2024-12-26 06:06:36
The first post I published on More To That was called Travel Is No Cure for the Mind. It took me over 100 hours to do, and was the result of me reflecting on the nature of my experiences abroad. I particularly thought about how I felt when I was in Asia for 6 months, and the ebbs and flows of various emotions that I experienced during my time there.
When I hit publish, I recall thinking that it was a solid piece, and maybe a couple hundred people would read it. I had no audience then, so even that seemed like a stretch.
Well, what actually happened was beyond my wildest expectations.
Over 1 million people have gone on to read that piece, and I believe it’s still one of the most popular stories to ever be published on Medium. Around once a year, it’ll go viral again when someone shares it on social media, which will reliably generate all kinds of commentary from people that either hate it or love it.
It’s important to note that the vast majority of my work doesn’t reach this kind of popularity. But when it does, I gain interesting insight as to what people liked about the piece, and what they found concerning. When it came to the people that liked the piece, they resonated with the core argument that travel would not resolve any of the inner discontentment they had with their lives. That traveling could represent a temporary respite in the form of novelty, but once that novelty wore off, all of their prior tumult would have no choice but to resurface again.
The people that disliked the piece found my take on travel to be dismissive. The general sentiment was that I missed the point of why people travel in the first place. That people don’t travel to run away from their problems, but rather to open up a new lens they could use to view the world. That when you purchase a plane ticket to a faraway land, you’re giving yourself permission to allow curiosity to re-take the helm in a way that sitting in a cubicle on day-to-day basis simply cannot.
These are fair points. In fact, I agree with most of them. But of course, truth lives in nuance, and you have to explore these nuances to get a clearer picture of what I was communicating.
Let’s first start with the point that people don’t travel to run away from their problems. This is true, but only partially. Because if you think about it, there really are only 3 reasons why you travel (that are not work-related):
(1) You have loved ones in other countries you want to visit,
(2) You are curious about cultures and surroundings that are not your own,
(3) You are looking for novel experiences to break the monotony of daily life.
Reason #1 is less about cultural immersion, and more about spending time with your family and friends. Of course, part of your time together may be spent learning about unfamiliar customs and traditions, but the main purpose is to maximize the time you spend with your loved ones.
For example, whenever I go to Korea to visit my parents, I don’t spend too much time sightseeing or trying out various restaurants. I eat most meals at home with my folks, given that they’re the reason for my trip. The novelty of cultural immersion is far less important than the consistency of time I get with them.
Reason #2 is the one that detractors of my piece will point to with a huge red arrow sign. Many critics of my piece often point to how I neglected travel’s ability to open up new perspectives of seeing the world. That if we didn’t travel, we’d all be ignorant of the diversity that exists outside of our little patriotic bubbles. After all, the person that has never left his country will say that his country is the best one in the world.
Here’s the thing: I completely agree with Reason #2. Travel is one of the greatest expressions of curiosity across our species, and has led to a level of flourishing that would be unreachable if we all stayed within our borders. If you are curious about immersing yourself in a foreign culture because you want to be more aware of your own blind spots, then absolutely do it. If you want to feel the discomfort that comes with expanding your mind, then book that plane ticket and be open to all the surprises that come with it.
But here’s where a caveat must be issued: Be honest with yourself that this is why you’re traveling. Expanding your perspectives of the world is not supposed to be a super pleasant, comfortable process. In fact, I’d say that the level of your comfort is inversely correlated with how much your mind is being expanded.
This is why taking a 7-day cruise ship around the coastline of some popular tourist destination is not a form of curiosity-driven travel. The goal of a cruise is to keep you as comfortable as possible while introducing small hits of novelty to create the illusion that you’re “traveling.” Your introduction to any new cultures is confined within a bubble of familiarity that’s been carefully engineered to shield you from fear.
When you really immerse yourself in a foreign culture, it should be a bit scary. That’s because real immersion happens when you realize how fragile your accustomed norms are. And it’s only through your commitment to breaking them where you really use travel as a gateway to expand your intellectual horizons.
The reality is that most people don’t travel like this, and fall under Reason #3. Travel is a vacation destination, a tool you use to fill up idle time. Sure, you get to see more of the world, but what you’re really seeing is a new environment filled with your old projections. You want food to taste close to what you’re familiar with. You want to visit the places that will look best on Instagram. Aside from knowing how to say “hello” or “thank you,” you have no desire to speak in the native tongue.
