🚨TW: Suicide
Trigger warning because Tim Bergling, known professionally as the electronic dance (EDM) musician Avicii, one of my favourites, took his own life at 28 years old in 2018.
My brother, Mark, took his life in 2016, and I still think about him every day, miss him, and often shed tears of love for him. So, I know what it is like to read about others who die in such a way.
The other night, Lisa was working her night shift and, as I often do, I tried to get in a movie while I’m home alone. So I watched the Netflix documentary, “I’m Tim”.
It really moved me.
I’m going to take a risk and be super transparent here.
One of my biggest struggles has been to succeed as an artist. Or whatever I am. Maybe that’s part of my problem… not knowing what or who I am. Like Avicii, I can say, “I’m David”. But it gets complicated. Doesn’t it? Because I’m not just David. I’m David as husband and father. David as a cartoonist. David as an artist. David as a writer. David as a speaker. David as an online community facilitator. David as a pastor or whatever I am when it comes to that whole area of my life.
The struggle isn’t just with identity but trying to survive or make a living while being all that. And to be honest, it really is a daily struggle for me. I mean, if you told me 10 years ago I’d be doing what I’m doing now and making a living at it, I wouldn’t have believed you. So, I have seen the fulfilment of some kind of dream. But… still… I struggle. Daily!
Avicci said the quote above when he was very unhappy about how things were going, even though he was at the top of the world professionally and musically. At one point, he was worth $50 million and climbing. Phenomenal success!
But he was unhappy. He struggled with substances and mental health… a complicated mixture.
He used to wonder if he just had one more huge hit song, then he would be happy.
“But none of it turned out to be true!”
“I just want to know how to be content.”
That’s when it struck me hard. I had to pause the documentary and write in my journal:
I am not surprised when a famous and successful person, an artist, is unhappy. It’s so prevalent. All the fame, money, women, “friends”, and it still didn’t work. “None of it turned out to be true,” he said. He still was not content. He still wasn’t free.
But it was sad to watch. He was gone at 28 years old, alone in a hotel room in Oman.
Yes, there were substances: drugs and alcohol.
Although these became problems, they weren’t the problem. They were attempted solutions: masking agents and coping mechanisms.
The problem is, when he says all he needed was the next great hit, it means he had to be okay with what he already had and who he already was.
Which hits me hard. Lisa and I are okay. We have a home, a family, each other, our health, a little bit of debt and a mortgage. But we’re fine. We’re basically fine!
It’s the contentment that I need.
I realized this is the two-edged sword of contentment: realizing you don’t need more but also being okay with what you already have.
In other words, I have to be okay with the perceived LACK. It was the sense of lack that needed healing, and it isn’t healed by piling more stuff on top of it.
Why the sense of lack? Why the feeling of the void?
For me, this is the issue. This is what needs to be addressed. Filling the lack. Or that sense of lack. It isn’t that we want more, although we fall into the trap of pursuing that. It’s that we’re trying to fill the sense of lack.
Being content means being okay with who I am and what I have right now.
This is what hit me about Avicii’s life.
And this is what I need to explore in mine.
