The final instalment. The third and last batch of lessons from my 25 years of life. If you are lost, read the first part of the series and the second part of the series.
You don’t owe your past effort a future
We are wired to equate effort with value, to believe that anything we’ve poured ourselves into must pay off eventually. We cling to projects, people, and even objects once we give it a part of ourselves – be it emotionally, physically, or mentally. While tough, it is worth teaching yourself to let go. You don’t have to finish reading the book you hate. You don’t have to eat the stale leftovers. You don’t have to be with someone who no longer brings you joy. Life does not deal in absolutes or forevers and you don’t owe your past a future.
Success ≠ Forever
Building on the previous lesson, while life may not deal in absolutes and forevers, we often do. We equate success with permanence – a true friendship is one that lasts a lifetime, a successful business is one that was passed on generation to generation, and lastly, a successful life is one where you have achieved everything and retained everything that you’ve achieved. Success is no longer confined to attainment only, it is now related to endurance. It is no longer enough to reach the peak, we must retire at the peak for it to truly count. We sound ridiculous – a species that can’t predict tomorrow, harping on about forever.
We are accustomed to permanence, so we naturally expect it in all facets of our lives. If tomorrow is promised, why shouldn’t the riches of today come with us? We fixate on what we believe is constant and fail to account for the only constant – change. In reality, we are transient beings in pursuit of a phantom, trying to borrow permanence in perpetuity. We can’t carry the spoils of today into the future, simply because they may not belong to us in the future, but that doesn’t mean they cease to be ours.
Our understanding of success needs to be relaxed to incorporate transience. As we change, and we inevitably will, we will pursue endless avenues of life. If we are lucky, we will be inspired to reinvent ourselves through our careers, relationships, and hobbies, often leaving the comfort of previous success. The more we reinvent, the more we understand that success was never meant to be permanent; it simply was meant to be experienced. It is a teacher, not an accolade, that shapes us before it leaves. Success counts because it happened, not because it lasted.
People are neither good nor evil – they are just self-interested
We are all familiar with morality ethics. The conflict between “good” and “evil” is central to the media we consume – every fairytale has a cackling witch, every piece of adolescent fiction has an evil regime in Balenciaga-esque outfits, and every James Bond film has a villain with a suspicious German or Eastern European accent. We grow up believing in the moral good and are quick to categorize people as either “good” or “bad.” Reality is oftentimes more nuanced and for that I want to reference Adam Smith, the father of capitalism and modern-day economics, whose contributions to moral philosophy are highly underappreciated.
Smith believed that people are self-interested beings who are concerned with the public’s opinion of themselves and the intentions of others. The latter bit, although often forgotten, is quite important because it adds subtle complexity – humans are motivated by self-interest, but not blindly. We are not blindly motivated by power as suggested by Thomas Hobbes, nor are we pure creatures who are corrupted by society as proposed by Jean-Jacque Rousseau. In Smith’s understanding, if I won the lottery and offered you money, you would accept my offer. However, if I stole money and offered you a chunk, you would, according to Smith, possibly reject my offer depending on your assessment of my intentions and how acceptance of the stolen money might influence the public’s opinion of you as a person.
But why is this relevant to us? It is relevant because societal pressures are not always morally correct, nor are they always present in our lives, and some people outright reject these pressures – killing is okay if your country is at war, cheating might be okay if you never get caught, and theft is alright as long as you are stealing from the rich. Self-interest, however, is a constant – we will kill, cheat, and steal for our own sake or for the sake of people we love. Some might object and present examples of conscientious objectors, law-abiding citizens, and even “selfless” individuals who give up their own lives to save others. While noble, their actions are not selfless, because to act, we need to be motivated, and all our motivations evolve from the self. Internalizing this notion will set us free, allowing us to move beyond the limited conceptual framework of good vs. evil.
Keep your heart open
I was 20 years old when I ended my first relationship. I must admit I wasn’t terribly devastated as we had broken up about a thousand times before, with each breakup being the harbinger of the end. I did, however, become just a tiny bit disillusioned. We had dated for almost three years and went to being complete strangers. I could accept that he wasn’t “the one,” but I couldn’t accept dating again without finding “the one.” I lived a solitary lifestyle (oh so dramatic), having the occasional, intentional, unattainable crush here and there – even thinking that I was bi, while exclusively crushing on the straightest girls ever (safe to say, I won’t be singing Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl”).
With time, however, I realized that keeping my heart closed meant that I had to forgo meaningful relationships. I may have shielded myself from heartbreak, but I was exposed to the heartbreak of a life not lived. Eventually, I made a leap of faith and met someone special. While I am uncertain about the odds of us surviving, I am content with having the opportunity to find out. After all, I am a strong believer that you end up exploring more if you don’t have a map. If you are still unconvinced, read my first article.