When travel is used as a vehicle to break the monotony of life, then don’t be surprised when that sense of monotony finds itself to whatever newfound place you’re visiting. A curious mindset doesn’t ignite just because your surroundings have changed. Rather, it’s something to be cultivated in your current state – in your day-to-day life – whether you’re working in a cubicle or having the 1,000th meal in your apartment or home. Instead of trying to break away from this, use that desire for escape as a signal for you to look deeper at your life as it is today. Nothing is as mundane as you believe it to be; all you need to do is look closer.
Travel is no cure for the mind because there is no cure for it to begin with. There is no external vehicle that will take you to prolonged contentment. What truly brings contentment is internal: gratitude for what’s in front of you, openness to all the stories around you, and unwavering curiosity toward the people you see everyday.
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For more stories and reflections of this nature:
2024-12-04 07:30:36
As a parent, you get a front row seat into the development of a human being’s mind.
When my daughter was a newborn baby, all that mattered was her physical survival. The primary function of her mind was to alert us of her many discomforts, most of which revolved around requiring food or needing to dispose of it.
As she exited infancy and entered toddlerhood, there was a transition of another kind. Her mind went from solely mediating her biological needs to also monitoring her psychological ones. What was previously a bloodcurling cry for milk evolved into a silent shyness when asking for more at school. Her emotions were becoming more nuanced, and the fascinating thing was that she was becoming aware of this too. In fact, this awareness is a defining period of childhood for all of us.
What triggers this awareness is the realization that you are in relationship with others, and crucially, with those you don’t know that well either. When you’re an infant, all that matters is that your biological frame is intact, and you’ll scream at the top of your lungs to ensure that it is. Fortunately, the people that receive this scream are your parents, who have the patience to ensure that you’re okay.
But as you get a bit older, you notice that the same dynamic you have with your parents doesn’t apply to other people you meet. Whether it’s your grandparents, your friends, or even the nearby ice cream shop owner, each relationship contains its own culture that distinguishes it from all the others.
In other words, you begin to notice that the self is a social construct. There isn’t this static “you” that stays the same across all interactions; rather, there are certain parts that come out with some people and some parts that don’t. Of course, as a child, you can’t conceptualize it as a “social construct,” so your emotions do the legwork for you. With some people, you’ll feel at ease. With others, you’ll feel a bit nervous. The way you feel becomes an indicator of the dynamic you share.
The benefit of this truth is that it acts as a great source of meaning. Because you gain access to so many parts of yourself, you realize that there’s so much that you’re capable of. Knowing that you’re malleable instills a sense of confidence that you can navigate the world, allowing you to successfully collaborate with the people within it.
But the burden of this truth is that you begin to define yourself by what others think. If you are indeed a social construct, then your sense of self-worth is derived from the judgments you receive from others. This is why an attack on one’s reputation is akin to an attack on one’s body. The pain one feels when their reputation is in jeopardy is just as salient as a gut punch to the stomach.
In fact, many people would prefer the punch.
Perhaps the greatest manifestation of this burden comes in the form of shame. We tend to view shame as a circumstantial emotion, where it arises as the result of something you said or did. But if that were the case, then it would be a very short-lived thing. You’d apologize to the other, forgive yourself, and let it go. If it were truly circumstantial, then that quick process is all you’d need.
I notice this in my daughter, where anytime she thinks she did something wrong, she’ll sincerely apologize, check to see if things are okay, and then moves on with life. She doesn’t feel a lingering sense of self-hatred that she can’t shake off beyond the moment.
Shame is not that. Shame stays with you, and makes it feel like there’s something inherently wrong with you. It’s deeply rooted in the body, as merely thinking about the objects of your shame will conjure a slew of sensations that you can’t ignore. Feeling shame isn’t isolated to an action or two; rather, you begin to feel that your entire being is something to be denied.
What makes shame so pernicious is that it doesn’t take much from the outside world to install it. Of course, a negative comment can agitate it, but what keeps it alive is the narrative you tell yourself about that comment. For example, if someone said that you chose the wrong career, that statement will convert to shame only if it coincides with the story you tell yourself about your career as well. You had to already have deep doubts about your work in order to feel the shame that arises from someone saying that you’ve failed at it.
The same thing applies to relationships. You will only feel shame if you believe that you haven’t been the best partner, family member, or friend. There has to be an initial platform of self-criticism in order for shame to take hold and grow.
Now, in some cases, this dynamic is useful. People that have deeply harmed others, for example, need to be critical of their own actions in order to apologize and redeem themselves. Feeling ashamed of what they did is a reliable indicator that they have an inner compass that is seeking to be recalibrated. In these cases, shame becomes a corrective mechanism that helps to direct them toward a brighter path.
The problem, however, is when shame becomes chronic and is embedded into one’s identity. The trigger for your shame may have occurred years ago, yet you still feel it to the core of your being. This is a sign that shame has spread well beyond the domain of any single action, and has become a part of the way you view your sense of self.
This is when shame needs to be extinguished, and the only way to do that is by radically resetting any self-critical narratives you have. You have to burn the whole edifice down, knowing that it’s not producing anything useful or insightful for you. Any resistance you have to doing this is shame’s way of clawing for survival.
The key is to ignore its plea, and to perform the reset you so desperately need.
Feeling shame about your career? Tell yourself that you’re exactly where you need to be right now.
Feeling shame about a relationship? Tell yourself that you’ve done what you can to get it to where it is.
Feeling shame about your body? Tell yourself that your body is a gift that enables you to navigate the world.
Some of you may read those statements and think that I’m advocating for complacency. While that may make sense at first glance, what you’re missing is that shame is a poor conduit to empowerment. People that are shamed into improving themselves will never feel secure in who they are, even if they do reach the heights of success. As long as shame is the propelling force behind any goal, what awaits beyond the finish line is an existential crisis that will unravel everything that was earned up to that point.
The antidote to shame is self-love, and it is only through this internal force where true empowerment is possible. You don’t change for the better because other people make you feel inadequate; no, you do it because you respect yourself. When you build off a foundation of self-love, then everything that results comes from a deeply authentic place.
The key is to remember that self-love doesn’t mean complacency. Nor does it mean lethargy. If anything, loving yourself requires a lot of work, primarily because when you have self-love, you become aware of the potential that lives within you. You understand that you’re not a mere summation of social expectations, but that you have the personal agency to be the best version of yourself.
Self-love isn’t the presence of narcissism, but the absence of criticism. The person that aggrandizes himself is secretly seeking the approval of others, which makes him vulnerable to what people think. But the person that has compassion for herself builds a quiet confidence that requires no other voice to be validated. And it is on this frontier of acceptance where one meets the end of shame.
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Self-doubt is a common manifestation of shame. Here’s how to end that too:
A big part of ending shame is to understand how the sense of self develops over time:
Shame dissolves once you question its underlying beliefs. Here’s a post that can help with that:
2024-10-02 07:02:09
I have a weird job.
In essence, what I do is type my thoughts out on a screen, and then broadcast them in the form of a story or reflection that you can read. What was once reserved for journalists and authors is now something I can do from the comforts my own home, and this is something that is unique to this window of time we coexist in today.
Of course, this is all made possible by technological progress, and the very fact that I can connect with you now is further evidence of this. But one thing I wonder about any advancement of this nature is the trade-offs that accompany it. There’s great wisdom in the adage that “things are too good to be true,” but it has less to do with skepticism and more with self-awareness. Anytime you benefit from something, it’s worth understanding what had to be given up for you to accrue that benefit. Because when you do this regularly, you’ll find interesting ways to use that benefit to make up for some of those trade-offs.
That may sound a bit abstract, so let’s make it concrete through my experience as a writer.
Whenever I publish or send out a new piece via my newsletter, I will almost always get responses to it. This wasn’t the case when I was first starting out, but now that I’ve been doing this for a few years, my inbox acts as a regular reminder that people want to engage with my work. This is something I’m grateful for, but I’ve now accepted the fact that there are limitations to this method of communication.
The thing about an inbox is that it reduces the nuances of a person into a singular dimension. While email is still my preferred method of contact with readers (due to its 1:1 nature), it’s odd how the only insight I have into a person is a profile picture and their accompanying words of text. Of course, those two things can tell me a lot about someone, but the nature of the medium ensures that our conversation will unfold in a somewhat linear fashion. It’s difficult to go on tangents or delve into the core of who that person is, given that messages are shared asynchronously in a step-by-step fashion.
What technology provides in the form of reach comes at the expense of depth. This is the great trade-off of technological progress, which Martin Heidegger predicted well before the advent of the internet. He argued that as technology is further harnessed to serve our individual goals, it will come at the expense of a deeper connection with others. Since most of our goals revolve around social success (making more money, gaining more recognition, etc.), we will ultimately view other humans as mere objects of utility that help us achieve what we want.
