Browsing through my posts on here it is apparent that I dislike almost everything about the world I live in. So that has me considering the opposite.
What do I like about this world?
Relationships
The first thing that always comes to mind when I consider what I value is my relationships. First and foremost, I am living a lifelong dream to be with my muse. I spent years of my life aimlessly wandering after we fell away from one another out of love but I never stopped loving her. It is the kind of all-consuming love that lasts a lifetime, serving as an underpinning for some of the greatest moments of my life so far. It promises to remain a constant and I will spend my life serving this love and keeping it whole and sacred as it is meant to be. I have an endless supply of gratitude for this timeless love, because I know how many people in the world go without.
I still have my mother and the kind of endless love that all parents have for their children. We have both changed so much in our lives and dramatically in the past couple of years, but I am glad to have her around. The losses we suffered together in 2022 brought us closer together and I’m thankful for that. I find it difficult to relate to her all the time but I think that most children run into the same thing with their folks.
The few friendships I do maintain are sibling level and I would honestly do anything in my power for these people. I love them more than I ever loved my own brother and that says more than anything else I could put here.
Conversation
Among our oldest traditions as a species is that of conversation. I’m not referring to casual dribble about work or sports. I mean the kind where we get into the fundamental nature of why we believe we’re here.
This isn’t the sort of conversation that you have every day and that is part of what makes it so special. It allows you to set aside prosaic concerns and discover what’s under it all. You can learn so much about what drives a person if you just sit and talk about it, and it helps you be a better friend and confidant. Make the time to have important conversations and show up for them 100%. Leave your phone in your pocket.
Intoxication through the use of mind-altering substances can lend these conversations a sort of mystical status and I can’t recommend it enough. You may not come out remembering everything that was talked about, but you will come out feeling changed, often for the better. The snapshots you do remember will stay with you for years, and you’ll remember the company for a lifetime.
Expression
I had a difficult time deciding what to call this particular section. It was going to be music but then I zoomed out some more and considered all of the forms of expression that I consider precious.
The list evolves as my tastes develop and I find new and exciting things to expose myself to through travel and more convenient modes like social media. Seeing what people are capable of creating with nothing more than skilled hands and their imagination, I am reminded of how incredible we can be as a species.
If a work of any sort can elicit a genuine emotional response then it has inherent value. I include the full spectrum of feelings and believe a piece causing anger can be just as powerful as one that causes spontaneous tears of joy.
Having seen a few world-class art museums has made me want to tour the planet in search of this greatness just so I may sit with it for a moment. I want to carefully receive what skilled hands have fearlessly put into the world and hold onto it for as long as I’m here.
As a person cursed to live a creative life, expression comes in many forms, with new avenues presenting themselves all the time. One of the greatest tragedies of our short lives is knowing that we can’t try them all and achieve mastery. Specialization demands that you become ruthless in spotting rabbit holes and avoiding them in favor of what you do best. I’m a writer. Everything I enjoy outside of that is dabbling and doesn’t carry nearly the weight. All the more reason to absolutely revel in what others are capable of.
To all of the creatives of the world, no matter your form of expression, thank you for the bravery you show in releasing your work for us to make a part of ourselves. I’m jealous of all of you.
Simplicity
The average household contains over 300,000 items according to a Google search I just did. The number borders on the absurd but I think it’s low. That is hundreds of thousands of ways for you to add needless complications to your life.
I want to possess so few things that people wonder if I gave away my sanity when they see my space. I am reminded of this fundamental need of mine now as I sit at one of the desks I kept from when the business existed. I look around and I see items that I still consider to be excess and I feel driven to remove them.
I am something of an extremist about my minimalism, but it has made my life better in every conceivable way. Likewise, I never suffer from our societal contagion in the U.S. to “Keep up with the Jones’s”. People who identify with their possessions first lost the thread somewhere and it can be hard for them to ever see anything meaningful in life. They chase a high that can only be had with blind consumption and they never have a chance to get off the Hedonic treadmill.
I don’t agree with the Stoics on much but I find they are kindred spirits in this respect. If you give material things power over you, it will only ever end badly. Keep what is necessary and discard the rest because your experience will not be enriched by tangible things alone.
Honesty
It’s something of a rarity these days but I value radical honesty. I am referring to the kind of honesty that never pulls punches and doesn’t believe in white lies save for insane circumstances where the truth will put someone directly in harm’s way.
To paraphrase a short story by Sam Harris, the only time lies seem to be warranted is in the event that not doing so will result in injury or death of another person. Say a person comes to your door in a panic, informing you that a killer is on their heels and you have to help them hide. You allow them in to shelter them and sure enough, an armed individual appears shortly after asking if you have seen the person you are now hiding. The most effective thing to do in this scenario might be to lie to the would-be perpetrator and call the authorities if/when they accept what you tell them. Only in these extreme sort of life or death circumstances does it make any sense whatsoever. Even then I say the best thing to do is lock the home, retreat to an interior room and call the authorities as a first and best choice of action. Everything shy of this kind of never in your lifetime event warrants your complete honesty.
