“Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours.”
-Richard Bach, Illusions.
It took me a decade of wandering the world to learn two hard-won lessons:
You can’t actually ride off into sunsets
Meaning in life is your responsibility
Today, I turn 31 years old. As I sit here outside a cafe in the town I grew up in, feeling the sun on my face, my mind is coming unstuck in time, just trying to figure out what the hell all this experience I’ve shoved into my short life has meant.
Whoosh! I’m in a salsa class in Colombia, and I'm having the life-changing (not an exaggeration) realization that Shakira has an entire body of work in Spanish.
Wham! Now I’m on a motorcycle in North Vietnam, repeatedly stalling the poor rented thing out, trying to understand how to shift until I finally get it going well enough to feel the wind in my face.
Kaboom! I’m falling in and out of love over and over again, thinking that this time it will work, that next time it will be perfect, and that maybe someday I’ll figure out this whole partnership thing.
Whimballoom! I’m angry, I’m happy, I’m devastated, and I’m over the moon, and it’s all going by so fast.
Margaret Atwood has a short story called Happy Endings that concludes with this beautiful quote:
“So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it's the hardest to do anything with.
That's about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.
Now try How and Why”
In other words, the beginning has already happened, and you know the end is coming.
So, what are you going to do with the middle bits?
When I was a kid, my grandfather and father showed me the movie Shane, the 195XXXXX classic starring Alan Ladd. Against the backdrop of The Tetons, a man with no history and only the name “Shane” rides into town, helps a local family, mentors their son Joey, shoots the bad guys, and rides off into the sunset after leaving Joey with the incredible line:
“Tell your mother there are no more guns in the valley.”
I loved it. Looking back, the movie Shane and movies like it, starring mysterious wandering men who came in, made everything better, and then disappeared, had a massive influence on who I became. For years, I thought I could actually be them. I wanted my life to be big, epic, and memorable, like those characters who grunted clever one-liners before they solved everything with violence.
Before I realized that the lonely drifter isn’t worth idolizing and that life is about choosing who you’re going to answer to with in exchange for deep love and companionship (vs. answering to no one), I tried my hardest to ride off into as many sunsets as I could. After bashing my head against the idea for years, realized that life doesn’t have credits.
Whenever you walk off into the setting sun, eventually, you have to face the fact that you’ve ended up somewhere out of frame, it’s dark, and you’re alone.
Which brings me to my second point.
When you find yourself alone in the dark enough times, eventually, you have no choice but to look at the runaway train of nonsense in your head and say, “Just what the hell is going on here?”
So many people, when asked that classic question, “What’s the first thing you’re going to ask in the afterlife/what would you ask if you could know anything?” answer with:
“What’s the meaning of life?”
Oof. Tricky.
It was on a remote beach in Panama, this time literally alone in the dark, asking the stars for answers, that I realized…
Meaning is what you make it. Human beings are meaning-making machines. We assign meaning to every silly little thing that crosses our path. We look for signs in everything because the alternative, that we’re alone in an uncaring universe, is terrifying.
But we’re not, are we? Because we can make meaning. We can look at the cosmic craziness and decide that it means just whatever the hell we decide it means; thank you very much. We believe in the silliest things imaginable with pride. We believe them because we damn well can, not because they’re logical!
“There is a theory which states that if anyone ever discovers exactly what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another which states that this has already happened.”
As I’ve said many times before, as a human being, you can believe anything.
So why not believe the set of beliefs that will offer you the most joy? The most fulfillment?
If I have anything to offer as I look back on a life lived with intensity, it's this:
Meaning is up to you.
So choose a great story and hold on for dear life.
Definitely not
Happy birthday mate!