Technology is nothing more than an aid to these individual goals, which is why any usage of it to connect with others involves some form of compression. Whether you mildly enjoyed an essay or thought it was life-changing, the only way you could express this great variance of emotion is through clicking a tiny heart. If you want to ask someone to complete a task, you type up a quick message with bullet points and shuffle it off to a static profile picture on a Slack channel. Nuance is a bug of technology, not a feature.1That statement explains everything wrong with social media, and the one-dimensionalization of human beings that happens there.
So knowing this, what can be done? Well, this brings us back to what I said earlier, about using the benefits of technology to make up for some of its weaknesses. To make this concrete, let’s go back to my personal example as a writer.
When I was in Toronto, I decided to use the exploratory mood of being in a different city to my advantage. I wanted to take some time to actually meet my readers instead of interacting with them through a screen. To do this, I leveraged a cool feature in my email service provider, which would allow me to narrow down my readership to a specific area, like so:
Then I put together a short survey form to send to this small segment of readers, asking them if they’d like to meet up around the area I was staying in. I planned to host 2 meetups, all of which would be 3 or 4 people max. I figured that doing a large meetup would defeat the purpose of having one in the first place, which was to get to know the people I’m talking to. So once the form hit 10 people, I disabled it and proceeded to set up hangouts with everyone.
When I did my first hangout with readers, the immediate thing I noticed was just how nuanced and intricate their life perspectives were. There was simply no way I would be able to delve into this level of granularity by having an email exchange with them. When it was just us sitting around a table in a café, so many tangents opened up, so many ideas were exchanged, and so many personal stories were shared. I think the first meetup went on for 3 hours before we decided to call it a day.
Paradoxically, the energy of that meetup was the result of us being together without any technological intermediary, but the meetup itself wouldn’t have been possible without the aid of technology. If I couldn’t reach my readers via an email list or even publish my thoughts online to begin with, then I don’t know how I would’ve found the people that sat with me that day. But because my desire to connect deeper with people was there, I was able to use the available features to actualize that want.
At a meta level, this blog itself is evidence of this dynamic as well. The purpose of More To That isn’t to build a huge audience so I can feel better about myself. Rather, it’s to find the people in the world that live their lives in a way that inspires me. And to do that, I have to first share my worldview so people know what kind of questions guide my definition of a well-lived life.
The only reason audience-building is a part of what I do is because I have to cast my net wide to find the few that want to go deep. And fortunately, many tools exist for the purpose of that. Email service providers, course software, community forums – all these are in service of that goal, and I’m using them to power the platform I’ve built here.
But in the end, I’m aware that even these tools can only do so much. I’m still using a screen displaying profile pictures and text to hear from people, and that’s how I connect with a majority of my readers. But the silver lining is that every message is a potential entry point to a closer relationship that can develop over time.
Ultimately, to be aware of technology’s trade-offs is to also understand that those trade-offs can be diminished. That if you’re solely using it to serve your goals, then perhaps it’s time to shift the way you use it. Instead of using it to maximize utility for your pursuit, you can use it to delve deeper with the few people that care about that pursuit the most.
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For more stories and reflections of this nature:
2024-09-25 07:04:19
In my early twenties, I had this phase where I was enamored with the idea of success. What did it mean to achieve it, and how do people work their way to it?
In an attempt to understand this phenomenon, I subscribed to a magazine that I hoped would unlock something for me. The name of the magazine was, quite shockingly:
Well, it only took an issue or two to figure out how the editors of Success Magazine defined that word. In short, it was all about quantifiable wealth. Each profile would start off with some headline on how much the individual was worth, or the sales price of their most recent exit. A large number in the opening sentence seemed to be a pre-requisite for inclusion, as any verbiage that came afterward would be contingent upon the validation of that number.
At first, I didn’t see anything odd about this. After all, as a recent college graduate, I was used to seeing the world through the tradeoff of promising opportunities with paltry salaries. There was an understanding that I’d be trading my youth for experience, which I would hopefully convert to wealth in a decade or two. So seeing the big numbers associated with these older individuals made me want to pay attention in an attempt to accelerate my timeline to success.
But in one of the magazine’s profiles, I came across a quote that made me re-think this all.
