Since I left my last corporate role and returned to working on our own Waldorf school, the thoughts that loop in my head have shifted. This contrast in how my mind spirals has helped me stumble upon ways to manage my mental health—and to make life less bad.
At my last job, I had trouble shaking off certain thoughts. I would replay arguments, rehearse future debates. From waking up to walking my dog to workouts, it was non-stop. My gym sessions, once a mental reset, stopped helping. I tried harder workouts, longer meditations, more books—but nothing worked.
Today, my thoughts are mostly about the school: its future, what needs fixing, the students, families, teachers, and the fights my wife and I are having about it. The volume and intensity are some of the highest I have ever experienced—or at least as far back as I can remember.
And yet, these mental spirals feel different. Still stressful, but not as destructive or lingering. They are still there, but lighter. Fluffier. Almost whiter. They do not weigh me down as much.
This contrast between how my mind spins—then and now—has helped me gain a bit more insight into how I can protect myself from being overwhelmed by my own thoughts, and how the choices I make in life shape that experience. It also confirmed one thing for me: the importance of having a coherent answer to the ultimate question.
When a frustration reaches the point where we cannot fix it, resolve it, or control it, we are left with the ultimate question: What is the purpose? What is the meaning? What is the f*cking point?
When I was working at a company, and the issues at work spiraled into untamed, unresolved, and uncontrollable thoughts—when I was pushed to face that question, “Why am I doing this?”—I could not find a satisfying answer.
But today, when shit happens at the school—say, a difficult situation with a child and their family, or the stress of finding new students—and I am pushed to ask that same ultimate question, my answer is always clear, honest, and coherent.
I know—this realization is not groundbreaking. We all know it: if we cannot articulate a rational, emotional, and intellectually honest answer to the meaning of what we do, we struggle. It is that simple.
What made this re-remembering of a not-so-groundbreaking truth powerful was that I got to vividly live through two diametrically different versions of it in close succession. Within six months, I experienced the mental toll of meaninglessness in a corporate job, and the mental toll of a purposeful—but endlessly challenging—mission of building a school. That contrast sharpened my awareness of my own inner life.
And that, I think, is priceless.
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