Early Life Crises and Why You Wake Up in the Morning

I'm sure you clicked on this because of the catchy title and not this picture :P

It’s 1:30 pm, and I’ve shut off both of my alarm clocks an hour earlier. The problem is that I’m still in bed. I’m supposed to be at this institution of learning in half an hour. Whoops, nope. 29 minutes now. Rolling my torso around, I plant my face into the pillow and mess up the orientation of my blanket doing so. It’s warm inside my bed, with that nice, cosy haze of trapped body heat beckoning me like a classical Greek Siren to remain inside, immobile, safe. Twenty centimetres to the left of me is the edge of my bed and the entrance to a dark and dangerous world. A world where decisions must be made, where interactions are to be had, where futures are created. But at the same time this is a world which repeatedly strikes you down again and again in the guise of supposed ‘learning lessons’. A world where one’s meaning, one’s ikigai, must be forged out of the turmoils of emotion in one’s soul. With only incidental experiences and notions to guide us, and tools of which our mastery is amateur and novice at most in the carving of the sculpture of our lives. It’s also a world where oats and milk must be made in order to enjoy breakfast. I enjoy it with mango.

So some time later I’m at a lecture on positive psychology. Some stuff about how to have more happiness and better outcomes in your life. The lecturer whines in a voice that’s had many years worth of whining experience, so the effect of her whining is exactly as intended. It allows me to spend the most insipid, uninspiring hour of my life listening to someone who’s probably a regular attendee at Anthony Robbin’s and Dr. Phil’s concer— I mean, seminars, tell me, in a bunch of dot points, how I should live my life in order to become happier and more fulfilled. Thank you dot points.
What the lecturer doesn’t understand is that the aesthetic experience of life isn’t something that can be completely conveyed to us through second-hand experience. If I can’t appreciate life because of deep, ingrained self-esteem issues, because I’ve never worked on myself to develop the skills and talents to explore this world, if I’ve never been able to break out of the ‘me-bubble’ and break past the comfortable, solipsistic existence where my problems, my worries, my unmet needs, my wants, then there’s only so much that a powerpoint slide with 5 dot-points on the characteristics of Flow can do for you.

So what happened between the time of me ‘waking’ up and getting to this lecture? Something which caused the millions of (alright, maybe hundreds of) neurons in my mind to fire in a manner to establish a pathway of thinking that, roughly translated, would yield an amount of motivation that would allow me to overcome the resistance that I had at that moment to leaving my place of comfort and warmth. The question that I want to pose in this article today is if we didn’t have any commitments or necessary demands on our time, why would you get up in the morning? The only reason that I really woke up this morning was because of the social framework in which I had spent the last 18 years demanded my participation at a particular place at a particular time. For me, this was the agreement which I had engaged in when I signed up for a university degree. When we deconstruct this, it’s a very simple agreement. I provide funds to the university and spend time studying material, and they provide me the material and a degree at the end of a number of years. In order to fulfil my part of this contract, I have to wake up and be present at particular places at particular times in order to receive such learning material. Simple.

But this system isn’t something created out of my own intellect and mind. It isn’t an agreement that was drafted by me, written by me, or even thought up by me. It’s an agreement written up by something else. Hundreds of years of modification to the education system by countless senators and politicians, perhaps. Some town planner a number of years ago who decreed that x amount of people need to have x,y,z degrees in order to fulfil workplace shortages in p,q,r industries at locations, e,f,g. You get the idea. Is the system ’bad? I think it depends on how you think. With a great deal of things in life, simple comparisons of ‘bad’ and ‘good’ compress the numerous different perspectives and situations and their conclusions into a single positive or negative connotation regarding something. Doing so weakens our ability to truly understand and appreciate concepts. So in other words, it’s a long way of saying ‘maybe’.