The profile was on an entrepreneur and author who sold a large number of books. While much of the piece orbited around his wealth creation principles, there was a small part where he discussed his thoughts on living a meaningful life. And in it, he recounted something his father always told him growing up, which has remained in my mind ever since:
When I first heard this quote, I was taken in by its eloquence. But as I let it sink in further, I realized that it was highlighting a paradox about success.
When you want to gain respect through success, then yes, it’s usually done through quantifiable variables. We respect people that have made a certain amount of money, built a sizable audience, or have won a number of awards. These are common entry points that make us want to learn more about the person at hand, which was why I was reading this person’s profile to begin with.
But when you want to gain love through success, it cannot be achieved through anything quantifiable. The people that will be crying when you depart the world are not doing so because of any number that is tied to your name. They are doing so because you were a loving partner, a caring friend, or a shepherd of kindness. You are dearly missed not because of what you’ve earned, but because of what you represented.
This highlights the distinction between traditional success and metric-less success. Traditional success will get you on magazine covers, but metric-less success will get you on family albums. While society as a whole worships quantifiable success, what will ultimately matter most to the individual is everything that can’t be counted.
Here are some examples of metric-less success that are often overlooked, but impact our lives more than anything:
Marrying the right person
No decision will have more consequence in your life than whether you marry, and to whom you marry. There’s an enormous difference between living by yourself, and committing to living with a partner for the rest of your life. (And it’s not just your living situation either; it’s an intertwining of everything. As Kevin Kelly says, “You don’t marry a person, you marry a family.”) Nothing I say here can adequately describe how different those two scenarios are.
With that said, if you do decide to get married, then one of the greatest success stories of your life will result from it being the right person. If you marry well, then everything is better. You’ll have a person who loves and supports you through your triumphs and challenges, and you’ll learn how to do that for them as well. You’ll have a continuous reinforcement of your values, knowing that the person you’re with also shares them too.
Happiness is amplified through this shared understanding of what’s important, whereas sorrow is alleviated through your partner’s presence during the hardest of times.
This kind of relationship can’t be derived through calculations on a spreadsheet; it can only be defined as metric-less success.
Maintaining a healthy body
The anthropologist Ernest Becker once wrote that we are “gods with anuses.” What he meant was that human beings are equipped with godlike minds that can compose beautiful music, build towering skyscrapers, and send rockets into space. But at the same time, this mind is housed within a body that’s been inherited from our monkey ancestors. It is a body that excretes, secretes, and inevitably decays. We are all constrained by our biological lineage, as even the most brilliant minds will be rendered non-functional in a container that can no longer operate.
This means that everything we value flows downstream from our physical health. Money is desirable only if you have the vitality to pursue it. A career is meaningful only if you have the energy to keep it going. Even time with family can be vibrant only if you’re free from pain.
Our desires are often directed outward because that’s where we’re most aware of what we lack. But all those desires will be leveled to zero if what you lack is access to your physical faculties. So by retaining a strong baseline of health, you are placing yourself in a position where any pursuit is achievable.
A body that exercises regularly, sleeps adequately, and eats well is one that allows its mind to retain its godlike properties. The feeling that emerges from this clarity is one that can’t be derived through digits on a spreadsheet; it can only be defined as metric-less success.
Being compassionate to others
Jiddu Krishnamurti was once asked how his teachings could be implemented in everyday life. Since many of his ideas dealt with denying social conditioning, people often wondered how they could practice these ideas while being an ordinary member of the world.
To that, Krishnamurti replied:
It is no measure of good health to be adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
We often justify the ills of society by encasing them in norms and codes of conduct. And one of the greatest ills we’ve adjusted ourselves to is the way we treat people based on what they can offer, and not for the human beings they are.
We often use status as a proxy for who to treat nicely, and who to disregard. This is because we’ve been conditioned to play the game of ascension in the great social hierarchy, and to gauge people by their position within it. Some use wealth as the benchmark, others use job titles, and some may even use follower counts. The unifying theme across all these, of course, is that they are all tied to an external label or number.
While this pursuit may yield money and accolades, the problem is that you will then begin to define yourself by the status differences you share with others. Your identity will be on shaky ground because the world will seem like a zero-sum game, where a peer’s success will yield envy and a peer’s failure will yield glee. Multiply this dynamic by billions of interactions, and you’ll understand why society can indeed be so sick.
