One final point. It is more likely that this ideational train will be fully operational and pulling on external images when we are tired and overwhelmed. Such a state is not uncommon when living in what several social observers have identified as the conditions of exhaustion (Newport, 2016; Stoycheva, 2022). We step on board the train in an anxious and fatigued condition. We soon find that the train is filled with passengers who match our anxiety and fatigue. They also hold an often-unacknowledged feeling of regret regarding their personal life as well as their collective life. Together, we create and maintain even more bizarre fictional accounts of the menacing world in which we now live and work.
No wonder that Daniel is struggling a bit with his plans for the future. Does he really want to push off on a psychic boat that will leave him on a stormy sea without a clear destination and little control over the direction in which his boat is headed?
Lesson Six: Stormy Sea and Its Navigation
Dr. Freud provided Daniel with a preliminary picture of the sea on which he might have to navigate if the choice is made to leave his current job. What does the stormy sea look like? Does it potentially resemble the deep, dread-filled sea portrayed by Soren Kierkegaard (1980). Or is that too dramatic, pessimistic and existential a sea for Freud (and Daniel). Perhaps it is the somewhat more tranquil sea that Agnes Mura and I envisioned when describing Bill Bridges’ (1980) model of transition (Mura and Bergquist, 2020). We don’t know what either Dr. Freud or (later) Daniel envisioned as a stormy sea on which to navigate.
In whatever way Dr. Freud and Daniel have envisioned the sea, navigation of this sea would no doubt be quite a challenge. One can easily be caught in a stormy sea of Regret, Loss, Anger and Anxiety. We do have a narrative regarding this stormy sea that is offered by Tennessee Williams, one of the major playwrights of our time. Williams is fully caught up in Regret, Loss, Anger and Anxiety. He offers his description to an impressionistic young man, James Grissom, who has been given an assignment by Williams to record some of Williams’ own life experiences, as well as the impressions of Williams to be offered by important women in his life.
Williams’ Sea: Tennessee William offers this description of his own stormy sea (Grissom, 2015, p. 147). He begins by summing up his belief that:
“God will not come and save us. Life will not treat us fairly if we dutifully follow the rules. Our friends, the true ones who can be counted on one hand, might come to our aid, unless they are dressed and perfumed and waiting for their own gentleman caller to arrive. We are utterly, completely alone, and when I have been my most fragile, my most shattered, that has been when I have fully realized how vulnerable I am. Far more frightening is the realization that those on whom I often need to lean are equally fragile, and can be—and have been—plucked from my life with sickening swiftness.”
Williams is particularly focused on the lies and untruths with which he lives in order to remain living. Williams must choose between truth and a state of “mendacity” (a term he is fond of using) (Grissom, 2015, p. 147):
“To face this, brutally and openly, would be for me to die, so I found my solace, my lie, in the illusion of writing, in which I could create alternate worlds with alternate people, and rule them beneficently. I was saved by writing, and later, when I was no longer able to love fully and clearly, and therefore could no longer write, I found solace, and still find it, in alcohol, drugs, in a multifaceted God who does as I choose. We are not created by God; our God is created by us. You cannot find salvation or solace anywhere until you find it in yourself and it is there [he points to his heart] that you then create your God.”
