Monday, 4:07 PM

Life sure flies by in a blink, doesn't it? I was just thinking about this. One day you're standing in your cap and gown, looking at people you've spent the last however many years sitting next to (and that you have no idea you'll never see again), and the next you're five, ten, fifty years down the road. Still clueless. And not any closer to figuring it out.

And whether you're five or fifty years on, you think, Where has the time GONE? You watch the clock above the teacher's desk tick, tick, tick painfully, slowly to 3 PM (or whatever time school let out) EV-ER-Y SINGLE DAY for, what, thirteen years? And then, at graduation, some sort of weird timewarp takes over that turbo-charges you into the future.

The other day it occurred to me—and this will sound crazy, I know, but bear with me—I thought, is there anything more sacred than a goal or a dream?

Let me see if I can explain what I mean.

I've run the entire circle on this goals-and-dreams thing since leaving high school.

For me, a lot happened in those first few years, hard things, but I was still dreaming. I believed in something then.

Over time, though, it all got gobbled up in "making it," even though I'd argue I wasn't really making anything, ruts maybe, turning circles. But, that's neither here nor there.

What I mean is, having goals and dreams was inspiring back then. You were hungry. You were motivated. You were also naive to the ways of the world (or so "knowing" adults seemed to say with their eyes and softly offending words: Oh, to be young!).

Point is, you were lit up, and the world was full of possibility. You could do anything.

Somewhere along the way, though, goals and dreams shifted into "productivity." You started reading and absorbing everything you could about how to "get things done," but eventually, it just felt empty, shallow.

We didn't have the term "hustle culture" then—Gary Vee was still the Wine Library TV guy, and there wasn't a whole school of thought around "crushing it" yet. And then there was. And it just felt gross, and disconnected from anything except, well, crushing it.

I didn't want to crush anything, and I didn't want to be crushed. But I did want to achieve my dreams, and these guys were achieving theirs, or so it seemed, so of course it seemed wise to follow them. Eventually, though, I could see cracks in the façade.

To further pick a bone with Gary Vee, I remember hearing or reading an interview with him years back. His daughter was maybe five at the time, and he was contemplating if he might eventually regret not spending more time with her. I knew he would. If he didn't, there was a high probability he was a narcissist who saw her and everyone else around him as an extension of himself.

I wonder what he'd say if he could address his younger self today? Would he say, 'I missed it'—or, 'I would hustle even harder'?

But that can't be what all this is for, right? Just hustling.

So what, you earned a lot of followers.

So what, you earned a lot of money.

So what, you bought the Jets.

Cool, but do you want that on your headstone? "I bought the Jets." Isn't there something else you want? And if there isn't, if this is how we'd all answer, is it any wonder we are where we are?

Not to judge Gary Vee or a goal of ... well, anything. My issue here, specifically, is how easy it is to get swept up into something in our early adult years, because we don't have a model of our own.

Add to that the fact that walking an unbeaten path (your own, that is) causes a lot of second-guessing, so it makes sense that eventually you'd just follow those laid out by others ... at least, until you realize you're on somebody else's path.

You no longer recognize the things you're chasing or why.

You no longer know what you want.

And since you couldn't hack it living into somebody else's dream or somebody else's way, you assume you can't make it work at all.

But that's just not true. You couldn't make somebody else's path work for you. You went after what you thought you should want, what you thought would make others happy or proud, what you thought would make you seem "successful," but successful by whose standard?

It's kind of crazy if you think about it. We get on a train to a destination we would never pick for ourselves and then wonder why we hate it when we get there.

That's the long way of saying that eventually our goals and dreams just feel empty and meaningless. Because they're exactly that, meaningless. At least to us. We didn't want these goals, which means what? We hate them when and if we get them? Probably.

So what would have been better?

Being yourself, I say.

Going after things you want.

Not at the expense of others, of course, but that, too, may be part of our problem—we think everything's a zero sum game. If I get what I want, you can't get what you want.

On top of that (this is how messed up our thinking is), you and I wanting different things isn't a judgment against either of our choices. We can both have what we want,¹ we can do separate things, and still be supportive of the other. We think someone else has to lose in order for us to win. We think going separate ways is an indictment on our individual choices. It's absurd if you think about it, but I might be on a tangent again.

Anyway, like I was saying, this week it occurred to me: is there anything more sacred than a goal or a dream? Here are the notes I immediately jotted down.

[1] Thomas Merton wrote that love, in fact, is the spiritual life. So then, if there's a dream or a goal that occupies our minds day and night, does that not constitute love? (And I'm not talking unhealthy obsession or idolization, but just enthusiasm and excitement around getting to do something.)

[2] Rainer Maria Rilke famously wrote, "If, when you wake up in the morning, you can think of nothing but writing ... then you are a writer." So what does that mean if you wake up wanting to build something, learn more about something, or do something?

[3] Your obsessions and inspirations are who you are. If all you can think about is whatever it is you want to see exist in the world, does that make you that thing? Does it tell something about who you are?

I thought of a quote by Amy Krouse Rosenthal:

[4] "Pay attention to what you pay attention to." Which is echoed, one way or the other, by other influential thinkers.

[5] Mary Oliver: "This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attention."