True success is when you can opt out of this game altogether and treat people with compassion, no matter who they are. The person that has no promotion to offer will receive the same level of presence as the person that does, and this equality of attention can extend out to the greater world. The immediate effect is that you’ll see how unconditional your interactions can be, but the long-term effect – which is even more profound – is that you’ll learn how to accept yourself without condition as well.
This texture of love you’ll feel for the world cannot be derived from a chart on a dashboard; it can only be defined as metric-less success.
Living in alignment with your values
Your values are as unique as your genes because no one shares the exact set of experiences and insights that were required to form them. They are the fingerprints of your being, and they are the invisible forces that guide everything you touch.
The problem, however, is that the world is an efficient place that seeks to standardize everything. It will point to a predefined set of ideas as the approach to follow, and will reward those who reshape their values to fit that mold. This is most evident in the realm of careers, where people are encouraged to learn a predictable set of skills to enter a preset path to success. Anyone that doesn’t follow this path is disregarded, so people often dismiss their curiosities in an attempt to fit in.
Integrity is the ability to navigate the outer world without discounting your inner values. In the context of work, it’s to be able to make a living without sacrificing your interests and ethics. In the context of family, it’s to be able to listen to your loved ones without outsourcing your agency. In the context of community, it’s to be able to form lasting friendships without relying upon flattery. In each case, there is an anchor of authenticity that you’re unwilling to budge, no matter how fervently people want you to.
Aligning yourself in this way is difficult, but such is the case for the most meaningful endeavors in life. Difficulty requires ingenuity, and ingenuity is what makes you feel like you’re working toward your potential. The thing about potential, however, is that it’s invisible and can’t be photographed on a magazine cover. But having integrity is about trusting that it’s there, even if you’re the only one that can see it.
The meaning that exudes from this alignment cannot be derived from any number next to your name; it can only be defined as metric-less success.
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Envy is the greatest enemy of metric-less success. Here’s how to deny it:
Once you shift your frame of success, you’ll feel empowered to take big leaps in life:
The Day You Decided to Take the Leap
For a deeper dive into the difference between respect and love, here’s a long post on it:
2024-08-01 20:10:15
One of the common mantras of our day is to be present. That by being fully aware of the contents of the moment, you are engaged in the only thing that matters, which is the “now.”
While this makes sense, I often wonder what it means to embody this presence. On one hand, it’s clichéd and trite because all it takes is an affirmation that you’re absorbing the moment. This is most prevalent in the culture of “woo,” where the proclamations of presence are more annoying than they are profound.
But on the other hand, being present really is the answer to life’s most important inquiries. On the question of meaning, the feeling of immersion is what cultivates it. On the question of creativity, presence is framed through the lens of flow states. And on the question of love, an unbroken attention on the other is what conjures it.
So what differentiates one pole from the other? When does being present feel like a trivial artifact of culture, and when does it feel like a profound gateway into what is real?
After reflecting on this for a bit, I’ve arrived at an answer. Ultimately, it all comes down to one thing:
When you’re truly present, thought itself ceases to exist.
Thought is the story we tell ourselves about any given situation, and wherever there is a story, there is an obfuscation of reality. Stories attempt to connect two events together (regardless of how unrelated they may be), whereas reality has no inherent connections of this nature. But because the human mind has evolved to recognize patterns, there will always be a narrative we tell ourselves about any circumstance at hand.
So if thought is a story, this means that it follows narrative arcs. And when it comes to arcs, one thing any storyteller will tell you is that they are timeless and universal. Three-act structures work because they map well onto how we think about resolving conflicts. The Hero’s Journey resonates because whether we realize it or not, we use it to explain how we arrived at our current perspective of the world.
What this means is that thought is rooted in an ancient pattern. The ways in which people worried and reflected 30,000 years ago isn’t all that different from how we think today. Of course, the exact subjects and characters in these thoughts differ, but when it comes to the narratives that connect them, they follow the same age-old pattern they always have.
This reveals that thought is never new. Every thought is an echo of one that has already existed in the past. That time you worried about that stupid thing you said is a pattern that has cycled through billions of other human minds. Same goes for the regrets that are difficult to shake. If anything, you can take comfort in knowing that there’s nothing novel about it.
Being present is in understanding this tired nature of thought, and silencing it altogether. Because it is only in this state where something truly new can be felt. For example, if you’re looking out at a still lake and are fully immersed in what you are experiencing, there is a novelty that emerges from being in that specific combination of time, attention, and space. You’re not thinking of what comes next; you’re simply there. But if you look at the lake and think, “Wow, that’s so beautiful,” then you have allowed thought to enter the frame, which will inevitably introduce feelings of longing or grasping. This pulls you out of the moment and opens up the door to desiring this experience again, and any pattern of this nature is never new.
