The Self-Care Delusion: Why It Can’t Fix Everything

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Episode Transcript:

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:00] So a few months ago, I shared a spoken word roundup narrating five of the most popular essays from my personal newsletter and publication. Awake at the wheel. Now, the response was just really great and I had a lot of fun performing them too. So I figured maybe every few months or so I’d share a bit of an update. So today’s special solo episode is, let’s call it Spoken Word Roundup number two. The name of my little online writing Oasis is Awake at the Wheel, and that’s a bit of a nod to a blog that I used to write back in the early 2000s, and it’s where I now write weekly in a much more personal and long-form way. And at the end of each one of these pieces, I always include what I call my wake up call. And that’s an invitation to explore a question or take action designed to help you feel more alive and less alone. Which I feel like we could all use a little more of these days. So today I’m sharing five new spoken word essays, a few of which cause a little bit of a stir. One is about the delusion of self-care. The next asks the question, why are so many self-aware people still so miserable? The third invites you to stop trying to always be so good and focus on something else. Now, the fourth one is about the dark side of focusing on what you want to become, and the final one is pretty much a short and sweet piece that I call the curable ache of not loving. So if you’re moved by what you hear or you’d love to spend more time with them, you can read these essays. Take your time moving through them, along with the wake up call prompts over at my awake at the wheel newsletter, you’ll find a link in the show notes. So excited to share this collection with you! I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.

Jonathan Fields: [00:01:52] Hey, so let’s dive in with our first piece and it’s called the Self self-care delusion. So this time last year, I was in a lot of pain and I kept it private, even though the evidence was pretty visible in the early days. Shingles wrapped around the left side of my face and head, even on my eyelid. And thankfully it wasn’t inside my. I ended up in the emergency room. It was pretty brutal. Not so much the rash that was mercifully mild, but the nerve pain and the hypersensitization the slightest breeze against my scalp felt like an electric current being shot across my head, and every time I blinked, I was reminded I wasn’t okay. Took four months and megadoses of nerve meds to finally wash out of me. Thankfully it did. And then hiking with a friend on the tail end of recovery. We’re just kind of catching up on life. And he turns to me and says, dude, you’re like the chillest person I know. How did this happen to you? And I spent a lot of time actually thinking about that. Now, I’m not someone who typically buys into the age-old personal development trope that everything happens for a reason. Honestly, sometimes bad or hard stuff is just bad or hard. But for some reason this felt different. Something about this particular happening led me to believe there was, in fact, a message being delivered. Something to be learned. Now, shingles, if you’re new to this delightful midlife condition, is a re-emergence of the chickenpox virus. And I’m of a generation where we all had it when we were kids. The virus has been in me my whole life, laying dormant, apparently waiting. And when it comes back as shingles, it travels through the nerves, inflaming and at times creating long-term, even permanent damage. The opening move is a rash, but it’s the nerve stuff with no clear expiration date that really gets you both physically and psychologically. Having no idea if, how, and when you’ll recover. Not fun. It made me curious. Why does it find a way to smack you again, often decades later in life? And no one knows for sure. But it’s commonly agreed that stress, along with a dysregulated nervous or immune system, play a meaningful role. Which is where my friend’s question came from. He was basically saying, you always seem so relaxed, so capable of navigating life, even when you’ve got a lot of plates spinning and things are hard, you’re the one who seems to have everything dialed in. The one who even talks and writes about how to do that and interviews the greatest minds in the space. So like, um, WTF man? And by then I had been asking the same question. What was happening within me that led my system to crash on a level that had let this nasty bug rear its ugly head. Was there some message that I needed to listen to in order to avoid a bigger and scarier one down the road? What was I missing? My relationships were deep and strong. I’d been taking better care of my body, eating cleaner, taking all the right supplements, tracking my sleep and my steps and heart rate variability. I had a long-standing mindset practice and hiking and meditating and breathwork were part of the mix. For years. Living in nature was a daily balm. I’d become more or less a walking, talking, self-care cliché. And still my system crashed hard enough to let this happen. What about my work? So in the months leading up to it, I’d been, let’s see, running two companies, producing two podcasts, three