"Nothing veils a star" (Aurelius, book 11, chapter 27) and we too, should confront existence with no intermediary. Indeed, we are "thrown into existence" (Aho, 2023) and in that existence, we immediately are encumbered with veils in the forms of pre-conceived meaning, religious and philosophical shackles, genetic predispositions, cultural responsibilities and expected duties. Many of these veils were placed there by our parents. Some of us willingly accepted the veils, while others of us have been figuring out ways to cast them off in order to see existence clearly and with our own eyes. Fortunately, for some, the beginning of the un-veiling takes place in the form of abandonment.
Abandonment may trigger fear and anxiety, or perhaps instill confidence. Regardless, the opportunity for growth and resilience are present with each abandonment, in that the definition and clarity of existence moves from low-fidelity to a higher fidelity until one can, eventually, comprehend existence as it is.
When Nietzsche declared the death of God, he was observing what had already transpired in the hearts of men for quite some time - that "God may have been an illusion, but ... a necessary illusion" (Gravil & Addis, 2007, p. 21). While God supplied aim, values, emotional relief and fortitude and even a future, the lived experience of man could not be fully supported by those dogmas. What he was taught on Sunday did not fully equip him on Monday, Tuesday, or any other day of the week. God abandoned man. Truthfully, however, all along, God was a creation of man and man abandoned that creation. Even for the Christian Kierkegaard, God could not be objectively ascertained (2007). Therefore, while some men may proclaim God is alive and well, he nonetheless must admit that his experience is one of faith and, at best, a belief, else eight billion people might agree on the definition and objectivity of God like they agree the sun shines.
All people must be abandoned or experienced abandonment. If they have the will to live and exist, each abandonment yields a stronger, sharper existence. While some abandonments are temporary, and others are permanent, with each successive sense of isolation, the individual is forced to use his own devices or seek help from others in his sphere - he must swim, or sink. His use of his rational thinking and volition (what is 'up to him') is what he must rely on if he is going to swim.
Below are a few reflections of milestone-abandonments, from my life, and how I dealt with each one.
I was seemingly fortunate in my childhood to avoid abandonments. Family, community, school, church and God were all relatively stable aspects of my life. My parents did not divorce, as did many of my friends' parents in the early 1980s and 1990s. There were no attacks on my religion or religion in general for that matter. My friends and I attended church on Sundays, went to school and played sports during the week, achieved our Scout badges and awards, served our community, and generally we got along and were decent kids. I felt secure in many aspects.
But despite religious reassurances, I still suffered temporary, local abandonments. Being the youngest of seven children, my older siblings all left for college while I was still in public school. Some of the older ones would come home to visit at times, and when the hour arrived for them to drive back to college, I felt an immense sense of abandonment. To this day, I feel the sting of tears in my eyes and the pain in my gut and heart as I sat on the porch and watched them pull out of the driveway, down the street and out of sight.
Leaving the nest of home to go to college and a church mission to Guatemala felt like a deeper abandonment. The structure of church and school and being with friends and like-minded people softened the blow, but despite these lifelines, the fear and anxiety of saying goodbye, first to my parents after they dropped me off at the MTC, and then later saying goodbye to my brother and sister at the San Francisco airport, en route to Guatemala City, brought a harsh new reality of feeling alone.
3000 miles away from home and 6000 miles away from my parents (who were in Prague), living in the lush highland jungles of Guatemala brough a fresh new realization of abandonment. My courage was fortified not only in Christ, but also by the words of the prophets in the scriptures and the leaders in the Mormon church, both local and global. More experienced missionaries also were a succor to my homesickness and longing for old comforts. At that time, I had not known of Seneca's toti se inserens mundo (Seneca, 2024, Letter 66) but I certainly tossed myself into the work and service in front of me. In fact, early on, while living in Zona 18 in Pinares del Norte, I was so overcome with homesickness, I took all reminders, photos and letters of my family and stuffed them in the bottom of a suitcase and vowed to never look at them until I got over these emotions. My focus and attention, directed at learning Spanish, talking to people and serving others, proved to be the solution for overcoming the sense of isolation and abandonment. And while the spiritual practices of prayer and reading scripture were helpful, it was attending to the matters at present which ultimately resolved the fear and anxiety.
If homesickness weren't enough, I also had to manage being ill in a foreign country. I don't know what it was, but a doctor informed me that I contracted a virus. Some 29 years later, all I remember is being very sick and having the worse migraine in my life. Someone made the decision to send me to a hospital and I ended up spending a night being cared for. The next day, I was released to the care of other missionaries who kept an eye on me while I made a full recovery. During that time, I met Moses Vargas, to whom I disclosed my homesickness and loneliness. He helped me understand I was not alone and that I lived and worked and existed alongside several hundred missionaries in Guatemala. When I said my prayers at 6am, I was praying with all the other missionaries and that thought brought me comfort. It was something more real and tangible than the comfort the Holy Ghost or Christ could provide.
