Some people believe that the goal of life is happiness. They trudge through life with the conviction that at the end of all their strife and struggle is the fruit of joy. Others believe that there is no real destination in life which consequently means that there is no happiness to be found at the end of life. To such people, happiness is just as fleeting as struggle. The burdens of life rarely weigh them down because they know that this too shall pass. They may be the smartest of us all. The truth is, most of us aim to flourish in life, whatever that means for us, and avoid suffering as much as possible.
Humans are rarely satisfied with what we have; we believe that we must indulge in seeking the daydream of flourishing or evading the nightmare of suffering for the blessing of success. The reality is that we need more to feel alive. No human has ever been satisfied with walking the earth; we must swim in the oceans and fly in the skies and crawl underground. As we rush down these seemingly well-trodden paths, we often forget to reflect on where we are currently. Are we flourishing or are we suffering right now? We could be at either extreme or even quite close to it. However, at times, we might be at neither extreme. Sometimes, we might be stuck in a sludge of quicksand, or quite simply, languishing.
Languishing is the proverbial purgatory of one’s state of being. There are neither highs nor lows; life is a middle ground with minimal bumps. You’re not in mental anguish but you’re not thriving. To languish is to follow a dimly lit path that has no path; you can see a few feet in front of you but there’s no light at the end of the tunnel to signal your eventual escape. You get the distinct sense that there is nothing to look forward to. You feel happy, sad, angry, but they average to a straight line of numbness. To some, languishing can feel like walking in circles where you lalways end up where you began. To others, languishing can feel like walking in place; your feet leave deep impressions in the mud but you do not move forward. Is it the mud that holds you back or yourself?
No one really talks about languishing in time. You might do everything you do in a day without a hitch and still go to bed at night feeling like you didn’t do anything particularly useful. It’s like a painting that’s slightly skewed in perspective. Everything’s in place but nothing looks right. Something feels off but you cannot pinpoint what exactly is different or wrong. How would you then describe such a painting to someone who has never seen it before? It may be no surprise then that we rarely hear of a state of languishing.
One has to wonder then: would it be worse to hit the dead end of suffering or go down the endless tunnel of languishing? Each path seems to hold its own special hell. One may even find that languishing is no middle ground but a kind of suffering in its own right. How would you then put one foot in front of the other and make sure you’re moving forward? How do you ensure that you’re on the way to flourishing? Perhaps, it can be of some solace to know that putting one foot in front of the other means that you’re not going backward. Even if your steps fall in place, you do not wander into the past like you tend to do in suffering.
After all, there seems to be no suffering without the past, no languishing without the present, and no flourishing without the past, the present, and the future.