There’s a question that won’t leave my head these days. It came into sharper focus a little while ago, when I read this article.
For a long time, the question of my life was “How much will I earn?” A number was the goal; there was a balance to be filled. But at some point the grain of the question shifted. “How will I live?”
This wasn’t some grand epiphany. It’s just that my gaze moved from the world of numbers to the world of values. And today I want to set down the thoughts I met at the end of that gaze.
One experience a day — until that, too, becomes a compulsion
For a while I kept turning over the idea of “one experience a day.” A life of experiencing one new thing every single day. It looked wonderful. But two feelings arrived at the same time. One was, “For something billed as a challenge, that takes an awfully big resolve,” and the other, “That’s just going to breed another compulsion — the pressure that I absolutely must do one thing every day.”
When I think about it, there’s no rule that the one experience has to be filled with some external event, like skydiving or a new restaurant. In truth, maybe I was already close to the answer.
I go to work, I repeat more or less the same routine, and yet, strangely, not a single day is exactly the same. How is it that something different happens every day? Heraclitus said, “You cannot step into the same river twice.” The river flows on, and I, too, become a little different each day.
So newness isn’t something that “comes to us” from outside; it’s closer to something we “discover” in ordinary life. Noticing that the color of the sky on the way to work isn’t the same as yesterday’s. If I’m already noticing that difference, then the one experience is already happening every day — not a piece of homework waiting to be done.
Family comes first — and the difficulties that come charging in
The number-one priority in my values is clear. Family. Life with my family is the center, and beyond that center I want to face down the difficulties that come charging at me, refusing to just let them stand, and keep moving forward.
Epictetus divided the affairs of the world into “what I can control” and “what I can’t.” The trials that come at me aren’t mine to choose. But the attitude I meet them with — and the family at my side — those are the terrain I can protect.
When the root that is family holds firm, then no matter how some venture out in the world wavers or fails, there’s a base camp to come back to. Seen that way, the difficulties charging in aren’t waves that break me apart, but something closer to a whetstone that grinds me sharper.
I’m happy, and yet I can’t seem to feel satisfied
The contradiction I’ve been holding onto the longest is this. I clearly feel happy. And yet I can’t seem to feel satisfied. Can a person even perceive the “full” of happiness? I suspect there’s some compulsion in me that insists it has to be filled all the way to the brim.
Schopenhauer said of human beings that “when they lack, they feel pain; when they are fulfilled, they feel boredom.” Being happy and yet unsatisfied isn’t because I’m some oddity — it’s because human beings are, by instinct, designed to crave a “better state.” If anything, that’s a relief.
The problem is the illusion of “full (100%).” Happiness isn’t a filled-up “state” so much as a flowing “process.” The moment the water in the cup reaches 100%, that water can no longer be renewed; it just sits there and stagnates. Maybe the healthiest happiness is actually the one that’s only 70 or 80 percent full — leaving room to be filled each day with new experiences and the love of family.
If not knowing satisfaction isn’t a lack, but a signal that there’s still room left to fill — well, that’s a fairly bearable contradiction.
A resolution, left in a single line
Having a lot of thoughts is proof that I’m taking life seriously. So I’ve decided to count even that as a blessing.
Rather than straining to fill a perfect 100% day, I’ll hold onto the center that is family and live by observing, with interest, the ordinary days that flow a little differently each time. Setting down the compulsions, and gladly welcoming the difficulties as they come.
How much I’ll earn is still one axis of my life. It’s just that I’ve decided to set a larger question on top of it: how I will live. Because today, too, the color of the sky will be different from yesterday’s.
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