Disengagement and Reengagement in Living

If you withdraw from participation in a particular group or relationship or even a hobby, a strange thing happens. Sometimes quickly, sometimes gradually, but eventually what happens is that your connection to the particular group or person or even hobby begins to die or at least it feels that way. And, when we begin to experience a deathly feeling with regard to a group or relationship or endeavor, then we lose our desire to resume our ties with that group or relationship or endeavor.

Of course, we might stop and wonder whether the group or other person in the relationship has really lost interest in us or lost a connection to us. The group or other person might be fine with us, just waiting in a sense for us to reappear. With regard to a hobby like gardening or hiking or painting or playing music or following a sport's team, there is not really a person on the other side, but only an activity that we have previously given ourselves to and enjoyed. Strangely, the dynamics of disengaging from a hobby is very similar to disengaging from a relationship with a person or group of persons. Once we withdraw from it for a time, we don't feel any energy or life coming from that interest anymore, and cease to be drawn to it. It is as if that part of ourselves that was interested and inspired by a particular pursuit has disappeared, just as in a relationship it feels like the person we are disengaged from has disappeared.

I am starting to think that our feelings of distance from others or certain activities is a necessary process of change which is really a way of leaving parts of ourselves behind that we are tired of. Often it is not the other person that we need to leave behind but simply the way we have become accustomed to being with that other person. It is the "how I am with this person" that I am tired of. With a relationship to a group of people, it can be the same. For example, I might become disengaged from my work at the Public Defender's Office because I am tired of how I am relating to my clients or my co-workers or adversary counsel or judges. Or, I might become disengaged from my work at church because I am tired of how I have become accustomed to relating to my parishioners.

Disengagement is necessary in all relationships at times, but then so is the insight that the most important thing you are disengaging from is a way of being your self that no longer seems to be working. If you can realize this, then you can then find out upon reengagement whether there is enough room for you to develop new patterns in a relationship or pursuit that create and sustain meaning in life.

I am learning upon disengaging with this group and that, and this hobby or that, that an emptiness comes from disengagement. There is a sense that you get something back when you are putting something in, and this giving and getting is mutually sustaining. When you cease contributing to others, to groups, to an activity, it can all become very still and even lifeless. But, when you keep on contributing in a way that depletes your self, then that causes growing frustration and only keeps up a false sense of purpose and meaning.

We are in a position as humans of needing to create meaning on a regular basis. The relationships we have, the work we do, the recreation we enjoy all play their role in creating and sustaining meaning in our lives. When the patterns that have created and sustained meaning have broken down or atrophied or disappeared for various reasons, we are faced with the challenge of giving ourselves to new relationships, or new groups, or new interests to create new patterns of living that provide us with meaning and energy for living.