Listen – seriously, open your ears and listen
People don’t actively listen. This isn’t our fault, because we are born with the ability to hear, but speech is something we develop, resulting in something I call a speech fixation. From infancy, speech gets rewarded – our cries bring comfort, our first words earn applause. We are taught how to vocalize our thoughts, but not how to listen. Unfortunately, failing to listen – to our conversation partners, but also to our bodies and our surroundings – stops us from being truly present in the now.
Often, we start anticipating the next moment before we even have a chance to immerse ourselves in the current setting. We listen just enough to have an answer, get distracted halfway through a meditation by a creeping mental to-do list, and fill every silence with background noise. We have our brains on 2x speed and wonder why time moves so quickly.
We can choose to slow time by becoming listeners who are engaged in the present. We can choose to leave the confines of our own voice to hear the world. Or mute the world around us to truly listen in to our inner voice. Time softens when we listen. A conversation becomes a melody, the white noise of our surroundings feels like company, and the present stops rushing to become the past.
Life will teach you lessons you are not ready to learn yet
We are dumbfounded by life, and that’s the way it’s meant to be. I spent a good amount of life trying to figure out the why’s behind certain events.
Why did my father live on the other side of the world?
Why did my childhood best friend make a pass at a guy she knew I liked when we were 16?
Why did it take me so long to settle in Toronto?
I was naively, and falsely, convinced that if I could rationalize my feelings and trace cause to effect, I could move past the hurdles at a quicker pace. I wanted to strip apart life to make it more digestible, but despite my strongest efforts the feelings persisted. As I reflected on my life while writing this piece, I realized that understanding doesn’t equal integration.
Gestalt psychology calls us to explore the idea of a whole being different than the sum of its parts. We can’t make sense of an experience while standing inside it, because the meaning is hidden in acceptance and emerges only with distance, when time rearranges the fragments into something coherent. The fragment cannot be understood in isolation, it only finds its shape when placed in context.
Life, in its quiet cruelty, will keep replaying unfinished gestalts until you finally close them. Heartbreaks will echo, friendships will dissolve, and cities will chew you raw, but you need to let it happen, because accepting the “what” is a prerequisite to understanding the “why.” Paradoxically, you will never be ready to learn a lesson, yet you will learn it all the same, in hindsight.
Decide what you want to do to become who you want to be to have what you want to have
This is a very simple idea and yet, it seems like we can’t arrive at it ourselves without the guidance of self-help books. The problem isn’t exactly us – it’s the way we grow up. We get used to being told what to do, what to want, and when to want it that by the time we are allowed to make important decisions for ourselves, the habit of outsourcing the responsibility of choice becomes too compelling to give up. We become adults who are confined in the same structures we keep in existence.
To regain control of our lives, we first need to decide what we desire and then work backward. We have a mental image of ourselves that currently does not correspond to reality. To merge reality with our desires, we need to understand who we need to be to have what we want to have. If we want to have a fit physique, we need to be active and eat clean. If we want to have a successful business, we need to be entrepreneurial. If we want to have healthy relationships, we need to become romantics. Once we figure out the “who?” we need to think of the “how?” How do we become active people? By getting memberships at our local gym. How do we become entrepreneurs? By starting businesses. How do we become romantics? By opening our hearts. The schema is painfully simple, we just need to act.
There are many paths to happiness, but your heart knows the shortest one
The beauty of the human psyche is its flexibility – we can find happiness in virtually all situations. In practical terms, this means that if happiness is a destination, there are many roads that lead to it. We can live a happy life even if we don’t follow our passion or calling and just stick to ordinary jobs doing ordinary things in ordinary towns. The main difference is how quickly we will arrive at our destination. Our hearts know the shortest path to happiness, and following our passions is bound to bring us happiness, or rather us to happiness, much quicker than if we dedicate our lives to less-attractive pursuits.
Be a crying baby
There is a saying in some cultures that the crying baby gets the milk. Be that crying baby. It is important to vocalize our needs and desires because, at the very least, the act of saying them out loud allows us to refine them. Vocalizing the desire helps us get clarity; it helps us see whether our desire is aligned with our higher self and purpose. Spiritually, asking sends out our intention into the hands of the higher power, and in practical terms, asking for what we think we deserve lets other people see it too. Put differently, we might not receive that awaited raise or promotion unless we ask, because our bosses are too busy thinking about their own promotions. We need to be our own advocates; we need to be crying babies.
This is the final part of 25 years of living, thinking, and overthinking. Take what’s useful, leave the rest behind. Life will keep teaching, and we will keep learning (usually in the wrong order). Thank you for reading Ripe Reflections.