What The Hell Am I Doing?
I’m sure I had fielded the question before, but my first memory of it being asked of me was when I was very young and I literally had my hand in the cookie jar. “What the hell are you doing?” Or something equivalent.
You know it really is an important question. And some of the most important questions we can ask of ourselves are the very same questions others ask of us. This is one of those kinds of questions.
I think it is true that the worse kind of deception is self-deception. No one ever truly lived well who succeeded in the area of self-deception; deceiving themselves. It’s easy to do but it’s also the goal of all things truly spiritual to avoid this pitfall.
And so we meditate and listen to our lives, as Harry would say. And through that listening get in touch with the true path, the high road and move back onto it when we discover we’ve gone off course.
Well, I think this business of questioning oneself is an important tool that can help us with keeping our lives on course. And there’s no more important question that we can ask of ourselves than the question, “What the hell am I doing?”
Last weekend I took a road trip with my son and attended a football game in Auburn where I grew up. If anyone doubts the power of human community when it aligns and presses in the same direction then let them attend a football game in the deep south at one of the universities where football reigns supreme. When great human causes across the ages have succeeded against all kinds of obstacles and barriers it’s usually because a convergence of opinion, zeal and will aligned closely like they do at a game like my son and I attended last weekend.
You make all kinds of new friends at a game like Auburn and LSU played last Saturday night. All you have to do is wear orange or blue and yell loudly at the same time that others around you are yelling and presto you have all kinds of new and momentarily deep friendships.
One of the ones I made last weekend was with a woman sitting beside us. She and her husband, like John and I, were Auburn graduates and avid fans. At half time John left for the concession stand and while he was gone the cheerleaders came over to the stands where we were sitting and led the crowd in some cheers. And as they did, this woman sitting beside me said, “You know, I was once hot like those girls.” And then she said, “I wonder what happened? I’m not sure but I can tell you it was gradual. I woke up one day and noticed how out of shape, how over weight I’d become; how in so many areas of my life I had gone way down the road of compromise. And, you know what it snuck up on me. I lost it gradually.”
We talked on and talked about how easy it is by small, almost unnoticeable steps to get off course. I told her about this service and asked if I could include our conversation. She said yes. And then she said, “Tell you what, LSU comes back here year after next. These are our forever seats. We’ve got these seats reserved forever more. Meet me back here in two years and I’ll be hot. I’m getting back on course in my life. I remember how exciting life looked to me then. I’m going to reclaim that excitement and then she turned to her husband and said, are you ready for this? Are you ready to get hot again with me?”
It is so easy to get off course. We don’t have control of everything. We are guests in a process that is much bigger than us and all kinds of natural and man made forces can take us off course. But we do have some control and living well requires that we exercise wisely the control that we have.
Small, seemingly insignificant steps can lead us way off course and before we realize it we can be off course in all kinds of important areas of our lives. We can get off course in our friendships; we can get off course in our marriages; we can get off course in our work. We can get off course with our health. We can get off the course of understanding ourselves, our gifts and talents. We can get off course and lose our enthusiasm for life. We can simply in small increments resign in so many life areas and before we know it we’re not hot anymore.
I think if we frequently and often asked ourselves this simple question, “What the hell am I doing?” I’m convinced we’d be less likely to get off course. We’d more likely notice earlier the compromises, the quiting, the resignation, the slow giving up on being vitally alive.
We’d be more likely to remember the course, remember it’s direction, remember who we are when we are living well and we’d have the comfort of knowing that whatever our lot, it is one that we’ve given our best to.
It’s about being awake, consciousness. It’s about living all of life, running through the tape. It’s about the good fortune of being busy with being alive when death someday greets us.
It’s about living out our full potential. It’s about catching ourselves when the drift from the good path starts. It’s an onboard guidance system that starts to beep loudly when we cross the yellow line on the road of life. It’s the rumble strips of the life highway. It’s an opportunity for, Whoa! What the hell am I doing? Watch out now!
So, I’m going to invite you to think about it; to really think about it. What about the drift, the slow incremental drifting that may have come into your life? Are you still hot? Still giving it your best? Being all you can be in relation to your health, your relationships, your work, your self-discovery? Are you living your life in the way you want to? Stop for just a moment and ask yourself in relation to each, WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING?