One good thing about abandonment is that it reveals how humans play games with humans in the name of God. When I threw myself into the work, or when Moses Vargas and others consoled me, people would reason that it was the Holy Ghost and God and Jesus who inspired me or those 'other people' to bring me comfort and support. Looking back on this, I realize they were simply imbuing social ethics with a smattering of divinity.
When a leader of the church takes credit for other people's choices and deeds in the name of God, they do so in an attempt to garner more power for the church, not necessarily for God. A relevant example of this is from Uchtdorf (2019) wherein he makes the argument that when people perform acts of kindness, they are doing so in the name of God, and more specifically the church. However, the logic does not work both ways. If the same person (e.g. a missionary or member of the church) provides service to others, the church will attempt to take the credit, but if that same person does something dishonorable in the eyes of the church (e.g. use their tithing funds to give to a soup kitchen rather than to the church), the church will deem this act as not in the name of God and may even discipline the member (e.g. excommunication). The key message from the church to the individual is this: "obey and we will take the credit and uphold you the best we can, but dissent or misalign, we disavow you and you are on your own."
This key principal, even if unspoken, is discerned more acutely after having served a mission for the church. There is significant management and stewardship of a young man or woman for the first 20 or so years of their life. There are checkpoints, interviews, and to-do items in order to keep the person on the right track. But after those first 20 or so years, you are left to your own devices to keep the program going. As long as you follow the program after serving a mission (getting married, holding callings, having kids and repeating the cycle), you will fall under the good graces of the church. But if you don't follow the program or even fit the mold of a 'good' member, you are abandoned since your usefulness to the church is no longer valuable.
For me, in 1997, I realized I was a tool for the church. My whole life had been a checklist with regular interviews to ensure I was checking off all the boxes. And then when I returned home from my mission to Guatemala, it all went silent; I was abandoned and truly left to my own devices. When you've been told how to think and how to live the first 21 years of your life and when it all goes silent, you feel lost and disoriented.
I stayed true to the program, for the most part. I dated, eventually married, and my wife and I began a family. We accepted church callings and did all the enduring to the end we could muster. Children were born, babies were blessed, family home evenings were held, church attendance was regular like a metronome. During the week, my wife raised and cared for our children, while I commuted to work in the morning, worked all day, and commuted in the evening. Dinner, playtime, reading books, watching movies, playing games, cleaning up, bed time and then repeat. If only I had read Camus early in life, perhaps I would have been better prepared for what was coming.
In his Myth of Sisyphus, Camus observes, "we get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking" (1979). A bit later in the book he describes what I eventually would feel after 10 years of living the Mormon program. "Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm - this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the 'why' arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement" (1979). For me the 'why' was eternal life with my family and before that, I was yearning for confirmation or refinement or even sanctification. But there was no whiff of this to be found. The weariness became almost unbearable and the platitudes Mormonism offered did not outweigh the church's never-ending demands for more time, more money, more of my soul, more sacrifice on my part only for the benefit of the church. In a time when I needed support and energy or even relief, I only ever heard calls for more sacrifice. I felt abandoned. Confronted with metaphysical abandonment, I perceived that my choices were limited and I could not see any resolution other than death.
I began seeing a therapist in May 2014. She helped me see that I was enough - that existing and being there for my wife and kids and others was sufficient. And while she helped me correct some faulty value judgements I had been making, I recognized the space in which I could simply exist. I finally existed before landing on essence. Between 2014 and 2015, I deconstructed my beliefs and eventually I abandoned Mormonism, at least in my heart and mind. Never have I grown so much, emotionally, philosophically, mentally, than in those years of truly discovering myself and what my values were. I finally could choose my essence, rather than conform to what someone else decided for me.
By 2019, my wife and kids were also "out" of the church. The last time we attended services was December 2018. On a Monday in January 2019, the lay leader (bishop) came to our home, unannounced, and correctly claimed that we were less than honest about our temple recommend responses and he demanded we surrender recommends to him. This was tantamount to a slap in the face and an abject judgment of what our church thought of us after all the sacrifices in time and money we gave it. We were abandoned by our church. There were no questions about how we got to that point and there were no offers of succor to bring us back to the 'right' path. We had been fully abandoned and we could not be happier.
