Around this time three years ago, I moved from Boston to New York City to start my adult life. I’ve been reading through my journals from that time, and it’s pretty cathartic (if that’s the word) to see where I was then and where I am now.
A lot has changed since then. That’s an understatement. Everything has changed. Numerous tattoos adorn my body. Wavy hair curtains my eyes and even falls to my lips when I really let it down. I’m comfortable spending ample time alone. I even write on the Internet and sometimes people resonate with what I share.
But beyond that, I’d say a broader change is my comfort with not having a plan. Not knowing.
Like most people, I used to plan. Not like those kids who came into college having their full four-year curriculum mapped out, but something in-between.
There was this rough map laying out a path, one that’d been trodden down by the weary feet of generations of overachievers. Two years in some “prestigious” job. Two years in another one. Then two years at Harvard, Stanford, or MIT for an MBA. It all seemed so clear then, so obvious.
“Why wouldn’t I want this? Why wouldn’t anyone want this?”
I didn’t question it for a moment. I didn’t ask myself “Is this really what I want?”
Shoulds are a cloak we’ve grown used to the weight of throughout our lives. The shoulds of our parents telling us to be docile when we want to bounce off the walls. The shoulds of our teachers rewarding topic sentences and clear ideas when we want to throw words and letters at the page. The shoulds of culture telling us to be “successful” in some cookie-cutter mold designed by old white men.
Shoulds don’t belong to us. They belong to someone else, but we don them. We doubt our intuition. We fear being shunned, or rather, disconnected from others. Not realizing that in the process, we lose ourselves.
//
It’s rare to see an adult who owns their wants — someone who speaks their truth and is led by it.
Are you really in banking for the “fast-paced environment?” Just say “I’m here for the money.” My associate J gave me that answer when I asked him — it would be the most honest thing I’d heard in six months.
I just checked. He’s still there.
We’re conditioned to tip-toe around each other. Not being fully honest in fear of losing social capital or career progress. Fearful of the “consequences” if we do.
We think we know what we want — that’s when we start digging ourselves into a hole. We think. Then we want. We rationalize a decision, perhaps even using a pro-con list, then convince ourselves it’s a want.
But if you need to convince yourself, it’s not a want. Were you convinced to love someone? If you have, my heart aches for yours.
The clearest pointer I can give is children. They don’t think. They want. They want a cookie? They’ll tell you they want a fucking cookie. They don’t hedge and say “Oh it’d be nice, but I understand if I can’t. I’ll eat the broccoli instead.” Only after an adult tells them they can’t have a cookie unless they eat their broccoli do they cloak their wants with a should.
We haven’t forgotten what we want, there’s just too much outer noise drowning it out. Modern technology makes this even more apparent. We’re more used to tuning out than tuning in. Listening to someone else rather than ourselves.
Put your device down for a moment. Put this writing down for a moment. You have permission to not finish the piece if you just sit with this.
What is it you want? What do you yearn for? Said differently, what is it you can’t not do?
//
Life is fleeting. I’m telling you as someone with a parent with cancer. Nothing in this life is guaranteed. Absolutely nothing. Not tomorrow, much less whether you’ll make it to lunch. You say “Well, the odds are I will.” But while odds are odds, life is life. You could be walking back to the office and a piano could fall from a window, squashing you like an ant, your fingers still clutching your $15 salad or Mediterranean bowl.
I ask again, what do you yearn for? What is it you can’t not do?
These questions aren’t solvable by any stretch in our minds. It’s not in their nature. Yearning doesn’t come from the head. It stirs from the silence within you. That which calls to you in the shower as you prepare for the day. Or as you absentmindedly disassociate from work with some scrolling and linger a noticeable moment “too long” on some social media post of someone doing something that evokes that foreign yet familiar feeling within you.
There is fear — yes, of course there is! Life is full of uncertainty and danger. Lions await in the bush. Smoke from wildfires hundreds of miles away blanket a city and turn it into a dystopian world. But beyond physical danger, fear is man-made. We clutch onto a series of limiting beliefs we’ve inherited that are nothing but an illusioned story our minds tell to keep this “me” safe.
If you’re reading this, you can access a device with Internet. You have a few minutes to read (or skim) the words and letters some 25-year-old chucked onto a page. Congratulations! By nothing more than pure circumstance, you've already been born into the 1% of the world. What then will you do from here?
Look beyond the stories, just for a moment, of how you think life should be. Forget the stability, 401Ks, parental approval. All the stories you’ve been told. From this space, what then do you want? What is it that calls to you in the depths of aloneness? A voice unobstructed, perhaps pre-pubescent even. What is it you hear?
I hear a yearning to be of service. To be in connection. To experience being fully human. Not necessarily in skydiving or dining at Michelin restaurants (though those would be nice). Rather, experiencing fully how it is to be “me” in this skin bag I’ve been given in this lifetime. Grief, heartbreak, joy, bliss. I want it all.
//
Each of us is imbued with a unique path unfolding day by day, moment by moment, breath by breath. Believing we’re all subject to the same little 4x4 plot of destiny is absurd. Yet we’ve been led to believe otherwise.
Ah, the perils of being human. The stories we tell ourselves to keep ourselves safe keep us from experiencing the rapture of being alive.
If you’re privileged enough to think outside the box, hell, actually step outside the box, I urge you to take it. When we leap for the first time, everything seems to click together in the most satisfying of “ahas.”
Oh yes, life is beautiful. Oh yes, life works out. Oh yes, life is perfectly unfolding.
I say this for you, as much as (if not more) I say it for myself.
Can the same be said for everyone? Perhaps not. But perhaps that’s your mind lingering for a moment too long. You look at the local who serves you at your resort hotel or restaurant and you think “A pity, I feel weird being served by them.” But to them, fate has garnered them nothing but blessings. They support their families on what you would consider a miserly wage or stature in the world. Such is the blessing and curse of being born into a Western country. We project our accumulated experience onto what is and call it “reality.”
Who are you without these stories? How then do you view your future, the unfolding narrative of your life? What wants to be written? What wants to be experienced through you, as you? It doesn’t need to be anything grandiose. It’s often not. It’s the simple things we yearn for. Peace. Love. Purpose. In whatever form they may be. There is no one size fits all, even as we are cut from, we are, the same cloth that makes up the fabric of our human experience.
So leap boldly, perhaps for the first time, but surely not the last. There’s a thrill that will come with leaping into the unknown, a familiar sensation each time you approach the ledge. It looks different for everyone, for we are not the same. Some unique cocktail of fear, joy, pleasure, pain, everything. There are common threads, but your experience is yours and yours alone. In that way, your life is a gift unique to you. It belongs to no one else.
What’s being asked of you? What’s the fullest expression of this life, this gift, you’ve been given without needing to earn?
What is it you can’t not do?
I love the only don’t know photograph