There seems to be a point in everyone’s life where they start to wonder what’s the point.
You’ve been charging hard after your goals, trying to ignore the neglect you’ve been giving to important parts of the life you actually want — telling yourself they can survive on a perpetual promise: “just after this next thing.” You’ll give them the attention they deserve once you get that carrot on the stick. It’s perpetual. You keep putting them off because the right time is just around the corner. Getting around that corner only reveals the next one.
What if what Naval said is true when he asked, “What if this life is the paradise we were promised, and we’re just squandering it?”
What if you keep going like this? What happens to the parts of life you’ve been meaning to get to — the relationships, your health, the work that matters, the play — if the glance never comes? When your life has run its course and you’re looking back, will you regret how you spent it? Or will you be grateful for the day you woke up and started living according to what you wanted out of life?
Recognizing you’re in that pattern is hard. Deciding you actually want something different is harder. Doing something about it — and then doing it again next week, and the week after — is harder still. The change you want comes from deciding what to change, designing what that life looks like, and showing up consistently to hold yourself to it.
If you’re wrestling with this, you’re not alone. If you’re still reading, give yourself credit for recognizing you don’t want to continue on autopilot. And for better or worse, come to terms with the fact that there’s no going back. You can’t un-see this. As Confucius said, “We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.”
Welcome to the start of your second life.