Equanimity and Purpose - A Reason To Stay Steady

Once I was home, still alive, and mostly still myself, I had to start rethinking what purpose actually meant. Before the crash, purpose had often been tied to movement, responsibility, work, fatherhood, progress, and being useful. Afterward, recovery moved painfully slow, and a lot of the things that made me feel like myself were no longer fully available to me. That was hard to accept. It left me unhappy, restless, and frustrated in ways I did not always know how to explain.

This was not all at once, or in some constantly dramatic collapse every day, though that did happen from time to time. Mostly, it happened in the quieter way people lose ground when life gets hard enough and long enough. Literally rebuilding your life while recovering can come with large amounts of pain, frustration, and embarrassment. For me, that showed up when I forgot things I would have always remembered, or when I had difficulty coming up with simple words. These were effects of the brain injury, and they were incredibly frustrating to me. I could know exactly what I wanted to say, understand the thing clearly in my mind, and still not be able to find the word for it.

One morning, I got very angry because I could not remember the word for the stuff you make out of bread and put in a hot electric appliance. Yes. Toast. I forgot the word toast. I knew what it was, what it looked like, how it tasted, what you could put on it, and exactly how I liked it. For me, it was peanut butter and jam, with butter. But I could not remember the fucking word “toast.” It is difficult for me to describe just how frustrating that was, how angry it made me, or, in retrospect, how much pain it caused for a guy who has always liked writing and words in general.

My mom was staying with me at the time, and I remember sitting at the island in my kitchen trying to find that word. On the outside, I probably just looked frustrated. Inside, I was furious and terrified. Part of what made it so upsetting was how simple the word was. I was not confused about the thing itself. I could picture it clearly. The idea was there. The object was there. The taste was there. The whole ordinary morning routine was there. The word was not.

I have always been an early riser, even during the drinking days, so mornings had always felt like one of the few parts of the day that belonged to me. I liked being up before the world got too loud. I liked coffee, quiet, and the sense that I had a little bit of control before the rest of the day started asking things from me. After the crash, even something as simple as making breakfast could remind me that I was not fully back yet.

My mom came up the stairs and said, “Good morning, Chris. Did you forget to put the toast down?” She looked at the electric appliance where two pieces of bread had been sitting for over an hour while I tried to pull the word out of my head. The frigging toaster. Suddenly there it was. The word was spoken out loud, and it came back into my mind as the painfully simple word that it was. “Fucking TOAST,” I said to her, loudly, with relief and, if I am honest, some annoyance that she had to remind me.

I do not know exactly how the brain injury affected that kind of word recovery. There had been bleeding on the lower left side of my brain, and I needed emergency surgery to remove the pressure. That is about as technical as I can get. We did not study much medical brain information in the electrical trade. But that morning, the loss of the word toast, which I have not forgotten since, had a strange and almost humorous effect on me. My old life was fucking toast too. I needed to come up with a way to deal with that.

The funny part was that I had also forgotten the word toaster, but I did not even notice it at the time. In my mind, it was just the appliance. If I had remembered toaster, I probably would have gotten to toast a lot faster, but I had become so focused on the missing word that I could not see the other missing word sitting right beside it. That is one of the strange things about brain injury. You can be aware of one problem and completely unaware of another one helping cause it.

After I finally made the toast, which was delicious as always, I went for a walk. Not in a sad or depressive way. I just needed to get out of the house and be alone for a bit. I still remembered that my thinking was often better while I was walking, so I went out and let my mind move with my feet. The toast thing stayed with me during that walk, and oddly enough, that is what brought me back to the idea of purpose and equanimity. Yes, I remembered the word equanimity but had forgotten the word toast. Brain injury is pretty fucking wild.

That walk helped me realize that purpose did not always have to be some big long-term goal. It did not always have to be a mission statement, a dream, a five-year plan, or some impressive picture of the man I was trying to become. Those things still mattered, but they were not always useful in the middle of a frustrating moment. Sometimes purpose was much more basic than that. Sometimes it was simply staying calm enough to deal with the thing in front of me.

That might sound too simple, but I do not think it is. In fact, I think the simplicity is what made it useful. When I forgot a word, the purpose was not to become inspirational, or to turn every frustrating moment into some deep life lesson. The purpose was to stop, take a breath, and give my mind a chance to find what it was looking for before my emotions took over the room. If the word came back, great. If it did not, then the purpose was to describe the thing as best I could and ask the closest family member or friend for the word I was missing.

That became the practice. I would pause instead of immediately getting angry. I would try to remember the word without panicking. If I still could not get it, I would give the definition, or the shape of the idea, or whatever pieces I still had access to. I might say, “What is the word for the thing that does this?” or “What do you call the thing you use for this?” or “I know what I mean, but I cannot find the word.” That was not always easy. There is a strange embarrassment in knowing exactly what you mean but needing someone else to hand you the word for it. But it was better than letting frustration become the whole experience.

That is where equanimity and purpose started to connect in a much more practical way. Equanimity was the calmness that gave me a chance to respond instead of react. Purpose was the reason for using that calmness. In that moment, the reason was not complicated. I wanted to deal with what was happening without making it worse. I wanted to give myself a better chance of remembering, and if I still could not find the word, I wanted to ask for help without turning that into shame.

I wanted to handle the problem in a way that gave me something to build on instead of something else to regret.

It reminded me of one of those big flat plates you build Lego on. The plate is not the exciting part. It is not the castle, the spaceship, the city, or whatever else gets built on top of it. But without the plate, everything is harder to connect, easier to knock over, and less likely to hold together. That is what this kind of purpose became for me. It was not always the big thing I was building. Sometimes it was the steady surface I needed so anything could be built at all.

