What Now?

He sat across the scarred picnic table, affecting a nonchalant air about his accomplishment and taking a tacit pride in the hardship. He was coming off a double high: the euphoric high of his achievement, and the literal high of the highest mountain in Maine—the 5,267-foot Mt. Khatadin that marks the end of the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail. He was amicably disposed, I discovered, and at a single question, he began to tell his story, trying to hide his pride with understatement. I asked how long he had been on the trail.

“Six months. Started at Springer Mountain in April and chased the snow north.” He smiled, apparently to himself, as he refused to look at me. “Lots of days you wake up to the cold and the fire is out. I started out at 220 pounds and now weigh 180. My feet flattened out, I had to buy bigger shoes and smaller pants.”

He said you get used to not taking showers, which was obvious. He ate fruit flavored snacks from a sandwich bag and swigged lukewarm water from his crusty filter bottle. His haircut appeared to be a Swiss army knife special, and facial hair crept from the bottom of his eyes into the stretched and stained collar of his pink t-shirt. The monologue went on.

“I wasn't the fastest. But—,” he scratched his beard and inspected whatever appeared under his fingernail while he prepared his excuse. “You got to enjoy it. The record was broken this year by some guy by the name of Joe Mc-something, and he ran the entire 2,100 miles in 45 days. That’s an average of 48 miles a day, seven days a week. The guy is a maniac. He is trying to thru-hike all three major trails, the AT, CDT and the PCT (Appalachian, Continental, and Pacific Crest trails) this year. Don’t know what for.”

Paring life down to a pack and walking 2,100 miles is a product of hip romance, trying to escape the inanity of a day job. A sort of voluntary suffering that gives the illusion of control of our fates. Or at least that’s what I inferred. It wipes away petty problems and gives you real ones to focus on, like staying alive and keeping your sanity. However, even with the displaced stress (instead of sweating to make your car payment, you’re sweating for a more legitimate cause such as climbing a hill) it turns out satisfaction from achievement offers only diminishing returns. The same as last time is never good enough.

“This comes up at every campfire, that is, how to do the trail. Some do it fast, some do it slow. We always decide everyone should do the trail their way, long as they enjoy it that’s the main thing. I took my time, see.

“The best part is, since everybody is after the same thing, we are all friends and forge some good times. The campfire philosophy is wonderful. Everybody looks out for each other, we travel together some, help each other. Everybody is looking for something; I met a guy that lost a wife to cancer, another had gone bankrupt, another was jilted.”

All looking for something, I thought. Sounds familiar.

“That's interesting,” I said. “I would love to spend several months living on a trail.”

“Was easy for me. The company I worked for quit employing me, and so I decided to do the trail.” Intrigued by his choice of words, I wondered how I could get my employer to do that. Nosily, I asked him what was next for him.

“Oh,” he replied, insouciance vanishing, as if it was the first time he’d thought of it. “I don't know.”

The next morning at the Appalachian Trail Cafe, there were a few more thru-hikers signing the ceiling tile, a privilege exclusive to them. I watched them. Where were they from? What would they do now? Would they just go on to postpone life and hike another major trail?

I recognize this place, and maybe you do too. We finish, in order to have done, not do in order to finish. A soldier works himself out of a job by winning a war, a climber becomes blasé after climbing El Capitan, and a writer runs short on inspiration after winning the Pulitzer prize. Graduated teenagers, returned missionaries, retired pastors, successful counselors, post-children parents. A life’s work wrapped up in a project, only to discover the goal anticlimactic—the process was so much more fulfilling than the end—and it leaves us wondering what now because everything left to do is clogged with trivia.

Some positions are harder to abdicate than others, like a mentor, whose definition of work is to make himself unneeded. After you have successfully equipped your counselee, or you have successfully brought up a better generation of men, it takes grace outside of humanity to bow out and let loose.

Yet with a new normal comes an excellent chance to lay the true purpose of your life bare. Does your sense of worth depend on others depending on you? Can you go back to a day job, if you must? Does your pride allow you to accept help as you have given it? Or do you refuse to let loose of former source of fulfillment, prying your way back in?

A fine line separates calling and identity. A calling gives you a name tag, but the source of your self-esteem will be clear when your work is removed from you. Who would you be without your business? Or your bishopric?

Instead of being humble enough to go from bishop to janitor, former work can become identity—and therefore, an idol. It takes humility and contrition to be a nobody after being somebody, because our identity is wiped away. Purpose fulfills, but inviolate identity is found in something outside of ourselves and what we do.

I was jerked back to the picnic table when I realized he was still talking. “The trail is a great place. When you’re there, you can’t get away, and it takes all you got. It makes you feel good.” He maundered on. “But now I got to go back and make money. That looks boring.”