I have spent most of my adult life around people who are used to getting what they want. I don’t mean this in a negative way, necessarily: they’re not pushy people, not aggressive or out-of-touch in a trust fund kid stereotype kind of way. I just mean that they’re golden. Life has smiled upon them: spoils have fallen into their outstretched hands. These people are for the most part smart and kind and as conscientious as you might reasonably be given the rather unconscientious world we live in. Many of them had childhoods and young adulthoods that were far from golden, were in fact very difficult, so they have the mental narrative of having been the underdog before achieving a state of being intensely admired and loved. It’s a heady psychological brew.
I spent a long time chasing a particular carrot that was always dangling just in front of me. I'm one of the rare folks who, after almost ten years, ended up catching it. I thought that when I caught it, it would produce a rush of happiness and divide my life into "before" and "after" I had achieved that goal.
What I learned is that you feel exactly the same as before, and the happiness you derive from success/etc. feels exactly the same as the happiness you derive from small, inexpensive, and repeatable moments in life -- dinner parties with friends, walks through the city at night, good books, etc.
I'm glad that I set and achieved goals, but mostly because that made me appreciate what I already had. It also made me feel sad for the folks who will never catch their success because they're so focused on one thing that they're missing all of the moments around them that will actually make them happy in an easy and repeatable way.
Wow. This post couldn't have come at a better time for me. So much of the ideas and feelings you captured, not just are relevant and in some ways a mirror of my own experiences, but also resonate so deeply because they bring truths that have been spoken in poetry and religion together through your lived experience. Thank you for sharing these thoughts.
I spent a long time chasing a particular carrot that was always dangling just in front of me. I'm one of the rare folks who, after almost ten years, ended up catching it. I thought that when I caught it, it would produce a rush of happiness and divide my life into "before" and "after" I had achieved that goal.
What I learned is that you feel exactly the same as before, and the happiness you derive from success/etc. feels exactly the same as the happiness you derive from small, inexpensive, and repeatable moments in life -- dinner parties with friends, walks through the city at night, good books, etc.
I'm glad that I set and achieved goals, but mostly because that made me appreciate what I already had. It also made me feel sad for the folks who will never catch their success because they're so focused on one thing that they're missing all of the moments around them that will actually make them happy in an easy and repeatable way.
Wow. This post couldn't have come at a better time for me. So much of the ideas and feelings you captured, not just are relevant and in some ways a mirror of my own experiences, but also resonate so deeply because they bring truths that have been spoken in poetry and religion together through your lived experience. Thank you for sharing these thoughts.
This is brilliant