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
2024-04-18 14:04:27
One of my favorite lines of dialogue is from Quentin Tarantino’s film, Jackie Brown. The exchange is just a few seconds long, but it does a great job introducing the tension that I’d like to discuss today.
Samuel L. Jackson plays Ordell Robbie, a gun runner that’s looking to smuggle in half a million dollars from Mexico. He’s brash, driven by greed, and won’t take “no” for an answer. Any opportunity with a dollar sign on it, he rushes to take.
But of course, he happens to live with someone that’s the complete opposite.
His roommate / not-quite-girlfriend is Melanie Ralston, and in almost every scene, she’s holding a bong. She doesn’t care about anything else but the TV show she’s watching and the quality of the weed she’s smoking. As long as the bong is lit, all is well in the world.
In this scene, Ordell is getting ready to leave the house and scope out a venture. He’s pumped and ready to go, only to see Melanie on the couch once again to revisit her cylindrical friend. With a look of admonishment, he furrows his eyebrows and says:
“You smoke too much of that shit. That shit’s gonna rob you of your ambition.”
You then see Melanie, high as she always is with a smile on her face, who quips:
“Not if your ambition is to get high and watch TV.”
When I first heard this exchange, I just thought it was funny. But the fact that I can still recall it means that there’s something deeper about it that’s stuck with me. And I’ve since realized that it does a great job highlighting the paradox of ambition.
Ambition is a tricky thing because it’s both empowering and pointless. Empowering in the sense that it allows you to look for opportunities that actualize your potential (as embodied by Ordell), but pointless in the sense that it prevents you being okay with what is (as embodied by Melanie). Ambition helps set your future self up for a better life, but comes at the expense of enjoying that life today. This is what Schopenhauer meant when he said that one of the defining characteristics of humanity is our tendency to restlessly strive.
But one of the reasons I love that exchange so much is because it adds another dimension to this conundrum.
What if your ambition is to be okay with what is? Can you still call that ambition, or is it something else entirely?
To be ambitious is to imply that “you’re not there yet,” however you want to define those four words. That the bar is set higher than where you are now, and that the gap between them is what you need to make up for through your ambition.
But suppose there is no gap in your mind. That you’re perfectly content with what you have, like Melanie and her daily bong rips. Has ambition ceased?
I’ve thought about this quite a bit, especially because I consider myself an ambitious person. Not in the pursuit of status or recognition, but more so in the actualization of what I’m capable of. There’s this feeling that I can always be doing more, or that there’s ways in which I can express myself better. The distance between the crudeness of words and the richness of experience is ever-present, and I often find myself trying to bridge that distance with each piece I publish.
This desire to do so is both the source of purposeful challenge and unnecessary doubt, which is why I’ve thought about what it means to be perfectly okay with what is. While I initially thought that this would result in the elimination of ambition, I’ve since realized that it wouldn’t.
Here’s why: If you want a certain state to persist, you will no longer have an ambition to accumulate, but rather an ambition to preserve. Being perfectly content with your current state means that you’ll desire what you have now, and wherever there is desire, there is ambition.
In the case of Melanie, if you took away her weed and left her without a TV, she would no longer be at peace. In fact, if you’ve watched the film, you’ll see just how irritable she is when she’s no longer within the comforts of her home (which leads to some disastrous results). And while this character is an extreme example of this phenomenon at work, it scales to whatever our desired mindstates would be.
In my case, if I were to be perfectly content with my craft, then that presumes that I would have to keep writing at whatever level I’m at now. Any deviation from it would re-introduce feelings of discontent, given that I have an idea of what I imagine the best of myself is. And chances are, this kind of attachment to an ideal will introduce even greater suffering if I feel that I’m straying from it.
This is why I find it concerning when people rail against ambition. While I understand the premise of the argument, the solution to simply “be okay with what is” seems short-handed. You can be okay with what is, but for how long? For that moment? Sure. For the entire day? Maybe. For your entire life? I don’t think so.
I’ve said this before, but ambition is critical to the development of a healthy mind. Not only because it allows you to know who you truly are, but it also acts as a gateway to humility. Since ambition is about the putting the bar ahead of you, you’ll understand your shortcomings in a visceral way. This will allow you to keep arrogance at arms’ length, knowing damn well that your flaws are ever-present throughout the trek.
This is where we get ambition right. It’s when we’re driven from a point of self-awareness, understanding that we want to do the best we can with this mind and body we’ve been gifted. While we can be appreciative of everything we have, it’s important that we acknowledge how we could better direct our thoughts to solving the problems we care about most.
But where ambition goes wrong, however, is when we thirst for the byproducts of that ambition. When the promotion becomes more important than the work, when the money is more desirable than the challenge, and so on. This is when you’ve commoditized your ambition, rather than using it as a gateway to knowing yourself. And when you’ve swung too far to the rewards that exist outside of you, then it’s a good time to reevaluate what it means to be ambitious even when no one is looking.
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For more stories and reflections on ambition:
