Power
I have worked in various roles in various spheres now and have become quite familiar with the lot of managers and bosses and the ladder and all that. Working in regional news I got to see behind the curtain of a lot more institutions and organisations and came into frequent contact with movers and shakers at various levels in various hierarchies. The more exposure I had to this the more it began to dawn on me: I actually don’t want much in the way of power. I’m happier working relatively independently and certainly have no desire to tell other people what to do; in fact that’s a headache I could do without. I really, really value my independence and freedom of expression – freedom to speak my mind honestly and critically without having to toe the line; to do my own thing how and when I want to do it; to turn off from work and turn my attention to other things once I’m out the door; to go about my business fairly anonymously etc – to the point I will retreat from anything that threatens these freedoms. People at or near the top of the chain in institutions may not have anyone specifically telling them what to do, but they are hamstrung and compromised in dozens of different directions that would make me recoil, and the further up the chain you go the more enmeshed you become – to have to tether your entire being to some corporate or public entity or enterprise; to be under scrutiny constantly; to be responsible for the gripes and security of an army of people below you; to have be publically accountable for a whole range of crap that may or may not be your fault. Urgh. No, ta. The very idea brings out my soul in a panic rash.
Fame
If power could in fact end up restricting your existential freedoms, that’s nothing compared to fame – what a poisoned chalice that has turned out to be now we have learnt of it, readers! I used to want to be a rock star. Phew, eh? What a lucky break that never happened. Naw, seriously though, like a sizable majority of the population I used to see fame as the ultimate success because, I suppose, it appears to be validation on all levels – that you are special, you are talented, your skill is recognised, you have influence, you are fundamentally an interesting person. Except that fame does not actually prove any of those things, but what will happen is that you and your life will become public property that is fair game for everyone to chip in on, and you and your life will become a business commodity that everyone will constantly want a piece of. And what then? Many are tied to the desperate Sisyphean treadmill of maintaining it, others are stuck with it but desperate to escape back to anonymity. Now: I am really not a public person and I really don’t want to be one. I was not even comfortable putting my face next to news stories I’d written, or getting too much attention on twitter (seeing as it has become the place that people go to be truly awful to each other these days); I could not cope with fame. Fame sounds amazing for about the first year or so, then it sounds like a hollow victory and bubble-like existence. Ta, no.
Riches
Now come on Thomas, really? Ok, yes, I would sorely like to be considerably better off, that is a given. Everything is just harder to do and maintain when you’re poorer, and having to count the pennies is depressing and grinds you down. Yes, I want to have the money to buy nice things now and again, live in a nice home, travel more, and not worry about the expense. But, in line with studies that suggest money does not make us happier beyond a certain point where we are out of poverty and into comfortable, reasonably flush security, I have no real desire for flashy excess at all – in fact I kinda think flashy excess is pretty much always a sign of vacuous amoral try-hard bullshit. Add to that that, unless you win the lottery, you don’t just get rich without strings attached (see Power); and that there are consequences for your conscience, relationships and sense of self; and that I don’t buy for a second that wealth is necessarily anything to do with merit and... well, a friend and I had wildly divergent responses to the Scorsese black comedy The Wolf of Wall Street, thus: I found it morbidly fascinating, a tale of vile people with awful inter-personal relationships and something critical missing in their souls cutting a destructive swathe through the world of high finance. “But wouldn’t it be ace to actually live like that?” my mate said, referring to their lavish lifestyles. Well... “Um. No,” I had to tell him. Whatever bit of people it is that craves superyachts and absurd shiny rollerskate cars and a house with 15 empty bedrooms and cocaine on your private jet and gold leaf on your f***ing ice cream obviously just isn’t in my peasant-stock blood. It just all looks like so much empty swank wank, wastage of existence to me.
So, if I’m pooh-poohing power, fame and riches for their distinctly turn-to-ashes-in-the-mouth potential, what kind of life goals would I push in their stead on this dawning of a new hopeful year?
Robustness
Actually, end-state goals are a bit suspect in general I think, because the Buddhists were right – everything is temporary. I am old enough now to have seen plenty of people attain 'living the dream' status, and lose it again; to appear to have the perfect life one moment, then really not a few years down the line – and vice versa (the good news is while cloudless joy may never last, nor does lightless suffering, a mercy often overlooked but built into this 'time marches on' business). Things simply do not stay the same, and even if you can hold onto something, or keep doing the same things, the world changes around you and things go stale – so simply planning to achieve one state, one situation, one goal, and assuming that’s your happily ever after, is rather unwise; because then there’s the whole of the rest of your life to negotiate. I was once forced, at gunpoint (not at gunpoint), to watch 25 minutes of JoJo Bows, and her mum, repeatedly tell a TV camera about how she was finally living her dream and she never thought she would but she always dreamt of it and now she was living it and this was her dream and she was living her dream and this was great – and I got sad because I could only see impending child-star breakdown because what then, JoJo, WHAT THEN? No. If I am going to set a post-40 life goal a good one would be this: To strive not for any particular one end state, but for greater resilience, robustness and savvy to weather the slings and arrows, storms and changes that will be happening in life anyway, whatever. That takes an openness, a resourcefulness, flexibility, intelligence and, importantly, this...
Relationships
Because they are everything. If I stop for a moment to consider it, it moistens up my ducts because everything about where I am now is down to the friendship, support, influence and companionship of family and friends. They have been my rock, my mirror, my focus group, my bed and bread, my entertainment, education and enlightenment, my shoulders to cry on, mentors, cheerleaders, life coaches, homies and my home – and much more. They make me proud to know them and want to strive to live up to who they want or need me to be, or think I could be. I can’t overstate it – I, Thomas, an acknowledged selfish, self-absorbed loner and misanthrope, owe everything to the good people in my life, and hope I can give something back to them all. In particular (it will come as no comfort to the lonesome) but hitching yourself to another human in a relationship scenario, if it works right, just changes everything: Suddenly there is a net of support, a bed of warmth and comfort, that makes all kinds of things possible that just weren’t before and in many ways allows you both to stretch out and become more confident in various directions, while simultaneously acting as a shock absorber and balm for those slings and arrows mentioned above. I'm sorry for the yuk, but it's true. That's why nurturing good relationships is a goal in itself because there's not much more that is so utterly impactful upon our lives. Also, you learn stuff.
Learning
Back when I was a philosophy teacher I used to try to explain the ongoing drive to ask those big, impractical questions by saying: "When you are born into the world you have no idea what you are, what the world is, or what on earth is going on. As a child you ask and learn more about this, but once you attain adulthood you’re just supposed put all that on one side and turn your attention to making money, being useful, making a family, making a name. Well, I never felt I got a satisfactory answer, so I’m still asking." That was fine for a while, but when I left teaching for the more worldly world of journalism I too had got a little tired and jaded with the inconsequential and unworldliness of philosophy, thinking “What does it matter? It doesn’t help you live.” I thought I’d reached the end of the road with all that deep thinky stuff, having arrived at a kind of mellow, world weary nihilism after endless circling on the same old questions. But I was wrong.
Actually, end-state goals are a bit suspect in general I think, because the Buddhists were right – everything is temporary. I am old enough now to have seen plenty of people attain 'living the dream' status, and lose it again; to appear to have the perfect life one moment, then really not a few years down the line – and vice versa (the good news is while cloudless joy may never last, nor does lightless suffering, a mercy often overlooked but built into this 'time marches on' business). Things simply do not stay the same, and even if you can hold onto something, or keep doing the same things, the world changes around you and things go stale – so simply planning to achieve one state, one situation, one goal, and assuming that’s your happily ever after, is rather unwise; because then there’s the whole of the rest of your life to negotiate. I was once forced, at gunpoint (not at gunpoint), to watch 25 minutes of JoJo Bows, and her mum, repeatedly tell a TV camera about how she was finally living her dream and she never thought she would but she always dreamt of it and now she was living it and this was her dream and she was living her dream and this was great – and I got sad because I could only see impending child-star breakdown because what then, JoJo, WHAT THEN? No. If I am going to set a post-40 life goal a good one would be this: To strive not for any particular one end state, but for greater resilience, robustness and savvy to weather the slings and arrows, storms and changes that will be happening in life anyway, whatever. That takes an openness, a resourcefulness, flexibility, intelligence and, importantly, this...
Relationships
Because they are everything. If I stop for a moment to consider it, it moistens up my ducts because everything about where I am now is down to the friendship, support, influence and companionship of family and friends. They have been my rock, my mirror, my focus group, my bed and bread, my entertainment, education and enlightenment, my shoulders to cry on, mentors, cheerleaders, life coaches, homies and my home – and much more. They make me proud to know them and want to strive to live up to who they want or need me to be, or think I could be. I can’t overstate it – I, Thomas, an acknowledged selfish, self-absorbed loner and misanthrope, owe everything to the good people in my life, and hope I can give something back to them all. In particular (it will come as no comfort to the lonesome) but hitching yourself to another human in a relationship scenario, if it works right, just changes everything: Suddenly there is a net of support, a bed of warmth and comfort, that makes all kinds of things possible that just weren’t before and in many ways allows you both to stretch out and become more confident in various directions, while simultaneously acting as a shock absorber and balm for those slings and arrows mentioned above. I'm sorry for the yuk, but it's true. That's why nurturing good relationships is a goal in itself because there's not much more that is so utterly impactful upon our lives. Also, you learn stuff.
Learning
Back when I was a philosophy teacher I used to try to explain the ongoing drive to ask those big, impractical questions by saying: "When you are born into the world you have no idea what you are, what the world is, or what on earth is going on. As a child you ask and learn more about this, but once you attain adulthood you’re just supposed put all that on one side and turn your attention to making money, being useful, making a family, making a name. Well, I never felt I got a satisfactory answer, so I’m still asking." That was fine for a while, but when I left teaching for the more worldly world of journalism I too had got a little tired and jaded with the inconsequential and unworldliness of philosophy, thinking “What does it matter? It doesn’t help you live.” I thought I’d reached the end of the road with all that deep thinky stuff, having arrived at a kind of mellow, world weary nihilism after endless circling on the same old questions. But I was wrong.
The past four or five years have thoroughly jolted and shaken me out of that kind of slumber and shown me without a shadow of a doubt, that as clued-up and wise-ass and jaded as I got, I still did not have life, or the workings of the world, or people down at all; because there were multiple surprises, twists and turns in store, both alarming and wonderful and, man alive, there was stuff to be learnt. The past couple of years in particular have unexpectedly transformed everything in ways I could never have predicted in my personal life, and have shown me you can explore those big questions not just as well as doing the work and family thing, but because of and through the work and family thing – it's all more life, and real with it. This has left me with a renewed thirst to learn more and more – I don’t mean just the accruing of facts or experiences, but the real stuff, the how-does-this-all-work: What we are, what the world is, or what on earth is going on. I feel both like I’ve made strides in that compared to my previous understanding, but also that I am newly confident in my capability to learn more, and newly confident in the value of it, even if it’s an endless task. It does matter, because it can help you live – with an intelligence and purpose that bolsters the above-mentioned Robustness. Of course, I will only get so far before I shuffle off: The Buddhists are right, everything is temporary. But in that time I reckon I can get a heck of a lot further than those who are dicking around, tunnel-visioned and half-sentient, chasing power, fame and riches for reasons and ends they don’t even really understand; and I hope that I can in that time pass on at least some insights that might help other people in the problem we all face every day – the problem of how we can happily live.
Happy 2018 n that.
Yes
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