Two Questions
To ask yourself, my Dearest Friend
DISCLAIMER: This article has potential mild spoilers for Hunter X Hunter, the best animated show of all time, and Avatar the Last Airbender, the second best animated show of all time. If you haven’t watched/read either yet, I recommend doing so before (or after) you read this piece.
Who are you, and what do you want?
You may have one of these two gut responses:
I don’t know
well, I sure as heck am not about to find out from a Substack article
But we can do better if we take it seriously. So let’s give it a shot!
I’m going to reframe this as two prompts:
Question 1: How can you make your 10 year old self proud?
Question 2: How can you live so that your 80 year old self would look back with a smile, and not regret?
In doing this exercise it’s critical to be honest, to let your internality and curiosity drive the response rather than whatever pre-computed answers come to the surface of your memory.
If you find this is leading nowhere, a trick is to ask someone who knows some past version of you this question (you have to be persistent tho - maybe this won’t be the right first prompt, and you have to ask what you were like as a kid. Pay attention to the minutiae and tidbits that come up! This is a lot like asking good customer discovery questions. Except you’re the discoveree here. Parents are great for this).
Why does this work? Because we optimize become what we measure. By considering a life not as a counter or bucket that is leaking, but rather an inequality (how can I jointly optimize for my 10 year old and 80 year old selves), you can orient yourself to live life to answer that question.
Because it is unknown if reincarnation is possible, it’s best to live as if we only have one life. How then do you make the most of this life?
By living as you would in your ideal life! This is deceptively simple. If you knew you had one life, would you spend it working on the divine, or the mundane? Would you squander your time and energy to work on the transcendent because there’s only a 2% chance of success? No! Because you only get one life. It’s hard to see this because we are already in it. But if you zoom out, and consciously do life planning, this becomes apparent.
“But I’m X years old. It’s too late for me.”
X isn’t that old. The real tragedy would be if you let yourself become a tragic character by wallowing in pity over the lost years. Sunk cost fallacy accounts for many wasted human years. Don’t be a casualty.
Some proofs of existence of people who didn’t do much until they were X (not saying that’s even you - but let’s say this is a lower bound or worst case):
Jack Ma, the Chinese tech billionaire, got rejected from every single job he applied to including Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) which is why he started a business. [read his Wikipedia]
Marc Randolph, the co-founder of Netflix, was a geology major who didn’t start in technology until the ripe age of 32, at which point he had burned through 5 different careers [source]
Sam Harris didn’t finish his undergrad until he was 30. I’m sure you’ve heard of him. [source]
H [who we both know!] was 40 by the time he had his first real job. Would you say his life was wasted? Don’t bring up specific ways in which he differed. That misses the point.
THERE ARE SO MANY MORE EXAMPLES (comments section, do your thing!!)
Ultimately it is hard to see because we are trapped in delusion.
Money, time, and energy are all finite.
Finding peace and truth and self-love is important. As a final opinion, I would suggest finding a meditation retreat to attend, timed for after your work trial ends. That way, you can approach whatever you do next with a fresh mind. Trust me, the one week won’t be an opportunity cost punt. I can help you find one, and am open to attending with you.
I wrote something similar(https://blog.rashik.sh/life/what-I-want/) last year. I don't fully agree with the details anymore, but looking inwards has been helpful.
I was meaning to write a follow up post to that and I believe it will also work as a response of sorts to this article.