Standing in Traffic

Learning to trust our own voice

Have you ever felt like you’re standing on a 6-lane highway overpass, cars whizzing past, knowing it’s only a matter of time before one swerves too late? You’d probably ask yourself: How did I get here? Why did I ever step onto this highway?

I’ve been asking myself those same questions lately.

A good friend of mine gave me some stickers the other day in a really sweet card. She knows I love stickers, and many she gave were hilarious, but one of them stood out to me above all the rest. It read well, well, well. If it isn’t the CONSEQUENCES of my own actions.

My friend knows me really well…

The truth is, depending on the angle you take, looking at my life situation right now could easily look like I am a train wreck in slow motion.

After 20 years in the Navy, retirement is months away, and I have no idea what comes next. There’s a retirement ceremony on the books I haven’t planned, but people have bought plane tickets for. At some point I have to get a job, but I have no clue what I want to do next. My marriage of 24 years is ending, the foundation of half my life crumbling beneath me. Even my role as a father feels uncertain as my oldest pulls away before leaving for college. Every part of who I thought I was—officer, husband, father—is shifting all at once.

I could keep listing life events… but I think I’ve made my point.

There I am, standing in the middle of a 6-lane highway during rush hour, trying to dodge cars, wondering how I got here.

My decisions, of course.

That’s how any of us got where we are, isn’t it?

A highlight of my day today was when I spoke with a graduate student from a prominent university here in Washington DC. She is proposing to do work that is tangentially related to work I used to do, and she wanted to tell me about her project.

At some point in the conversation, I asked her why she’s trying to do what she’s trying to do—which is very complex and fraught with lots of uphill challenge. Her answers really impacted me.

What’s the point of life if we’re not doing hard things?” she said. “By doing them, we learn about ourselves. In that sense, we can’t really fail. And if we do fail, we just try something else. Isn’t that why we’re here—to keep trying, to keep growing?

Wow. Okay. Add that person to my network immediately!

She was very motivated, driven, and eager to find meaning in everything she does. We were an instant match for each other’s energy. And the longer we talked, the wider and more interesting the conversation got.

We spoke about a variety of topics that interested us both—like the interesting ways people interact with AI and other emerging technologies.

She shared an interesting anecdote about a personal conflict she was having with a loved one. She knew the loved one was trying to tell her something she needed to hear, but their words kept triggering irritation in her, which was blocking her.

She told me that she and her father used to hand-write long letters to each other when her father was on trips. She always appreciated the way her father spoke to her in her letters. She said his voice was one she always trusted. So she decided to train a large language model on dozens of her father’s hand-written letters. She then asked the AI to interpret the words her loved one had been saying, but in the voice of her father. She said the result from the AI was remarkable, and really helped her move past the conflict and hear what her loved one was trying to tell her, which was ultimately beneficial for her to hear.

Isn’t that a fantastic story? The power of words spoken from ones we love. They can change so much about how we view our perspectives.

Her story made me wonder whose voice I would want to hear from right now, amidst a life that feels like someone in the middle of Walmart as the doors open on Black Friday.

No. That analogy isn’t quite right.

I was waterboarded once—a form of interrogation where you’re forcibly held down on a table and your interrogators steadily pour water on your face, which triggers your body’s natural reluctance to breathe because it thinks you’re underwater. It is so severe it produces heart attacks in some cases, which is why it is now officially outlawed. It is pretty terrible.

That’s kind of how things feel right now.

Anyway, I sat and wondered who I would want to write me a letter right now, and the sad realization was that I don’t really have anyone.

And that is especially sad because I write other people letters of encouragement all the time. I have hundreds of them saved right here in my Scrivener library.

I get such a joy from sharing perspective and encouragement with people who are wrestling through life. One of the privileges of being in recovery is that I get to go into drug and alcohol treatment centers on a monthly basis where I share my story and talk a bit about how I recovered. I do the same thing at a prison release program every Sunday, where I get to talk to a room filled with men my age who have been in prison since they were late teens or early twenties. All of these experiences give me the opportunity to do what I love to do—give love. Be encouraging. Help people reframe their situations so they can move forward and love themselves.

And so I suppose the best voice I could hear from in times like these… is my own.

Sure it is important to have friends and loved ones we can call, and their advice is often helpful. But they don’t have a golden compass or a pre-made map to follow. At some point, all of us will reach a point when we have to stop looking for answers outside of ourselves, and instead learn to listen to and trust our own hearts.

So I wrote myself a quick letter.

Hey Eric,

Sorry you’re struggling right now.

You sound scared.

I know how important it is for you to feel safe and know everything is going to be okay. That’s what we have always wanted the most, isn’t it? We just want to know everything is going to be okay, that someone will be there for us when we need them.

But here’s the thing—and I know you know this—staying safe means staying put. And you’re not meant to stay put.

You’re built to do hard things.

You feel it, don’t you? That curiosity and drive. It is what propels you forward. No one who ever stepped out in pursuit of achieving big goals ever did so without a lot of fear and doubt.

Growth always asks us to give up comfort and certainty.

Be good to yourself. You’re learning new things right now. This is a season of growth for you, and it’s tough. I see it.

But you’re doing it. Don’t quit.

Easy does it. You’ve got this.

Love,

Me.

Nothing magically changed after I wrote that letter, but for a moment, I could breathe again. My feet felt steady, like I’d stepped off the highway and found a small patch of ground on the median.

I’ve been reluctant to write lately, wondering why anyone would want to read about my mess. But earlier today I read an essay that began, There’s this feeling you get in your twenties, like life is suddenly about nothing…

After I got past my reflexive eye-roll, I thought—okay, if someone in their twenties can be bold enough to share their chaos, I probably have nothing to lose.

Besides, most of what I know has come from people like you who’ve shared their stories with me. That’s how we learn to do this thing called life.

So here’s mine, messy as it is. If there’s anything to take away, it’s this:

We need to pay attention to what we say to ourselves.

Because deep down, we already know the way forward—we just have to learn how to listen.

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About the Author

ES Vorm, PhD is a scientist, writer, and veteran of the Iraq conflict. A recovering perfectionist practicing the art of not performing, he shares essays on recovery, growth, and finding purpose in the middle of the struggle.