Perhaps for that one fine day you were able to do it. As you committed to the deepest of commitments standing among your family and friends you thought: this is it, and it is enough. No wondering when or how you will be happy. No capitulation to the random desires that endlessly flow through your mind. Nope. Just gratitude to the point of disbelief, to the point where wanting is a foreign concept.

xxxxxxxxx kinda always knew how this could happen. He and I were fresh out of Torres del Paine travelling alongside an outrageous character – a guy who hiked “off trail” an entire day so he could avoid paying the $20 entrance fee; wore Walmart boots, jeans, and a hooded sweatshirt¹; and whose calories came from nothing more than a loaf of bread and some dinky cheese slices – when it was time to rest for the night. xxxxxxxxx and I shared a room while “the character” negotiated a reduced rate for his own room by vowing to not use the bed, but rather to set up his tent on the ground, inside the hostel bedroom.

(more…)

As you were going out and doing “things” every single Friday night, there were those older friends claiming to greatly enjoy quite the opposite – “doing nothing.” They must have been kidding themselves, right? Sure, they had found a way to rationalize totally forgettable Friday evenings, but deep down they wished to be living how you were living, which was indeed how they once lived.

With youthful confidence, you vow to avoid the same mistake. Then years pass. Then your body starts aching in frustrating ways. Then, just as Legos lost appeal with time, the “things” you defined as “things” no longer deserve the same positive status. And so you chuckle and realize those older friends may not have been rationalizing anything at all. In this moment, full capitulation is possible: Ha. I was so stupid when I was 22. This humbling may even extend to your current self: Wow. I should probably drop some of my 35-year-old certainty because if I grow at all, in 10 years I’ll look back and again view my younger self as stupid.

(more…)

Please allow me to counter myself: fuck balance. There is nothing more important than purpose, and it comes with a steep price. But it’s a price that anyone should want to pay because, as I just declared, there is nothing more important than purpose. All the things we say we want – love, money, health, etc. – are inhabitants in the kingdom of purpose.

There’s a major difference between doing things and doing things. People living in the non-italicized state may think they comprehend some truth that the overweight mogul has missed; they are wrong. The mogul knew the rules – there is a steep price to pay – and decided to play anyway. Some on the path to doing things may pretend the rules don’t apply. They are also wrong. These are the people, specifically women in our current “The Future is Female” moment, who “want it all.” I want to be CEO AND a great mother AND healthy AND well-read AND a great spouse. Naw, it doesn’t work like that, because operating at the highest levels requires a form of singular purpose that blocks out other endeavors – maintaining concentrated purpose is hard enough that spreading it across disciplines is damn near impossible.

(more…)

“Man himself is in control,” was Bezdomny’s quick and angry reply to what was, admittedly, a not very clear question.

“I’m sorry,” replied the stranger in a soft voice, “but in order to be in control, you have to have a definite plan for at least a reasonable period of time. So how, may I ask, can man be in control if he can’t even draw up a plan for a ridiculously short period of time, say, a thousand years, and is, moreover, unable to ensure his own safety for the next day? And, indeed,” here the stranger turned to Berlioz, “suppose you were to start controlling others and yourself, and just as you developed a taste for it, so to speak, you suddenly went and…well…got lung cancer…”- at which point the foreigner chuckled merrily, as if the thought of lung cancer brought him pleasure. “Yes, cancer,” he repeated, narrowing his eyes like a cat as he savored the sonorous word, “and there goes your control! No one’s fate is of any interest to you except your own. Your relatives start lying to you. You, sensing that something is wrong, run to learned physicians, then to quack, and maybe even to fortune-tellers in the end. And going to any of them is pointless, as you well know. And it all ends tragically: that same fellow who not so long ago supposed that he was in control of something ends up lying stiff in a wooden box, and those present, realizing that he is no longer good for anything, cremate him in an oven. Why even worse things can happen: a fellow will have just decided to make a trip to Kislovodsk,” – here the foreigner narrowed his eyes at Berlioz, “a trivial matter, it would seem, but he can’t even accomplish that because for some unknown reason he goes and slips and falls under a streetcar! Would you really say that that’s an example of his total control over himself? Wouldn’t it be more correct to say that someone other himself is in control?” – and at this point the stranger laughed a strange sort of laugh.

—

“You haven’t by any chance spent some time in a mental hospital, have you?”

“Ivan!” softly exclaimed Mikhail Alexandrovich.

But the foreigner was not the least bit insulted and he burst out with a hearty laugh.

“I have indeed, I have indeed, and more than once!”

—

(more…)

Imagine a day 20 years from now when your parents are grocery shopping. They happen to run into a friend. Small talk ensues, compliments follow, and then the conversation turns to you. Think deeply about this moment and you’ll notice the lie inherent in the encouragement you will receive your entire life.

If you haven’t heard it yet, it’s coming: xxxxxxxxx, you can be whoever you want to be, do whatever you want to do. What a wonderful notion. It’s simple and totally empowering. But is it true? This act of uncovering truth is the task of a lifetime. You will be constantly bombarded by information, usually from well-intentioned people, and it will be up to you to determine what is valuable (aka true) and what is not. The better you are at this task, the better you will be navigating both yourself and the world.

(more…)

Some time ago one of xxxxxxxxx’s co-workers approached him in an emotional state. After a long, dramatic story, the co-worker ended with:

“Can you believe our boss said that to me?”

First consider that the co-worker probably did deserve the reprimand from the boss.

Then consider that there was some obvious advice that could be given to help the co-worker best proceed.

xxxxxxxxx’s response?

“Man, that sounds tough.”

(more…)

Do you know one of your great powers? If I have a thought on something and learn that you possess an opposite thought, I first consider how I’m wrong – getting it right – instead of hunkering down in a defensive position. I strive to be like this with everyone, since I truly can learn from anyone, but it’s harder with some than others. You are in the elite group that makes me being the person I want to be easy. But that’s not the power I came here to discuss. What makes you truly special, the elite of the elite if you will, is that I feel I can learn something about myself when I’m talking with you. I cherish this.

(more…)

Everyone wants to be wanted. I shall waste no more time explaining this principle for it is so obviously true.

What is not nearly as obvious, however, is the unconventional way to help others quench this endless thirst. You have, as you might have guessed given the existence of this letter addressed to one xxxxxxxxx, perfected this uncommon way: be vulnerable about your own wants. (more…)

It’s one thing to go from complete strangers to friends – people do that every day. But to go from strangers to spending two holidays together in nine months? That right there is an accomplishment worthy of celebration.

Which, speaking of celebration, how about that wonderful Fourth of July weekend? I dare say it was my favorite version of the holiday since FDR’s epic bash in 1938. [Redact] offered the perfect mix of structure and freedom, of catching-up and exploration on one’s own. Those balances are oh so challenging to pull off well. Not so for the [Redact]. Or, I guess I got a little ahead of myself in the excitement of recollection, for the [Redact] may be a glorious group of people, but they aren’t gods. So, executing [Redact] had to have been challenging (damn mortality), it was just that they made it look easy.

(more…)

There are many things that have always bothered me about, as you called them, “bumper sticker Christians.” Near the top of that list was a notion, demonstrated through their behavior, that faith alone was all that mattered; just believe in Christ, ask for forgiveness (when it’s convenient) and all was good. Now, perhaps this is all that’s truly required for salvation, but it strikes me as a terrible waste of our time on Earth.

(more…)