Let’s break down this ‘maybe’. One one hand, there is the argument that a college/university degree is commonly recognized as an important (but not absolutely necessary) factor in attaining and maintaining a reasonable middle-class lifestyle. But lets ask ourselves why we want a reasonable middle-class lifestyle? Each of our reasons will be different, and they may all be equally valid, or the validity may differ from reason to reason. That’s not for me to judge. But what I can offer in this situation is a question. Is the reason behind your wanting of a middle-class lifestyle something that you’ve consciously thought about and concluded is in alignment with your values, or is it something else? Is it a situation where you’ve just done what everyone else has done for the last few years of your life - going to school, attending x, y, z, going and getting a particular degree, getting a job, getting married, buying a suburban house with a swimming pool and three bedrooms, saving up for your children’s college fund, and so on – do you do this because you’ve consciously decided to sit down one day and think to yourself what are the values and principles which are pertinent to your own life, and decided that to do something like this would bring you closer in alignment with these values and principles? Or are you like me and many other people who drift through life. Who never really think to question themselves the why behind what they do. When we don’t go and make it clear to ourselves what our why is, then the motivations in our lives for getting out of our bed in the morning become dictated by necessities which we have unconsciously forced ourselves into as a product of our lack of consciousness as to our direction in life. Ever had the alarm clock ring in the morning and you dread pulling back the sheets because you’re not really that excited or interested in the things that life could bring you today or in the future? I don’t doubt that that is a sentiment that is shared by myself and many other people in the world. Sometimes, I imagine that some of us want something more than just to show off our new watch/ dress/ book/ etc., or to just see whatever new movie some Hollywood directors have deemed appropriate for the particular season we’re in, or to attend a certain number of classes simply to meet a decreed set requirement in order to pass, or so on. I feel that too many of us live our lives in this walking daze, not driven or guided by consciously chosen ideals, but simply existing and allowing life to take us where it may, like ships in the middle of sea without oars or sails to guide our paths. Is this necessarily a ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ method of living life, I hear you ask. And of course the answer is no….t necessarily. I simply suggest that although there may be no difference in validity of one particular philosophy on life and living over that of another, there is a difference in the aesthetic quality of the existence that we experience when we are conscious as to why we choose to live our lives in a particular way, as opposed to when we do things just because we and those around us have never known anything else.

So where does this tension-filled, somewhat vague crescendo of an article end up going? Is the author going to tell you what he believes is a workable remedy to the conflict which he has just exposed? Yes. But if you really want to know what I think, go and read Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha right now. At this moment. It’s a book that’s about 100 pages and the words are printed really big because it’s the book that old people and literature majors enjoy reading in their spare time (sorry old people). If I have managed to encourage at least one person to read this masterpiece, then I can rest happily.
But if you’re like the majority of people who don’t read these things, here’s the TL;DR version, albeit with my own spin tacked onto it. Siddartha is a story about a Brahmin’s son trying to seek enlightenment and nirvana. Nirvana is, for those who may not have been exposed to the concept, the idea that you’re free from suffering in the world. Sounds like something pretty cool. I wonder if it comes in the form of a cheap Chinese import that they sell on eBay. Unfortunately for Siddartha, he can’t find someone to sell him (well, actually teach him) how to attain Nirvana. He goes around to different groups of people promising him enlightenment, and at every group of people – the Brahmins, the mystics, Buddha, and so on – he is disappointed, for he finds himself unable to achieve Nirvana. Eventually he gives up on his search and engages in the hedonistic lifestyle, having sex with women and bearing a child. He lives in the materialistic urban world for a while before rejecting this as well, and finally spends the end of his days with a guy who paddles a raft back and forth in a river. And it is here that he finds Nirvana.