[6] Ira Glass: "Amuse yourself."

[7] Joseph Campbell: "Follow your bliss."

[8] Epictetus: "When we blather about trivial things, we ourselves become trivial, for our attention gets taken up with trivialities. You become what you give your attention to."

This made me think of a list of questions I created years ago. I'm including them here, if you're curious.

A real goal or dream is something tied to who you are, something you're a little embarrassed to want because it doesn't seem to be anything anyone else wants. It doesn't "belong" anywhere or with anyone else because it's yours, and you are different than everyone else in your own delightfully weird way.

How many of us work for those kinds of dreams and goals?

Seems to me it doesn't make a difference if you've done well in life or not (on paper at least), if your soul is slowly suffocating.

So many of us seem to have the same question: Am I making the most of my time here?

Or, more honestly, I'm not making the most of my time here.

Why? What's that about? It doesn't really make sense, right, if a person has "done well on paper" and is still asking the same question as the rest of us. Yet we idolize fame and fortune, as if it's the pinnacle of achievement.

I've heard it said many times, there are a lot of miserable billionaires. The rest of us might wish we were in their shoes, but if it means we end up with the same regrets, what does it matter?

And what does that mean we actually want? What will actually matter?

No deliberate word-play here, but maybe the answer is in the question: maybe what we want is to matter, for our lives to have meant something, even if only to ourselves.

That could mean experiencing more joy and fun and "aliveness." It could mean giving back somehow, serving others. It could mean greater freedom, greater peace, and being less consumed by so many things that steal those things from us over time. It could mean taking more chances, doing the things we're afraid to do, but so desperately want to do. To love and to feel love. Or even to chuck it all and live in a van by the river, which is cliché, but then, if it's so cliché, why are we still drawn to the idea of living in a van by the river?

Humans have been around for, what, 300,000 years? Organized civilization 3,000-6,000 years? There may be dispute over the numbers, but no matter how far you go back, across all of time and humanity, there seems to be a common thread, something built directly into our DNA. Whatever that is, it seeks growth and evolution. There's something within us that strives and dares and does. It's built into us like it's built into an acorn to grow into a tree. No one has to tell the acorn. It already knows. So do we somehow. There's just a pull.

So then, what are we doing?

Why aren't we going after lives that mean something to us?

Why aren't more of us going after lives we feel matter, even if only to ourselves?

I could guess.

Maybe it's because we bought into a pre-packaged idea of success that we never consciously chose. We bought into an "American Dream." We accepted an invisible script that tells us success means a bigger house, a more expensive car, a Cartier watch, a few Stanley tumblers, and the endless pursuit of "more."

We never thought to define what constitutes enough.

We never calculated the trades we were making to keep up with that script, like maybe a life we actually want, one that calls to us, but that we can hardly hear over the distraction.

That's the other part of it.

These days, we deal entirely in attention.

The modern world wants it from us, we want it from the world, and there's never enough of it.

The world says, "Look at this amazing new thing you need if you want to [fit in, be cool, be worthy]!" Then millions of grown adults line up to fight over a plastic cup just to prove they're relevant.

Then we ourselves say, "I don't feel rich enough, good enough, valued enough. Please pay attention to me!"

Never once do we stop and think that staying on that hamster wheel might be exactly what's making us feel empty and worthless in the first place. We intuitively see the meaninglessness and futility of it all, yet we never opt to get off the ride. Because that would mean we're missing out.

But what if we're missing out on something far more precious because of it?

Our attention is cheap. We give away any and everything truly worth something, just to give and get more of it.

But maybe we should be thinking about attention in entirely different terms, attention as sacred, attention as devotion, and the fact that what we give our attention to is what we worship.

In the modern world, we optimize for the wrong things, but no amount of optimization will redeem a life you didn't choose.

So what? What would we choose? Isn't that the million-dollar question?

More letters to come.

Footnotes:

[1] Caveat to "we can both have what we want." Let's lay out a scenario or two.

Scenario 1: I want to live in New York. You want to live in New Orleans. We're dating. Over time we see that both of us really want those separate things. If either of us wants those separate things more than we want to be with the other person, then we can both have what we want, but—the catch—we can't both have what we want and be together, or we can both have what we want, but we're going to have to make some serious compromises to convention, such as maintaining a long-distance relationship or splitting our time between the two locations or ... you get the idea. Something's gotta give.

Scenario 2: I want to live in New York. My parents and extended family live in New Orleans. They want us to live on the same street, but have no interest in moving to New York. I have no interest in moving to New Orleans. Something's gotta give. One of us is going to have to give up what they want. Either I give up the New York thing to make them happy, or they give up the same-street thing to make me happy. These are the dilemmas of life. I'm of the opinion—of which you do not have to be—that my parents lived their lives where they wanted, how they wanted, while making whatever compromises they wanted. I'm living my life now and have my own dreams and ideas of how I want to live it. I do not owe them living on their street for the rest of my life. Does that mean I'm making trades? Sure, that's the deal of this whole life thing, trades. I'll miss out as much as they will on the perks that might come from us living on the same street, but I trade that for my dream and wish of living in New York. Will I regret it? Maybe. Would I regret not having lived in New York? For sure.