Hello Friends,
I hope you had a great week and are enjoying a lovely Friday. The last few mornings here in New England have been cool and foggy. It seems mother nature is getting in the spooky spirit for Halloween.
I’ve been thinking about my future recently. Pretty much every day for the last few months in fact. I am not sure it is healthy either.
The Future
There are a few things I know that I must do. The urge to do them is so great and the disappointment in not completing them would leave me hallow inside.
I am talking about the Appalachian Trail and many other long distance adventures. The brief time I had living on the trail was some of the best in my life. I feel that the trail holds answers to all of my questions and I just need to get out there and listen.
This is not about the trail however, it is about my future, and particularly the amount of stress I put on myself trying to figure out how to get the future I want.
I have talked about this in the past, but the future that I wish to come true (at least as of now) involves lots of hiking, biking, and the sort, and having a good career to support myself financially.
These two things don’t tend to mix very well when you need to take six months to a year off from work to hike.
The good news is that there is time later to figure things out. Dr. Arthur Brooks, author and academic, who has a very successful career and is quite wealthy, was a classical musician for six years before going back to school.
During this time he was making less than $20,000 and could not afford health insurance. When he went back to school it was not for music and his career is largely focused around social science.
So to put it bluntly, he basically fucked around for six years before starting a career path and still ended up successful. So why am I worrying so much about my future?
The Present
The show “How I Met Your Mother” had an episode that showcased “shattering the illusion”. (Check out this clip as a reference)
The idea of “shattering the illusion” is that we all tell ourselves lies, however small, without realizing we even do it. In “How I Met Your Mother” the perception of the character is changed when someone points out an annoying habit of another character and the illusion is shattered.
This experience happened to me the other day while listening to a podcast. The guest (No idea who it was, so sorry) stated that most people are living in the future. That they believe in some sense that life has not really started yet.
When I heard that it was almost as if I heard glass breaking inside my head. The illusion was shattered. I was constantly looking to the future and thinking about how good life will be once I can save some money for my next thru hike.
I was not living in the present. How long could I go on living in a fictional future?
Some live their entire lives only looking towards the future and not living in the present. It is not until they are lying on their deathbeds do they realize that life had been happening all along.
I don’t want to let life slip by me as I look to the future and think “that’s when my life will really start.”
Fake Beauty
In a Keynesian beauty contest the judges are rewarded for picking the most popular contestant between all judges rather than the person they think to be the most attractive. As you can imagine, these can lead to very swayed results.
The Keynesian beauty contest appears in many aspects of our lives. The car we drive, the house we buy, even the spouse we marry. Many of the things that we chose in our lives are influenced by others.
Often the career path we chose is one that will appease our parents. The car we drive will make our coworkers think we are cool. We even pay someone to make sure our lawn looks nice to show the neighbors we’re alright.
How many things are influenced by others?
How many things have we chosen something different than what we really want?
How often have you actually asked yourself, why do I want this?
I think most people go through life not questioning much. They buy a house because that’s what everyone else did. The get married and have kids because that’s what their parents did.
If you don’t question the actions you take, are they really your own actions?
Don’t fall into the trap of the Keynesian beauty contest. Chose who you think is the most attractive, not the popular contestant. Follow the path that you want to follow, not the one most travelled.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost – The Road Not Taken
