Étant précède essence

For seven decades I have been told what I am. In my first years I was told that I was a child. By the time I was comfortable with that I  was suddenly a young man and expected to act differently than when I was a child. Years later it seemed that I was what I did.  Something didn't seem right. I really wanted to rebel - and from time to time I attempted to do so - but I didn't really know from what or against what I was rebelling.  It wasn't that I didn't like being a husband, a father and a psychotherapist. Actually I truly enjoyed each of those life roles very much, and I don't want anyone to think that I would ever have given them up.  I enjoyed them and they did give my life meaning nevertheless something was still wrong. They were my essence.  But I didn't really know my being.
Étant précède essence - being precedes essence.

I have to admit that the struggle would often drive me to depression.  I guess, according to Jean-Paul Sartre that is to be expected when one runs head first into the absurd. But often I found myself banging my head against it. As Sartre said "life begins on the other side of despair."

Pool on Little Missouri River into which I walked
at the end of running the Eagle Rock Loop

Although it may be called another manifestation of essence, my first valid glimpse at 'being' was when I finished the Eagle Rock Loop and walked full clothed into a pool on the Little Missouri River. I had just run the 43 mile loop alone - a triangle that went north up the Little Missouri River, cut across three mountains and returned by a second river that intersected the Little Missouri near Albert Pike Recreation Area. There were times when I had to search for the trail. The temperature hit 93 degrees even under the heavy forest canopy. Then I ran out of water because one of the water sources upon which I was relying had dried up. I had to use my emergency purifier and take water out of a puddle.  Standing in the waist-deep pool I looked around. The sun was just getting low in the sky casting long shadows. I remember thinking "I'm alive" - not in the sense of 'oh, boy, I just did that and I didn't die' but in the sense of being aware of being alive, feeling alive. It is a feeling that words can not adequately describe. I had that sense that this was me. I was really getting to see myself.

Sadly I returned to essence shortly but I wanted to know the feeling of being again.  Had I really experienced being or was it just adrenaline pumping me up to get through a long hard run? Yes, it could have been an adrenaline rush but I've had adrenaline rushes and this was different. It was as if something primeval had surfaced from my very core.  Had I really experienced being or was it just fantasy?  I needed to know and I was almost addicted to repeating that experience like a scientist wanting to replicate an experiment to demonstrate its validity. For many months after that experience I did frequent long solo runs culminating in my run across the Badlands. Every time there was that brief glimpse at being.  The experiences and the moments were very much like those described by Buddhist monks and others who, while meditating, get a brief glimpse of reality unfettered by social expectations, religious dogma and our human baggage. But, like the person meditating, I was unable to carry that experience into the rest of my life. I could remember it, but that isn't as good as living it.

Horse Bridge near where we live at Glacier 

Then there was Glacier . . . Glacier National Park.  I believe that the reason this magnificent park means so much to me and is like my true home is because this is where pure natural wilderness, bearing ageless life wisdom and reality, collided with my craving to experience being.  It was like a rebirth. I'm not a dumb man, but somehow I, like those around me, couldn't see the reality of  Étant précède essence. I had been locked into my essence which was not all that I am. In fact, according to existentialists like Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Sartre the true me is my being, not my essence. If we had time I would pursue the idea that society wants us stay in character; viz. essence.  Perhaps it was being freed of the confining mental myopia from which we, as a species, suffer.  Far from the negating and confining influence of what we call 'civilization' (or society) I was able to capture a sense of being. I was able to throw off the social expectations, being defined by essence, and embrace my being.  Finally I understood the words of Richard Dawkins who wrote “There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.”

As full a life . . . .
       As wonderful a life . . . .
               As full and as wonderful as WE CHOOSE to make it!

Étant précède essence!