It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, and that’s basically because I fell off the wagon a couple of months ago. But that’s the nature of addiction. Sometimes you stumble. Sometimes you fall. But somewhere in the falling, we learn things about ourselves if we’re willing to look. This post is about some insights I’ve had during that time.

In 2017, I had a massive mental breakdown. At the time, it seemed to come out of nowhere, but looking back, it’s clear where it came from. I was still teaching full time and had been living under the stress of tough schedules for three or four years at that point.

But where it came from isn’t important. What is important is how I dealt with it. It was perhaps one of the worst depressions I had ever faced, and it left me walking around in a fog for most of that year.

And, oh boy, I tried everything. I even decided to go back to church—which, if you know me, sounds kinda crazy. I grew up in a very religious household, but when I became an adult, I drifted away from it. At one point, I had even declared myself an atheist.

Long story short, it took me quite a while to figure out how to be happy again. I went to church. I started doing more things with my family. I did puzzles. I read self-help books. And I wrestled with the existential dread that I think lives somewhere deep in all of us.

We distract ourselves from that emptiness, but when we’re alone, it likes to creep up on us. I spent time trying to figure out where it comes from and how to reconcile the idea that our actions in this life seem meaningless. That one day, far in the future, none of this will be here. So why go on? What’s the point of living if the sum total of our lives is zero?

I ultimately came to the conclusion that I was thinking about it all wrong, that there’s no such thing as the past or the future. All this is is a perpetual now, and all we can ever know and have is what’s happening right now, in the present moment. So why burden ourselves with the woes of things that aren’t even in front of us? What matters is what’s happening now, and right now, in this moment, my actions have meaning.

Also, it’s not a given that this won’t survive. We have no idea how the future will take shape. I was reminded of this earlier this year when my brother passed away. He had been living with my parents since about 2012, with no job, and he basically drank all day long.

I spent many years worrying about what was going to happen to him when my parents passed. Would I be left with the burden of taking care of him? Did I even want to do that? I worried it would ruin my relationship with him. Or that I’d be stuck taking care of him myself. And in the end, all that worry was for nothing.

As I get older, that lesson comes back to me time and time again: to try to remain in the present moment as much as possible and not let the past or future creep in and ruin it.

About a week or two ago, I found myself drifting back into that same feeling I had in 2017. I felt myself losing control. I felt myself being sad. And it dawned on me that this type of feeling creeps in any time I make a big change in my life. In this case, I had just taken a new job at work, and my daughter moved away for college—leaving that “empty nest” feeling of not seeing her as much.

In short, I felt alone.

But something different happened this time. Instead of entertaining it or letting it expand to fill my entire life, I decided I wasn’t going to dwell in it. I didn’t ignore the feeling. I knew I was sad because things had changed, and I allowed myself to feel that sadness.

But I didn’t load anything else on top of it. In other words, I allowed myself to feel the grief of the situation without turning it into some existential crisis. It hit me that the reason I struggled so much in 2017 was exactly that: I took normal feelings of grief and stress and tried to make them into something bigger.

I made it about the meaning of my existence. And it occurred to me that this is my pattern. Instead of embracing the emotions that life brings, I keep looking for something behind them. Something from my childhood or something in my psyche that makes it more than what it is.

But what did Sigmund Freud say? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I’d argue that a cigar is always just a cigar, but you can make it into anything you want with enough mental gymnastics. And man, I’m an Olympian when it comes to mental gymnastics.

So instead of allowing myself to drift into the nothingness that is existential dread, I told myself I wasn’t going to entertain that. I focused on feeling the emotions surrounding my job (and, more prominently, my daughter moving away), but I also focused on the things that make me happy: hiking, running, reading, listening to audiobooks and podcasts, watching movies and TV shows, etc.

And just like that… the feeling passed.

It was a rather profound moment for me because it might be the first time in my life that depression didn’t pull me out of sorts for a long period of time. I also came to the realization that this is just what happens in life.

A few months after my divorce, I was working my second job—an evening job pushing carts at a local Walmart. Near the end of the night, I had a panic attack at the back of the building while I was gathering carts from the tire center. I slinked down against the building and rode it out. I looked at the carts in the distance and asked myself how I was ever going to get “up there” to get them. And that phrase (“one day I’ll get up there”) hit me in a profound way, as it was also a metaphor for getting over my divorce.

While I was on the ground, I looked over and saw a key ring. Nothing on it, just a ring. I picked it up, put it in my pocket, and told myself I’d keep it as a reminder that one day I’d make it “up there,” where I’d be happy, healthy, and living my best life. And I spent years focusing on that.

But what I’ve come to realize is that there isn’t an “up there.” Everything that has a beginning has an end. You may reach a moment that feels like it’s “up there,” but it’s really just a comma in a very long sentence.

Life is a series of mountains and valleys, ups and downs, good times and bad. Or as the author of Ecclesiastes once wrote: “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.”

The idea isn’t to resist the pain or focus on some better moment. The idea is that all we have is a perpetual now, and the goal is to stay in the moment and not let a bad one spiral into a panic attack. Obviously, this is much easier said than done, but it’s still the truth.

So, at the end of the day, I walked away from my momentary crisis mostly unscathed this time. I’d like to believe it’s because of the work I did in 2017 and the realization that living in the present moment is the key to being happy.

Maybe that’s the real lesson I’ve been trying to learn all along, that peace isn’t some destination you fight your way toward. It’s not “up there.” It’s right here, in the middle of everything messy and uncertain and beautiful.

The sadness comes, and so does the joy. The fear, the laughter, the quiet moments when you’re just sitting still and realizing you’re okay — they all belong to the same story.

Life doesn’t wait for us to get it all figured out. It just keeps moving, moment to moment, inviting us to show up for it. So I’m trying to meet it where it is. Not in the past, not in the future, but in this simple, imperfect now.

Because right now, in this moment, I’m still here. And that’s enough.