Lately I’ve been noticing the people around me in a constant state of stress and anxiety over things that don’t really matter, and completely blasé about things that really are important or otherwise essential for a meaningful life. It’s frustrating to watch because I recognize the same behaviors in myself from years past. Behaviors I came to hate and spent years trying to understand and correct. It’s sort of a painful reminder of time I wasted wandering aimlessly through life.
The truth is our culture encourages certain patterns of thought which aren’t really conducive to a meaningful existence. As individuals, we’re free to adopt our own values, but not without facing some hard, uncomfortable facts. Adopting a reality-based paradigm that happens to be incongruous with deeply-entrenched cultural norms can induce some emotionally devastating and draining cognitive dissonance at first, but eventually the result is surprisingly liberating.
I could write a book on the subject, given enough time and space. But I don’t have enough of either, so instead I distilled a great many hard life lessons down to the bare essentials: three facts of life which are extremely uncomfortable to think about and accept, but that, if embraced, will provide a framework for making your life much more satisfying and enjoyable:
1. You are going to die.
I don’t mean to start this list off on a downer, but I think this point merits the top billing. So many of us live our lives as though the days that lie ahead stretch out to infinity. The future is some postmillenial abstraction, a place where we live out our dreams, reach our goals and bask in the glow of our amazing accomplishments.
The truth is much less rosy. My go-to reminder of the mercurial nature of life is 9/11. I often wonder how many people found themselves stuck in one of the doomed towers, left to reflect on all the days they would never see. They could never reconcile with anyone, take a trip overseas, play with their children or see their loved ones again, or any of the other things that they had otherwise put off or taken for granted. They got dressed and headed into work like any other normal day, never dreaming that a few short, terrifying hours were the only future they had left.
This is obviously a dramatic example, but the truth is that many, many people expect to live for a long time (or forever), only to find their existence tragically cut short by an accident or illness, or possibly some act of violence.
The idea that we have a long time left on this Earth is a dangerous one. It gives us a false sense of security, and lets us defer coming to terms with and embracing our own mortality. Worse, it makes us feel secure in wasting time. If you want to experience a taste of how truly awful this lie is, spend some time at a nursing home or hospice. Listen to dying people talk about their lives. The saddest stories you’ll ever hear are tales of regret, of wishing they could turn back the clock and live their life over again and actually do all of the things that were deferred to “the future.”
That reality is coming for you, too. Your life may be over in a few hours or a few decades, but death is coming. The sooner you appreciate that, the sooner you can start acting like it. Carpe diem! Don’t be lulled into the fantasy that the future offers you all the time in the world. Stop sitting around, get out there and do the fucking things!
2. Your personal history is bullshit.
I want to take a moment to talk about Kyle Maynard. If you haven’t heard of him, Kyle was born with a rare condition that left him without arms or legs. Despite this, he went on to become a wrestler (placing 12th in his weight class), a weight lifter, MMA fighter, and ultimately climbed Mount Kilimanjaro without the use of prosthetics. He reached the top of Kilimanjaro without any assistance, crawling all 19,340 feet to the top.
Kyle isn’t alone. It seems like every few months, I read about an injured veteran who runs a marathon after losing his legs, or someone with a developmental disability succeeding against all odds. These people aren’t “lucky;” they’re anything but. The secret of their success is that they work their asses off, and don’t let their circumstances dictate the quality of their life.
This leads me to my second uncomfortable truth: whatever you’ve been through in your life so far doesn’t matter. I guarantee there is someone who persevered through worse. You have no excuse.
I had a conversation with a friend recently, who confided to me that he hated being single. But the reason he claimed he couldn’t have a relationship was because of a bad breakup from a few years before. Having your heart broken sucks, and I can empathize. But remaining alone for the rest of your life because someone hurt your feelings? That’s beyond stupid. Per point #1, that’s the sort of shit people regret on their deathbed.