episodes a week, mapping out a return to high production video, working on a book, developing a new suite of products for the Sparketype brand. Facilitating a three-month professional certification while redesigning it mid-flight. Starting to think about the visual mixed art media I wanted to return to and speaking. Nah, I was fine. Except for one major thing. It was wrecking me. And any of these would have been a full-time endeavor. I’d have been joyfully immersed in the process of creation, centering my inner maker on a level that let me lose myself in the process in the best of ways, and close the gap between taste and expression, working hard but also working well. And therein lay the problem. I wasn’t doing any one. I was doing all at once. So my maker’s mantra has always been fewer things better. I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me, I’m happiest, most productive, most alive when I’m not juggling a shit ton of big projects and instead just pouring myself into one, maybe 2 or 3 at the most, if that last one is more of a minor gem. And I was violating one of my cardinal rules, doing many things worse. Not poorly, but for sure not well either. At least nowhere near what I knew any given project was capable of becoming, nor anywhere near the level of creation that made me feel good and connected, or nourished by purpose and possibility. The insanity of the load I had taken on was dizzying, and the weight of it all crushing. And my wife noticed I got a bit ornery or at least depleted in the month leading up to it and mentioned it to me. And was it happy with my work? She asked and I told her, you know, not exactly. If I’d been doing any 1 or 2 things and not the other 1000 zillion, I’d actually be pretty happy and fulfilled. But too much of even a good thing can become a bad thing. I was tipping into obsession and overwhelm and then burnout. Still not listening. So my body decided to send me a love tap kneecapping me with nerve pain, ensuring I’d have a months-long reminder to keep me honest as I reimagined my work and life brought me to a powerful realization. I’ve got self-care practices out the wazoo, but you cannot self-care your way out of a fundamental misalignment in a core area of your life. Relationships are one of those areas. If you’re tethered to a toxic person, you can’t meditate or journal that away. Same for a mental and physical health. If you have a condition, syndrome, or disability that requires certain fundamental choices, interventions support accommodations or lifestyle adaptations to be, well, doing everything but those things won’t cut it. Work is one of those core areas too, which is where I was falling down. So sure, I was doing a lot of quote maker work, which on the surface was really well aligned with the kind of work that makes me come alive. But the way I was doing it, the mode was where things just fell apart, where the fundamental misalignment was and all the veggies meditating, breathwork and hiking couldn’t fix this. In fact, in a weird way, I’ve come to believe my self-care deluge may have unwittingly, at least in part, masked the slow-motion shingles car crash that was setting up inside of me. My practices were so good they let me keep telling the story of oh, all is good. I can take this even if it’s way past my normal happy place. They let me believe I could push a lot farther into a core misalignment than I ever should have gone before finally tapping me on the face and telling me, yeah, dude, no, self-care doesn’t make up for the damage done by violating a core norm, value, belief, or way of being. Nor does it compensate for the profound dilution of purpose and meaning, connection and joy that we invite when we do what we believe to be the right things, but in the wrong way. So now, over a year later, have I fixed all the work mode misalignments? Am I doing fewer things better now? Well, I did for a hot minute, maybe even a hot few months. During my four-month recovery, I had a constant reminder in the form of physical pain of what happens when I go work life. Darkside. But I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t found myself drifting back into overlapping big Project Maker mode lately. It’s not that any given project is bad. Some of the things that I’ve added to the space I cleared last year are incredibly exciting. It doesn’t matter. Too many good things that require my energy to make them meaningfully manifest all at once is still a bad thing. So in getting back into sort of rejiggering mode, to trying to figure out what really needs to happen, in what order and why, what’s a now thing and a then thing and maybe a never thing, and then spreading out the time frame to allow me to work my way back to fewer things better, and adding that new mantra into my mix. You cannot self-care your way out of a fundamental misalignment in a core area of your life. And here’s the wake-up call connected to this. And it’s the first time you’re listening to one of these. At the end of each one of these short essays from my Awake at the Wheel newsletter. I end with a little wake-up call, a call to action to see if we can actually think about and then do something about the idea, the seed that we’ve just planted. So this is, considering the two mantras, fewer things better, and you cannot self-care your