Ultimately, presence cannot be experienced if thought exists alongside it. Wherever there is thought, there is narrative, and a narrative arc of any kind gives rise to the shadow of an age-old pattern. In the end, the best way to step into a moment isn’t to remind yourself to be present, but to enter it without any expectation of the memories it may yield.
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For more stories and reflections of this nature:
2024-05-01 05:36:12
The imperative to “follow your passion” was once an empowering slogan, but is now a tired trope. In its heyday, it was empowering because the promise of spending a third of your life doing something you love couldn’t be ignored. The thought of converting your interests into a viable living was something that resonated with millions, and this passion-driven economy was viewed as a utopia to strive for.
But the downfall of this imperative came from the inability to actualize one word from the previous sentence:
A pursuit’s viability.
Ultimately, you can’t live off your love for something. It doesn’t matter how powerful your inner engine of expression is; without the fuel of money, you will stall out and be left on the side of the road. And like it or not, the only way for this fuel to be provided to you is to create something valuable enough to warrant that exchange.
This is where the “follow your passion” train hits a brick wall and breaks down into obsolescence. There’s simply too much emphasis on self-interest, and not enough on communal interest. When you tell someone to follow their passion, you are effectively telling them to do what they please because they only have this one life to live. And while this may make sense, it misses a crucial part of the picture: Not only do they have to follow their passion, but they also have to convince others that their passion is worth paying attention to. And the gap between the two is bridged by what I call Creative Resistance.
In the same way that art and business have a timeless tension, so does passion and validation. Passion originates from the small seed of individuality, whereas validation stems from the vast circle of belonging. These two things operate in different realms, yet they are housed within the same container of the human condition. As the Daoists would say, one only exists because of the other.
Creative Resistance is the force that attempts to connect these two things together. In short, it lives in the things you’d rather not do that are just as important as the things you want to do. And the ability to discern which is which at any time will determine just how viable your passion can be.
Let’s make this concrete through a personal example.
If you were to ask me if I’m following my passion, I’d say yes. Creating things for More To That brings me immense satisfaction, and the nature of the work allows me to follow whatever I’m curious about. Given that contemplation and reflection are things I’d do anyway, it’s amazing that I can make these regular aspects of my work life.
With that said, I don’t feel that way each day.
Writing is a famously difficult endeavor, and I’m not exempt from this. Part of this stems from the fact that I’m writing to publish, which means that what I’m creating will be read by others. This introduces all kinds of dynamics, where I have to think about how I want to frame and present my ideas, which makes an already difficult endeavor even more challenging. Writing is my way of figuring out what I think (i.e. my passion) but it’s also my way of connecting with others and getting my ideas out there (i.e. validation). Creative Resistance emerges when I want to write purely for myself, knowing that I also need to empathize with my reader to make their investment of attention worthwhile.
Now, if I were simply following my passion, I’d be happy saying “screw it” and just scribble my thoughts out as if I were writing in my journal. If what I love is to express myself through the written word, then all I require of myself would be to follow wherever that love wants to take me. Writing would be a frictionless endeavor, and that might feel like a creative heaven.
But here’s the thing. Much of what makes a passion worthwhile is that friction is embedded into its very essence. Knowing that it’s not just about yourself is what actually makes it meaningful. By thinking about how the byproducts of your curiosity may be contextualized within the minds of others, you form a web of empathy that makes you feel understood. And it’s through that shared feeling of comprehension that your passion is of value to others.
If you’re following your passion at the meta level, you must constantly face Creative Resistance at the micro level. You must do the things you’d rather not do, knowing that each one is a building block toward the greater purpose of what you’re working toward. It doesn’t necessarily mean that each day is a struggle, but that you may be interpreting it as such because you’re being forced to look beyond the self, and into the realm of multitudes. Of course, at times you’ll have to prioritize your own interests above all (otherwise, it just becomes a job where you’re serving others), but the key is to remember that learning how to present your passion is just as important as the passion itself.
Perhaps the more apt slogan would be, “Follow your passion, but embrace the sacrifices that are required to make it viable.” It’s not as catchy, but it’s a far more accurate representation of reality.
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For more stories and reflections of this nature:
The Arc of the Practical Creator
