Way Back Into Love — Vientiane | June 2016
“Living Life Forwards! ”
“Papa,” says Jason, my son, “are you OK?”
“Yes, don’t worry,” I answer, but it’s not true. I just caught a glimpse of myself in a window as we were getting off the ferry and I didn’t recognize the face staring back at me. I don’t know who I am anymore. I know who I used to be and who I want to be, but who am I right now in this moment in time?
This happened last August in Hong Kong and it was the moment which triggered this series of In the Moment stories that I’ve been writing for the past year. It has been the examined narrative of an identity crisis. I remember the early twenties version of myself very well but since then it’s all become a bit of a time warp and I’ve lost track of who I am and where I come from.
When I was at high-school, all I wanted was to study art history, travel and be a writer but this wasn’t to be the case. I did my exams in 1989 and, young and naïve as I was, I took the advice to enrol in a business college because, “why do something as useless as art history.” That was a mistake! At the Christmas break of the first year I wanted out, but it was too late. Unmotivated and miserable, I sat through the three years of business college and then only passed half of my exam subjects. Returning to the college after the summer holidays of 1992 to complete the other half of my exams, I made a bold decision, I dropped out. As the Netherlands still had a conscript army at the time, this meant I had to join the army. This is when the turmoil started.
I had been a very self-conscious teenager, painfully shy and out of place, but the army changed that. I was terrified on the day I had to first report for duty, visions of American drill-instructors swirling through my head, but this proved to be completely unjustified. In fact, I loved the army lifestyle and so, when my time was up, I joined professionally. From that moment on I had two personalities, there was good old civilian me and there was the new sergeant Van Gaans me. Two almost opposite versions of the same person.
In 1996 I was sent to Bosnia-Herzegovina as a member of the NATO mission to stabilise the fragile peace in the former Yugoslavia. Seeing the senseless destruction caused by the civil war and listening to horror stories of the survivors, I seriously started to doubt humanity. Back in the Netherlands, I signed up for the army’s education programme and started a bachelor’s in philosophical anthropology in an effort to understand human reasoning better. I can’t say I do, but the study did add a philosophically curious side to my personality.
During my eight years in the army there were numerous ceremonial duties and often I had to ‘perform’ at open days to attract new recruits. Combining this with my role as a sergeant-instructor, I guess the army added a teacher-entertainer side to my personality. In addition to this, the army allowed me to go mountain climbing all over Europe, skydiving in Thailand and scuba-diving in Mexico, adding thrill-seeker to the palette.
After leaving the army in 2001, I travelled around the world for nine exciting months and, upon return to the Netherlands, I managed to land a job as an operations officer for a small airline operating in Spain. This new career was sadly cut short by the aftermath of 9/11 and I didn’t adjust well to civilian life. In December 2002 I made another life-changing decision, I moved to the Southeast-Asian nation of Laos in an effort to spice things up a bit. I think it’s fair to say that these events add cosmopolitan to my personality traits.
Back in high-school I had been shy and basically steered clear of the girls, but army life had changed this as well. Feeling far more confident about myself and looking good in a uniform (no need for modesty here), I became a merciless skirt-chaser. Women became blankets until, a couple of hundred blankets later, I found myself sitting on a hilltop in Africa and realized that this lifestyle was not sustainable. To cut a long story short, in early 2008 I got married and in December 2009 my son was born. From heartbreaker to husband and father, another significant shift in personality.
Then, in 2013, I decided to add one more twist, I was going to be an entrepreneur! This is something that has been lingering inside me since childhood but I’ve always been to scared to pursue it. The sheer energy of Hong Kong, however, made me take the plunge and… I failed spectacularly.
Looking back at the past 24 years, I don’t think it’s that strange that I’ve lost track of who I really am. It’s been a hectic time with many ups and downs. With all the different roles I’ve been playing, it’s a miracle I haven’t turned out schizophrenic. In an effort to reconnect with myself, I’ve spent the past 46 weeks reflecting on my life by reliving some of its major events through writing.
Where did this epistemic vertigo come from? My best guess is that it’s the result of a fear of failure, a fear of having wasted a life. Sure, I’ve done all these different things, but what’s been the point of it all. What have I really done that makes it all worth it? Then I remembered a quote from Waldo Emerson I used in a class formed around the theme of success about eight years ago:
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived; this is to have succeeded.
I’m 44-years old and I honestly think I can tick all of Emerson’s boxes. It’s time to let go of the fear. In the words of the ancient Chinese sage Laozi:
If you are depressed you are living in the past.
If you are anxious you are living in the future.
If you are at peace you are living in the present.
I think the time has come to stop reliving the past and worry about the future. It’s time to embrace the present, to realize that I am who I am and that I won’t be who I was yesterday nor who I will be tomorrow.
That’s a lot of ‘I’ in one sentence but it’s a suitable conclusion to this year of reflection. To quote the great Dane who has been the connecting force throughout the past 46 weeks one more time, “Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.”
Hugh Grant, Drew Barrymore and Haley Bennett – Way Back Into Love on Music & Lyrics OST [CD]. Los Angeles, USA: Atlantic Records. (2007)
This autobiographical sketch comes from my bundle In the Moment: A Disjointed Audiobiography which is available at Amazon.com. (USD 9.50 for a paperback or USD 4.50 for the Kindle version)