The world would be a completely different place if honesty really was the best policy and not just some trite saying that authorities use to guilt people into telling the truth. Telling the truth is the easiest course, too, because you’ll never need to craft a narrative to cover anything up.
Travel
Earlier in my life I wasn’t much for traveling aside from concert-related road trips but that was enough to leave the door slightly open for me to rediscover the power that adventure has to transform our lives for the better. Some of the most illuminating, transcendent, and life-affirming experiences I have ever had were because I took a chance to go and see the world.
If you never leave your hometown, state, or country, you are missing out on hundreds of other ways of seeing literally everything. The perspective shift you experience is worth the price of admission alone, because it will forever alter how you treat your fellow human beings. In daring to open your mind, you allow other cultures in and this makes you an infinitely more complex person.
Traveling also gives you more tools of expression as you become able to relate to and communicate with more of the world’s citizens. It requires that you remain present at all times and this makes it a rare opportunity to be in awe of the commonplace, every day lives of others because it is so different from your own. You’ll return home with a great appreciation for all that you have and some clues about the things you want more of.
Fire
My inner caveman loves fire and won’t let me make this list without including it. On a barely subconscious level, it is a symbol of our primordial origins as a species that crawled from the sea hundreds of millions of years ago. After enough walking on four or more legs with varying degrees of consciousness, we arrived at something resembling humanity. We discovered combustion almost certainly by accident and it enthralled us with the power of anything elemental and seemingly magical.
It kept us warm, safe from becoming a meal, and it allowed us to cook the animals that were slower than us. I continue to admire it as my ancient ancestors did, with the same entranced state coming over me as I’m sure it did them. It is a fitting metaphor for our lives and it has stood the test of time as one of the most incredible forces we have ever tried to tame.
There is just something about watching an inanimate, amorphous form with an endless appetite. It is completely indiscriminate in the way that it consumes, and in it’s wake, you’ll often find vibrant renewal, as is the case with forest fires. The same fire when intensified to a cosmic scale produces planets, stars, galaxies, and everything from here to the ends of existence as we know it.
Memories
My memory is noteworthy by all accounts, having stored decades of truly useless information between my ears. Much of this can be recalled effortlessly on demand to the astonishment of those who requested it. Names, faces, places, directions, it goes on for what seems like forever with little struggle to find it when I need it and what seems like an endless storage capacity.
It is only as I get older that I come to terms with the fact that some day in the not-so-distant future, I may lose this capacity in favor of having more operating memory. Our minds are incredible bits of evolution, becoming fine-tuned machines that establish meaning in everything, but eventually, priorities shift in favor of daily functions. I may live to see the day where my mind begins to arbitrarily remove old memories in favor of storing more practical information like where my shoes are, and this notion makes me sad.
But having the time I had so far and all of the years ahead that I’ll remain in relatively good health encourages me that the descent will be dignified and I will appear to improve with age. At least that’s the hope I’m holding onto.
I’ve seen what cognitive decline in the elderly looks like, and I intend to outline the conditions which I will not suffer through for the sake of adding years to my non-existent tombstone. When the joy has gone from my mind, I’ll be on my way. I’m not asking anyone, it’s just a courtesy to say I will go on my own terms. I will have zero regrets, and all of the gratitude in the universe for the time I did get.
Love
I believe love is the single greatest force in the universe as observed through our lens of conscious experience. It has the power to start and end wars, and has been the source of inspiration for the best and brightest among us.
It is an accessible, abundant, and timeless commodity that you can count on giving and receiving throughout your life. It is the lifeblood of our passions and it gives us all a reason to live as the best possible version of ourselves, so that we may spread love to all we see fit. From the beginning of time until the end, it remains constant and steadfast.
I speak of every form of love in the broadest sense. The universal love that you feel for your favorite dessert as much as you feel for your family and significant other(s). It can be familial, romantic, platonic, and every other conceivable configuration.
I am loved, I love others, and I love that I have something so powerful and limitless at my disposal at all times.
Stories
The stories we tell and are told are a major part of what make life worth living. Either those made by teams of writers and brought to life through the talent of players on stage and screen, or those stories put to paper for the imagination to do all of the work through reading. Our stories help us keep note of the time we live in, make the every day seem amazing, and give us common ground with anyone.
The stories that have made up the substance of my life are important to me and to a lesser extent those in my circle. I speak on them with a mixture of pride and wide-eyed disbelief that I got to live them and survived to tell the tale. Since I am the main character in my story, it will be for others to decide if it was a comedy or a tragedy once it’s all said and done. I intend to live the whole thing true to the things I consider important and will leave the summary up to the historians who may tell it in the future, should it be so interesting. I suspect it will just be the few loved ones I have that remain, and that is comfort enough for me to live every day as though it were my last.