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I have seen dozens of people be buried.
I witnessed the very last scene of their life. Some were actual friends and family, some were total strangers from when I worked at the natural burial place. My biggest takeaway, especially for the strangers I helped bury, is that life isn’t forever. And while that sounds fairly lackluster, I say it because there’s a big enormous difference between those words and feeling it. Because we act as though we have tons of time. One day this, one day that. Might’s, maybe’s, and should’s roll off of our tongues as though they carry any weight.
It doesn’t matter who you are, what you do, or why you think you’re here, one day the same exact body you are using now to read this, is going into a casket headed towards the ground or a cremation oven headed towards a vase.
That is the inescapable truth and it ought to ripple back through time from the future and hit you in this very moment, encouraging you to at least do something interesting with yourself until that day comes.
First, you gotta get over all your dramas and traumas.
Take the time to understand your roots, the soil you came up with, and all the influences that made you who you are. I’m guessing childhood wasn’t picture perfect, but I’d bet everything that neither was your parents, or their parents, or their parents, or their parents, or their parents. You get it. You study your childhood, then your parents’ childhood, and on and on and on until you realize that your roots aren’t where it started or where it ends. You move on. You seek forgiveness where you can, you give it where you can, and you get on about your business. Grudges and guilt are just too heavy to drag behind, so don’t.
Now that you’ve lightened your load, you can take a better look around. On the inside, of course, of who you are, what you care about, and what grabs your true interest. Take time here too. Years and years if need be. Stop only once you’ve stumbled across the overlap of what gives you energy and what you seem to be good at. Usually, you are only good at something you practice. If you’re not good, but you’ve been practicing a lot at whatever it is, consider something else. Or press on, if you have reason to believe you will get better. (That type of belief goes a long way)
But, if you claim you’re not good at X, yet you haven’t spent much time (if any) practicing, then what you’re saying when you say “I’m not good”, is that you expected to be born with those skills. I’d argue that you probably didn’t even expect to be born to begin with.
Go ahead and press delete on that belief and keep it moving.
If you’ve got a grip on yourself and are early on your path with your thing.
It’s time to redirect all loose ends into this main stream of yours. Don’t get it twisted, most people spin their wheels debating with themselves on what is going to be their ‘thing’. I’ve been there. I was there so long that I was repeating myself in my journals for years on end. When you catch yourself in basically the same spot a year later, or heaven forbid a couple years later, you know you’ve been wasting time. And when you really come to understand the pain of wasted time, time that will never return to you, it will make you sad, mad, and more. Hopefully, causing you to do something with that pain of having let time go by unused in a fulfilling way. At some point, you have to just pick something, anything is better than taking a dream to the grave or the vase.
It won’t be perfect. You’ll see flaws in the ‘thing’ you choose. They all have flaws. They all have their downsides. But, anything attached to a steady stream of unthrottled energy pouring in can become great.
As soon as you can turn off the fracturing of your life energy, DO IT.
There’s this throwaway line at the end of all the episodes of my favorite podcast, where he says, “That’s 345 biographies down, 1000 to go.”
The best part is that he’s been saying ‘1000 to go’ on every episode for hundreds of episodes.
It’s a mindset thing. One about mastery, lifelong learning, and the pursuit of greatness.
That’s the right way to think about your thing too.
It doesn’t matter what it is. When you hear the phrase ‘pursuit of greatness’, you may think I mean something on a big stage, or high culture, or fancy, but I don’t. I mean the absolute best person giving haircuts in your town. Or the absolute best person at making art with carpets. Or the absolute best person that has ever held the position at your job.
It has nothing to do with the thing itself. Instead, it has everything to do with your attitude and your approach to the thing.
When I graduated high school, I remember the principal spouting out an inspirational line about how yes, some of us may go on to become great trees, but even if we’re a shrub, be the best shrub you can be.
That’s how I remember it anyway.
Shrub it up or die trying.