My reaction (which wasn’t very appreciated) was to point out that putting up walls like that is a natural fear response to prevent the possibility of being hurt again. But ultimately, it’s still a choice. I said: “You’re miserable because you’re choosing to be miserable. You’re also squandering the potential for a lot of love, fulfillment, and good experiences so you can wallow in self-pity over one bad thing. That’s asinine.” He then changed the subject.
The point is that people often use their personal history as an excuse for why their life is terrible, and why they simply can’t do something. It’s not true.
The lie enables us to feel a certain kind of comfort with our faults and insecurities. The danger is that we’re not motivated to change that with which we’re comfortable, and so in buying into the lie, we feel no urge to improve. It robs us of the motivation to take action. This lie will leave you on your deathbed, lamenting all you gave up to remain comfortable.
Life isn’t easy for anyone, and we all have our personal baggage. But stop acting like your problems are so insurmountable that you have no choice but to accept them as a reality. If Kyle Maynard can crawl up a mountain with no arms or legs, you can overcome whatever bullshit thing happened to you.
3. You are the result of your past decisions.
According to Nielsen, the average American watches about 5 hours of TV every single day. That’s 35 hours a week, 1,820 hours per year. We rack up 10,000 hours of TV time every 5.5 years. Why is that significant? Because 10,000 hours happens to be the amount of practice time needed to master a skill
Think about this for a minute. What if, instead of watching TV (or texting, Facebooking, looking at cats on the Internet, etc), you studied another language? Or read some classic literature? Practiced an instrument? Focused on a new skill? You could, with no other change in your routine, completely change your life. Assume you start this at age 20, and live to 75; you could become a master of 10 things in that time. An amazing author, a master painter, a skilled negotiator who speaks 3 languages, and so on. All by giving up the cruft.
This leads me to my third uncomfortable point: whatever you don’t like about your life right now is entirely your fault. Overweight? That’s not genetics or bad luck, it’s because you eat like shit and don’t exercise enough. Job doesn’t pay enough? That’s not Obama’s fault, or the 1%-ers’, it’s because your skill set isn’t more valuable. University is too hard? That’s not because of your race/gender/sexuality, it’s because you suck at the program. Work harder or find something else to study.
Understand I’m not presenting a New Age view here. I’m not saying that you should manifest your future through meditation or crystals or something. I understand that life is a complex interplay between the things over which we have control, and things we don’t. My favorite example is playing hooky: I can control whether or not I skip school and go to the beach, but I can’t control whether or not it rains. Sometimes you can do everything right and fail anyway, other times you can fuck up majorly and it works out in your favor. I get it.
The point I’m making is that you have no excuse for following a path that doesn’t make you better as a person. You have to expect that some things in life won’t go your way, but your ability to deal with them is directly determined by how much work you’ve put into yourself. There is an old saying: “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago; the second best time is right now.” If you’re not happy with yourself today, you can blame every day that “past you” didn’t put in the effort to make the present what you wish it were.
What I’m getting at is that your decisions up to this point have had considerable sway over the direction and quality of your life. If you’re not happy with the result, that’s your fault. The good news is that there is hope; you can change. There is still time to improve. Cut out all of the nonsense, and focus on getting a little better every day, and work towards your ideal life.
What does this mean?
There’s another old saying I like: “That which does not come out as sweat when you’re young comes out as tears when you’re old.” It’s true. Totally, absolutely and unequivocally true. You are not a precious little snowflake, some special case for whom these truths don’t apply. If you want to live a good, meaningful life that doesn’t fill you with regret at the end:
- Embrace your mortality. It will help you distinguish what’s really important and set your priorities straight.
- Stop making excuses. An excuse is just a way to avoid responsibility and let external forces dictate the course of your life. Seize responsibility in your life, and make it what you want.
- Make good choices every day. Visualize your future and constantly make decisions that take you closer to it.
I don’t normally post a lot of philosophical stuff here, but this has been on my mind quite a bit lately and I wanted to put those thoughts into words. I hope you found it useful, and at the very least motivational. Did it piss you off? Light a fire? Confuse you? Feel free to shoot me an email or tweet and let me know!