The Seeker (17/30)

Thirty essays in thirty days, number seventeen

I've looked under chairs
I've looked under tables
I've tried to find the key
To fifty million fables

They call me The Seeker
I've been searching low and high
I won't get to get what I'm after
Till the day I die

- “The Seeker” (The Who, 1971)

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A few years ago, my mom met a girl I was seeing and looked a bit bewildered afterwards. “Man, she sure is searching for something,” she remarked.

I laughed and mumbled some kind of assent. But internally, I bristled. What my mom saw in the girl—starting countless new jobs and organizations, trying on philosophies, believing without a shred of doubt that the next thing was the thing—well, that was me, too. Is me.

—

In The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker wrote of the human condition:

“For twenty-five hundred years we have hoped and believed that if mankind could reveal itself to itself, could widely come to know its own cherished motives, then somehow it would tilt the balance of things in its own favor.”

This seeking gene has always been prominent in me. One of the few things I remember distinctly from childhood is laying in my twin bed at night, buried under the color-streaked comforter covered in football helmets and basketball hoops and baseball bats, trying to understand what happens after we die.

This strain of curiosity has persisted. A quick glance at my bookshelf reveals such titles as: Waking Up; Man’s Search for Meaning; Man’s Search for Himself; The Science of Enlightenment; How to Change Your Mind; How to Raise a Jewish Dog.

As much I would like to be more inclined toward learning about history or how to fix a faulty transmission, this is the psychological hand I’ve been dealt. Tigers and stripes.

—

Of course, all of these abstractions and elusive ideas can become circular and navel-gazey. Lingering in the background is the question of utility: what is the point of trying to answer unanswerable questions? How does this help me file my taxes and be a good person?

It’s possible—likely, even—that it doesn’t. That there is no point. But during the long period in which I suppressed my seeking and tried to crowd it out, a period in which I supplemented my bookshelf with titles like Web Analytics: An Hour A Day, The 20-Minute Networking Meeting, and How to Win at the Sport of Business¹, I was just that: suppressed.

In one of those eye roll-inducing paradoxes, it’s only through surrendering to my nature that I’ve been able to integrate and expand beyond it. This past year, as I wrote more and dove further into the abstract than I ever have, I also did something light years outside of my comfort zone and competence: I got certified as an EMT. My natural inclinations were nourished, so I was freed up to lean into pursuits I normally wouldn’t—more practical ones.

At the moment I’m reading a book called Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment: a blunt, sometimes crass, wonderfully-written treatise on abiding non-dual awareness. It would be great, of course, if my seeking resulted in a revelation that changed my relationship with reality for the better, or at least helped me understand it more deeply. But I’m not holding my breath.

I seek because it’s in my nature—a nature to which I’m in the business of surrendering. Like The Who’s protagonist, I may not get what I’m after until the day I die. That’s okay. In the meantime, I’ll be reading about awakening and filing my taxes.

1. All great information. But I still haven’t read any of these books.