Losing Your Spark

    I don’t know when it happens. I don’t know when the adventure of life slowly fades and is replaced by the repetitive and mundane. Over the last few years, I have slowly started feeling this way. I feel like my spark has faded and been lost.

    It is hard for me to tell if this is just a part of the ‘mid-life crisis’ that comes when you get deep into your 40s. Or perhaps this feeling of malaise and being lost has its roots in the series of unfortunate events that have dotted my last several years.

    When you lose a loved one, it changes you. When you lose several in rapid succession, it does irreparable damage. Your brain and heart don’t get a chance to process one loss, and another comes rushing in to knock you upside the head. And how do you process such losses when you feel like you have nobody to talk to about them?

    At this point in time, I feel like I have two types of people in my life. Ones who listen to me like they're listening to the ‘on hold’ music waiting for a real conversation to begin. Then there are the ones who simply cannot just listen. Any conversation devolves into a pissing contest over whose problems are worse. That usually ends with me deferring to them and just putting my problems, which we never come back to, on the back burner.

    But what of the spark? That zest for life, that yearning for the future. What happens to it? Some people seemingly never run out of fuel for that spark. Others, like me, are just staring at a cold fire pit, wondering where the lighter fluid is.



    When I was a teenager in the 1990s, the spark raged out of control. I was full of the angst that the Grunge movement and my own childhood had instilled in me. I was fighting for my future. I was working hard to do well in school so that I could have the future I wanted. I was planning on that future with friends, many of whom are still big parts of my life to this day. I was bound and determined to make it and filled with the energy to prove it. My apologies to 16-year-old me.

    When I was in my 20s in the 2000s, the spark was lit by an unending need for change. I did whatever I needed to do to find my path. If I had to leave a job that I felt was unfulfilling, I did it. If I had to move across the country a time or two, I packed my bags. I was lucky enough to find the love I had craved since I was a boy. I was also unfortunate enough to find that things like time and distance cannot always sustain love. Unflinching, I pressed on. I knew that each door that closed meant my future lay behind another one I had yet to find. I knew that risk-taking was the only way to truly change things. My apologies to 26-year-old me.

    When I was in my 30s in the 2010s, the spark engulfed me in the need for success and acceptance. The future I had dreamed of as a teenager felt like a raft attached to a slippery rope that I was slowly losing hold of. 

    What was success? What was love? The definitions changed with age. I wanted to be a published author, and that happened, now nine times over. Yet it didn’t lead to being a self-sustaining career. 

    I wanted to change day jobs so that I could at least feel fulfilled while waiting for my ship to come in. I did that, and yet my dissatisfaction only grew and festered. No matter the good that came to me, I was never fully happy. I was in the best shape of my life physically, but on the inside, I always felt not enough. I wanted to be as big as possible and yet still go as unnoticed as possible. That spark turned to an inward anger that burned me up and wore me out. My apologies to 36-year-old me.

    Now in my 40s in the 2020s, the spark lay dormant. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I am still bound and determined to find the path I am meant to be on. Now it is far quieter and reserved, and cautious. It feels as though those losses I've suffered, 6 people in 5 years, have snuffed the spark out.

    There is no more teenage angst, though I wish there were. 16-year-old me would have a thing or two to say about my current mindset. 

    There is no more taking risks like you’re trying on a new shirt. I now worry more about the potential problems than the potential rewards. Maybe that comes with age, but 26-year-old me would tell me much of what my life consists of now is due to the risks I took back then. 

    There is no more ‘me against the world’ level of needing to prove myself. Shouting from the rooftops about who I am sounds like more effort than it’s worth these days. 36-year-old me would likely ask, ‘What in the world was everything we did for then?’

    These days, I feel like I packed all of my hopes and dreams onto the back of a snail and am watching it try to cross a busy highway. All of the various incarnations of myself would likely be shaking their heads for different reasons. Yet inside, I am still all of those people. There are times when I feel myself slipping into those old mindsets. But I feel like the ‘older and wiser’ version of me overrules them all. It says ‘Why push a sled full of rocks uphill when you can sail down a lazy river if both routes lead to the same destination?’

    Maybe in my 50s in the 2030s, I’ll look back on this and laugh because I found my spark again. Maybe I’ll apologize to the current version of me for something I haven’t even done yet. The spark inside you isn’t something tangible. It is a feeling, a movement, a driving force meant to get you through the journey we call life. It is also something that, if not cultivated and nurtured, can be lost. I will keep on looking for mine, and if you are looking for yours, know that you’re not the only one.