That mattered because recovery is full of frustrating situations. Word recovery was just one of mine. I could forget a simple word, mix up names, lose the thread of what I was saying, or feel my emotions rise faster than I wanted them to. If I treated every one of those moments like proof that I was broken, I was going to make recovery harder than it already was. But if I treated each one as a chance to stay steady, breathe, ask for help, and keep going, then even a frustrating moment could become part of the rebuild.

Some of those moments were even funny. One time I was talking to my son’s mom about the movie Mission: Impossible, starring Tom Hanks. Which, of course, is not even close. Tom Hanks is a great actor, but he is not the guy hanging off airplanes and sprinting around as Ethan Hunt. That would be Tom Cruise. Somehow my brain had grabbed the wrong Tom and decided that was good enough. When we realized what I had said, we both laughed pretty hard.

That laughter helped too. Not because the brain injury was funny exactly, but because humour gave me a way to stay human inside something frustrating. It reminded me that I did not have to turn every mistake into shame. Sometimes I could just admit my brain had made a ridiculous substitution, laugh at it, and move on. That was still purpose. Not some grand heroic purpose, but the simple purpose of staying steady enough to keep participating in my own life.

That opened up a different way of thinking for me. Purpose was not always far away and waiting at the end of a long road. Sometimes it was right there in the kitchen, in the pause before anger, in the breath before asking for help, and in the decision not to make one forgotten word bigger than it needed to be. Purpose was staying calm enough to keep building.

That is what I needed. Not perfect calm or pretending I was fine. I was not forcing myself to feel grateful every time something was hard. It provided just enough steadiness to deal with what was real. Enough calm to describe the word I could not find, enough humility to ask someone else for it, and enough humour to laugh when Tom Hanks accidentally became an action star. That became enough purpose to keep one frustrating moment from knocking over the whole structure.

That is where Purpose mattered inside Equanimity. Equanimity helped me stay steady enough not to get yanked around by every hard feeling. Purpose gave that steadiness something to serve. At first, that purpose was very basic. Stay calm. Deal with the word. Ask for help. Keep going. But basic does not mean unimportant. In my opinion and experience, the most basic things are what everything else has to be built on.

When your mind is weaker than it used to be, when your emotions rise faster than you want them to, and when ordinary things take more effort than they should, it becomes very easy to ask a dangerous question.

What is the point?

That question is not always loud. Sometimes it hides inside smaller ones. Why bother today? Why push through this? Why keep trying so hard? Why does any of this matter if everything feels smaller, slower, and harder than it used to? What is the word for cooked bread in an appliance?

Purpose helped answer that, but not always with some huge inspiring speech. Sometimes the answer was simply this: because staying steady right now gives me something to build from. How I handle this moment matters. When I can approach one frustrating situation with a little more calm, maybe I can approach the next one that way too. Recovery is not built only out of big breakthroughs. A lot of it is built out of small moments where you do not let frustration make the decision for you.

This is what became the direction for me. It was not flashy or dramatic. It was just durable. Purpose gave my steadiness a reason, and equanimity gave my purpose a way to survive real life. Together, they helped me keep going when recovery felt slow, embarrassing, and harder than I wanted it to be.

And in those days, that was enough to start building on.

Designing Basic Purpose - Build The Base You Approach Life From

Here is what I want you to take from this entry. Purpose does not always have to be a dream, a destination, or some huge reason for living that sounds good in a book. Sometimes purpose is much more basic than that. Sometimes purpose is the reason you take a breath before you react. It is the reason you stay calm long enough to understand what is actually happening. It is the reason you choose not to make a hard moment worse just because your emotions showed up loudly.

That kind of purpose matters because equanimity needs somewhere to stand. Trying to stay calm just because you “should” can feel pretty thin when life gets frustrating. But staying calm because it gives you a better chance to deal with what is in front of you is different. That is not fancy. It is practical. It gives your steadiness a job.

So start there. Not with the biggest goal in your life. Not with the perfect vision of who you want to become. Start with the most basic question.

What is my calm for right now?

That answer might be simple. My calm is for not yelling, for hearing the other person properly, for solving the problem instead of feeding the argument, for asking for help instead of pretending I do not need it, or for getting through this moment without creating more damage.

That is basic purpose. Not the end result of a long-term goal. It is simply the reason to approach things calmly. It feels backwards to make the purpose the building start instead of the end, but to me, it fits very well.

It is the big flat Lego plate. It gives everything else a place to connect. You may build bigger things on top of it later, and you probably will. Relationships, habits, recovery, work, parenting, health, and the way you show up in the world can all become stronger from there. But those things are harder to build if the base is not there. If every frustrating moment knocks you over, it becomes hard to build anything that lasts.

So when something frustrating happens, you can try this. Stop first. Take one breath before you react. Name what is actually happening as plainly as possible. Then ask yourself what your calm is for in that moment. Not forever. Not for your whole life. Just right there.

Once you know what your calm is for, give it one small action that fits the moment. That might mean slowing your speech instead of letting frustration run your mouth, asking for help instead of pretending you are fine, stepping outside long enough to settle yourself, or admitting you are frustrated before the feeling turns into something sharper. The point is not to make the moment easy. The point is to let the moment be difficult without letting it become destructive. That is enough to start.

Equanimity does not need to feel heroic, and Purpose does not need to sound impressive. At the most basic level, Purpose is the reason you stay steady, and Equanimity is how you do it. Together, they give you a way to approach life without being controlled by every hard feeling that shows up.

That is how Purpose gave my steadiness a base.

And that is how recovery started feeling less like a condition I was stuck inside, and more like a life I could slowly build again.

As I keep building this blog, I would really appreciate your feedback. Please let me know what you think, what is helping, and where something could be made clearer or more useful. I am not a psychologist. I am just a guy trying to turn what I have lived through into something that might help other people in their own recovery, no matter how that recovery started.