What causes him to find this Nirvana? Is it the stillness of the trees and the flow of the river in the forest? Nope. He’s already tried that stuff and it didn’t work. By this time, he’s also got a son who pretty much hates him and who runs away from his father, and by all measures of conventional living standards, his life would be pretty shit. Like, WHO article-worthy shit. However it isn’t. What Hesse attempts to argue is that it is the conscious experience of the various manifestations of the different forms of human existence that allows one to attain peace, understanding, and fulfilment. We can’t achieve happiness and meaning and fulfilment through a single activity alone - rather, we must go through each of the stages of our lives, accept that at that time they will not bring us peace, enlightenment, or happiness, but also know that in the end, when we look back, we will be happy, have profound insight, and understand the world and ourselves because we have experienced the things that we have. It is the individual experiences of the multiple facets of life over a lifetime that will eventually bring us peace. Siddhartha needed to spend time sleeping with hot women and being disgusted at the inherent hedonism of doing so. He needed to spend time learning the ways of the mystics and being disillusioned when he realized their weaknesses and flawed nature. He needed to go through all of these experiences in order to be able to obtain and aggregate his cumulation of experiences and attain understanding of himself and the world. Perhaps that’s what we also need to do. Perhaps it is in those very days where you struggle to find your purpose that you are actually in the process of finding yourself.

In the beginning of this blog post I expressed cynicism towards the popular psychology of today – the idea that happiness and contentment and meaning can be compressed into a few dotpoints on a PowerPoint presentation talking about ‘flow’ and getting ‘in the zone’. Popular psychology like this appeals to us because it’s a quick-fix, fast-food, band-aid-esque instant application that says ‘use these 5 fabulous tricks and you’ll instantly know how to feel better about your life and your life’s meaning’. The thing is although this can definitely help, what a lot of these preachers of McAdvice may miss is that the concepts that they are teaching – being in the moment, self-acceptance, etc. – are merely the superficial expressions of an individual who has lived their fulfilling life and experienced all which they need to experience in order to find their meaning. We cannot confuse cause and effect – people who’ve done a Siddhartha may act in the ways expressed in the dot points, but not all people who follow the ‘5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Health and Wellbeing Today’ (also featuring ways to get slim for summer AND yet another uninspiring interview with someone we don’t give a shit about, going by with the initials Kim Kardashian), are going to have that life experience to back it up. And that’s the kicker.

So the take-home message of what I’m trying to say here is this. Those days and moments in your life where you question yourself; those times where you wonder why you go through the same old routine day in and day out; those days when you struggle in finding the meaning of it all – this kind of stuff is okay. Dare I say it might even be necessary - necessary to the development and manifestation of the peace which you may be searching for. Getting out of bed each morning is much easier if we allow our present struggles to work as a stepping stone towards the peace and understanding which we seek. Why should I get out of bed this morning? Not because I need to work towards x,y,z because someone other than myself thought it should be so, but because each day is adding to the wealth of experiences which will one day allow me understanding and peace and happiness and all that jazz. 

I'm Starting a Business

I'm starting a business.

When it was young it had the opportunity to flourish. To blossom. To create. To Inspire. But the moment it turned five years of age, its owners rushed towards its Wiggles and Ninja-turtled themed office and handed it a piece of paper, asking 'What service or function do you want to provide to resource-holders in return for financial compensation?' Maybe it wasn't exactly that; it probably was phrased 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' It didn't know.

At that time, this business that I wanted to start wasn't much of a business. To the investors, it was actually a bit of a flop. I tried to explain to them that what I was starting wasn't about the returns or profit column on whatever QuickBooks account they may have had open at the time, rather that I started this because of something thing called ideology. It wasn't even supposed to be a business. It was more of an honest appreciation of the world. But that kind of thinking doesn't stand in modern society. So I tried to convince them of the merits of my efforts. I said words like 'principles', 'virtues', 'creativity', 'exploration', 'character'. I tried to explain to them how this business would help us conquer abstract ideals such as 'the inquisition into the nature of a human psyche divorced from societal norms' or 'the freedom of possibility latent within the human spirit' or '[insert deep, meaningful, string of words of what we should do with our lives here]'. Sure, my business couldn't do very much when it first started - smearing paint in a motley blotch of different colours all over the kitchen table, or putting every goddamned thing it could find in its mouth is hardly suggestive of conventional excellence - but at the time, it didn't matter because this business was doing exactly what it was supposed to do.