2020 brought a new kind of abandonment. The COVID-19 pandemic introduced isolation policies which effectively brought a type of abandonment many had never experienced before. The only people we could come in contact with were our families, and friends and neighbors at a safe distance. The days seemed long as we sat by our computers, working remotely, and watched the evening news reports of the thousands of deaths from people who succumbed to the virus as well as people who died because of isolation polices (e.g lack of medical care). Politicians and medical experts played on our fears. Panic spread as people tried to hoard supplies and many resources became scarce.
When things began to somewhat stabilize in late 2021 and into 2022, those who remained with the company had to begin picking up the pieces. After losing so many people, help was hard to find. Having endured multiple rounds of complaints from his staff, one manager reportedly told his group of 300 employees "no one is coming to rescue us; we have to save ourselves." I can think of no better existentialist motto than that. While some have the luxury of creating layers of security, friends, people, processes and tools around them like a cocoon, eventually all of that gets stripped away and the individual is abandoned and he realizes no one is going to live his life for him - no one is going to provide all the answers - he is on his own, so he might as well accept it and begin rescuing himself.
Toward the end of 2022, nearly two years ago from the time of this writing, my mother died and abandoned me. To be fair, I had mostly abandoned her in my mind, but not in my heart. I loved her dearly and often remember fondly my times, memories and experiences with her. Eventually I came to see her as not only my mother, but simply another human, with flaws, insecurities, her own narrative and philosophy for life. And while it was more emotional than I had expected, her passing to me brought a new-found fortitude and love for life. As I recalled her life through my perspective, I realized how much light she gave me. Whether she intended it or not, the fact remains that I have instilled in me an unending source of motivation to seek the sunny side of life because of how she raised me. A mere glance at the sun, and feeling the rays on my face, reminds me of her. I don't know if I would have had this blessing if she had not abandoned me when she died. She died November 10, 2022 and the sun still shines.
My father still lives at the time of this writing, but he inches toward his own death. After my mother passed away, my father seemed to have a tough time adjusting. On one hand, he seemed to have a new lease in life and claimed he would live to 140 years old and even verbalized aspirations of going back to college to pursues a masters degree in psychology after he heard a speech by a trained psychologist. His need for companionship endured after mother's death and every attractive woman he met, regardless of age, became the one he was going to marry. He dominated in cornhole tournaments and he loved to sing for all the other residents in the assisted living home. He spent his days visiting and trying to inspire the remaining members of The Greatest Generation. He has always sought a way to be useful and to help others. This undying zest for life has been an inspiration to me. While amusing, his fight to continue to live and exist even to the age of 140, teaches me to also fight for meaning and existence. This passion for life is even more extraordinary knowing that his father psychologically abandoned him through anger and lack of conveying love and care to my father. Alas, my father, too, will pass; life will abandon him and when that day comes, I'll be an orphan and know that my own death will someday arrive.
All experience abandonment, even the Christian god Jesus. As Camus (1956) writes in The Rebel, even the son of God experienced the most exquisite abandonment. Believing he was solving two of mankind's greatest problems, evil and death, after he hung on the cross in agony and in utter despair, Christ came to conclude that all are abandoned no matter the divinity, luxury or privilege. Hence he gut-wrenchingly yells out the lama sabactani (see Matthew 27) and is awestruck at his total and complete isolation. Camus sardonically notes Christ's "agony would have been mild if it had been alleviated by hopes of eternity" (1956). When I read this passage a few weeks ago, it struck my like a lightening bolt. I imagined Jesus experiencing an unexpected and panicked brush with reality. After having believed his own message for over 30 years, he came to realize that he too would suffer the same fate that billions before and after him experienced. He was not who he claimed to be. No one is immune from abandonment.
Since we are all abandoned, we must all stand on our own. No one is going to fully live your life for you. You must seek out your own meaning and purpose, especially when you come to find out that no one knows what this absurd existence really means. If you come from GenX, like me, you will probably never forget the message from Dead Poet's Society (Wier, 1989): carpe diem! Seize control of your life! Make your own meaning! Exist since no one else will nor can exist for you.
In conclusion, I leave this thought and quote which conveys the idea of: no one has found an instruction manual for life and you're on your own.
The problem for Kierkegaard is entwined with our fundamental abandonment in freedom. Man is a free project: which is to say that there is no ‘world-historical’ source of instruction and no pellucid God-ward imperative. In what concerns us most deeply we are thrown back on our own decision. The speculative reason says, Kierkegaard, cannot help us in the matter of existence, for to speculative reason, existence ‘is a matter of infinite indifference’. Furthermore, I am utterly alone in my plight (Gravil & Addis, 2007, p. 47).
References
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