But unfortunately in the world that I come from - that is, the world of letter grades, career progression and progressive taxation - that sort of whacko ideology stuff just doesn't fly. The only principles the investors cared about was that of competition and accumulation. Creativity meant achieving in the top 5% of all English students when it came down to end of year performance reviews. Character meant following Best Practice Policies consistent with the rest of the competition - since studying two hours a day and keeping up with extracurricular involvements, music, a bit of exercise, and holding some leadership position will set your product apart from others, so that when potential consumers scan your business's history, they'll be more likely to choose yours over a competitor's.

This is the kind of stuff that was important to those who invested in my business. Competition. Achievement. Performance Reviews. I still wanted to keep my business aligned with my principles, but have you ever met someone who knows how to 'run the show'? They know how to convince you. So I went and talked to these people who held all the cards with the intention of convincing them to my way of thinking, but as often happens with things like this, it was they who would be doing the convincing. I was prepared when they began talking about the money - with those who deal in commerce, this was to be expected. Yes, a business that prospers and succeeds will bring all sorts of monetary benefit, but I was happy how I was - I didn't need to run my own enterprise to get money. But then they started talking about how if only I built up my business a bit more, if I focussed on expanding and connecting with others to form partnerships, I could have an enterprise. Working on this would 'open doors' and provide 'lots of opportunities for the future'. Now, being just a simple person who writes every now and then on a simple blog, the idea of the future wasn't something that I had thought about a lot. I looked at the state of my business - it was just a business: what it did was what I told it to do. It didn't think about the future - it never had. If I left it alone, it would go back to what I originally wanted it to do - explore, create, enquire. But I had spent a lot of time augmenting this business of late. I had spent a lot of effort investing in the kind of R&D that these investors had suggested. Thinking back to all this effort suddenly made the principle of 'return on investment' far more clear and real than that of 'ideology'. If I had invested in so much, what was a little bit more effort if it meant 'better opportunities' in the future?

But thoughts of the future wasn't what convinced me.

What really convinced me was fear.

Because as a businessman, an entrepreneur,  the last thing I would want is for my business to fail. These investors told me that if this business were to fail, if the consumers didn't want to purchase my product at a high enough price, then I would be worthless as a businessman. While I had spent the last 20 years of my life working on someone else's investment, I had grown attached to how it performed. What it would do. What it could become. The line between running a business and living my life began to blur - that business and how it performed slowly and surely became more and more integral to the idea of who I was. What kind of industrialist doesn't increase their competitiveness by implementing the most refined and advanced production methodologies? What kind of CEO fails to market their product by writing down all of its qualifications, alongside glowing user testimonials, on an A4 document before showing it to potential consumers? What kind of person doesn't get a job, doesn't follow the roster, doesn't 'contribute anything to society'?

What if I never wanted to start a business in the first place?

You see, fear is what stops us. Fear of failing. Fear of going against the trend. Fear of what our friends might say. Fear of what our parents or teachers might say. Fear of the 'what if'. Fear of not being normal. Fear of not doing what everyone else is doing. But sometimes it isn't fear. Sometimes closing your business just isn't ever considered an option. We've never thought about doing it because in our world, it's a treachery unheard of.

This business's name is Eric. It's also Joe. Miguel. Alexandra. Amir. Jacek. Salama. Zhi. We don't necessarily all sell the same thing, but a lot of the time we've followed a similar programming. It's a great deal of us. And those investors I've harped on about? Anyone who's ever held the expectation that you or I should one day study, get a job, pay our taxes and colour ever so delicately in between the lines.

I'm not saying that a world without work, education, and knowledge is an ideal world - extremes are rarely a realistic representation and understanding of the world. Yet why is it that the question asked of our youth is 'What do you want to be?' or 'What are you studying?' As we age, this simply becomes  'What do you do?'. Is the extreme of simply following the programming set out for us really how we ought to live our lives?

I'm also not saying it's anathema for your work to be your passion, or for you to find great fulfilment, satisfaction, and enjoyment from what you do to make a living. It's when its the only the thing that defines us, when our value as human beings is boiled down to a qualification or an ability to earn that the alarm bells ring. When all of society has dictated that the greatest and most honourable way of living our lives is to labour for other people, to sell our labour and our skills so that other people may profit. Perhaps slavemasters don't need chains to enslave us - we now do it willingly. And perhaps our lives and who we are should be dictated by more than simply what another person pays us to do.

525,600 Minutes

It doesn’t have to be beautiful, but it could be different. It’s an interesting thing when we think about how much time there is for growth and progression in a year – as we age older and older, and each passing Christmas becomes that little less special each time it happens and gradually more and more a ritual to add to the ever growing list of ‘things to to’, and if we’re not careful, every day can become another set of actions which we mechanically perform without any direction or any wholly meaning purpose or meaning behind it.

We often think to ourselves that a year a large amount of time. That many things can be performed and achieved within the span of a year. And indeed, a lot of times, many things are achieved and areperformed – except whether or not these things really do help you become the person who you want to be, and help you gain that sense of fulfillment, freedom, happiness, joy, and the qualities that are inherent in the life that you want to live is often a question. Too often, the things that we do are the urgent, but unimportant things in our lives – the essay on circus-training in Alabama that is worth only 2.5% of your final grade, that project that your coworkers delegated to you which is due in two days, the stack of paperwork left on your desk – the things that have deadlines but really just aren’t that important.

All too often, I’ve found that many people end up filling up their lives with the endless barrage of unimportant, unfulfilling, but nevertheless urgent tasks. An individual day is lived performing a multitude of these urgent tasks, and then we eat, sleep, then wake up the next day and repeat the same kinds of tasks that we’ve done yesterday, the last week, the last month, and before long, it’s not difficult to imagine that our entire year has been filled up with unimportant yet urgent tasks. For what is a year but a day followed by another again and again and again?

I think that if we follow this kind of programming where we just do the things that are urgent, it can be easy to a) miss out on the things that are extremely important but not urgent, and b) end up looking back at our years wondering ‘what the hell have I really done?’. Following the string of unimportant, urgent tasks that are laid out before us in our daily lives and hoping to achieve happiness and the life of our dreams is like opening up Wikipedia and clicking on the first link that you see, then clicking the first link that you see on the new page, and again for each subsequent page in the hopes of landing on the article specifically about Pope John Paul’s perchance for paronomasia (no, that doesn’t actually exist, unfortunately). The kind of life filled with mundane and banal tasks can lead us to a situation where we look back to who we were exactly one year ago, and compare it to who we are now.

It’s interesting because if I take a journey back exactly one year ago, thinking about where I am in life, my sense of fulfillment, self-esteem, social competency and so on, I can admit that I’m not a lot different. And that scares me. I’m still often socially insecure, struggling with self-esteem issues, overly intellectual, and so on, and I’ve realized that without a conscious decision to change, and the discipline day in and day out to perform the actions, and realize the beliefs that will bring you to where you want to be, one can easily become static in the fog of banalities and tasks which are enforced upon us on a daily basis.

Unless we are, as individuals, content with simply ‘going along with the flow’ and letting our lives be defined by the unimportant yet urgent tasks in our lives, we run the very real risk of never giving proper attention to the important but not urgent things that we could be doing in order to really live the way that we want to be. What kinds of things am I talking about? The kinds of actions whose greatest benefits only come through a cumulative investment of effort into the particular task. Something like exercising often has an immediate as well as a long-term benefit, but consider something such as starting a self-reflective journal and unfailing updating it with ways in which you could have acted better in your life. Doing something as lacking in urgency as journaling your thoughts for a month may not give you any notable immediate relief, yet it’s the kind of activity which can change your course by that .1 of a degree that adds up so much over the long-run. Think of two planes which start off with an angle difference of a single degree, and let them fly apart for twenty years. The difference between them, although initially small, will be massive at the end of their journeys. I think that’s the kind of difference which comes from doing these important and non-urgent tasks day in and day out, and I think that’s a step in the right direction if we want to ensure that we live lives more of our own volition and choosing, rather than living lives which are dominated by unimportant and urgent tasks, which can ultimately leave us simply older, but not really that much different, versions of ourselves at the end of another year.