way out of a fundamental misalignment in a core area of your life. Remember, it’s not just the content of the things we’re doing, but also the way we’re doing them. That leads either to a sense of alignment and flourishing or misalignment and dysfunction. So think about what’s going on in your life right now, especially in the domain of work. Ask yourself how commitments and efforts line up with those two mantras. Are you doing fewer things better or more things worse? Or have you found a truly nourishing and sustainable middle ground? And if so, by the way, can you please help me and tell me how? If you’re in the more things, worse land, what’s that doing for you and to you? What changes might you make, not just to your self-care, but to fundamentally realign what you’re doing with who you are and what makes you come alive? So take a little time, noodle on it, journal on it, and if you’re inclined, go ahead and share it wherever it feels good for you. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

Jonathan Fields: [00:13:29] Now next up, we’ve got our second essay here, turned into a spoken word piece for the purposes of this particular podcast, and it asks a big question why are so many self-aware people so miserable? So we talk about self-awareness as this gorgeous thing, and it is, but it also has a dark side to know who we are, to be aware of our true nature, presence, gifts, desires, strengths, values, traits, tells and smells, all the yada yada that makes us uniquely us. Knowing these, it’s a good thing, right? Self-awareness gives us the raw data to better align our actions with our essence, to step into and bring that gorgeous, essential beingness to the world. To see and be seen as we are for who and what we are. To step out of the fog, into the light and live as the person we know ourselves to be. And riddle me this. Why do so many self-aware people still live stifled lives? I have wondered about this for years. I’d see it all the time when I was more deeply embedded in the world of meditation and yoga. You know, people would show up for class, do retreats, develop practices, journal, read, listen to, watch all the things. I know myself much better, they’d say. And they did. Still, their lives didn’t miraculously just change. They didn’t become these beacons of authentic self-expression and joy and connection. Not infrequently, they would even tumble into a darker reality. So it turns out just because we know doesn’t mean we glow. Awareness is the gateway to a more fully realized life. But it’s not that life itself. It helps you see more clearly the truth of who and what you are. But it doesn’t magically empower you to bring what you see to the world, to live as that person. In fact, there’s a potential dark side to becoming self-aware that kind of nobody talks about. It tends to reveal how truly weird we are. Rather than celebrate that, we’re rattled by it. The more we own our oblong essence, all those circle-shaped spaces we’ve been trying to fit our old veiled selves into, and the name of belonging, including the big fat one designated in our own hearts for our beloved facade. They no longer fit. That’s uncomfortable. So we start to judge our weird and worry about how others will perceive the closer-to-the-bone humans that we know ourselves to be. Self-awareness, it turns out, often invites an evil twin self-judgment, which for many tips into fear, censorship and self-loathing with alarming ease. So what do we do about that? Do we just stay unaware? Well, I mean, it’s safer, but also, for most, relentlessly heavy. Not the answer. What if, instead, we built a toolbox to support our own newly laid bare cells as they endeavored to take the lead in our lives? What might be in that toolbox? That kit. Now, one of the tools, I’d venture would be self-esteem. Awareness is the seed of self-expression. Esteem is the water that allows it to flower. Okay, cool. Cool. But isn’t self-esteem just kind of bullshit? Well, kind of. But also kind of not. So let’s start with a question. What is self-esteem? It’s often defined as confidence in your worth or abilities. I don’t believe confidence is the right word, and abilities makes it a bit too surface-level for me. So here’s my twist. Self-esteem is a deep internal. Knowing that who you are, regardless of skill or ability, has worth. You don’t need trophies. You don’t need praise. You don’t need validation. You just know. And when we have this, it becomes far easier to live as the people our self-awareness practices reveal us to be. So how do we get self-esteem then? That’s a bit more complicated. The challenge isn’t the who you are, regardless of skill or ability, has worth part that is universally endowed to all at birth. The real struggle for most people is that first part. A deep internal knowing. How do we arrive at a place where we take ourselves seriously enough, love ourselves deeply enough, and own our value fully enough to feel equipped, excited, even to let our newly self-aware, weird selves meet the world. Oh, and while you’re noodling on that, how do we also not anoint ourselves so divinely, or love ourselves so blindly that we become self-important, pompous, overbearing assholes? Lovely little dance, right? And it’s not quite over. So, strangely, this seeming inside game, the one where we just shouldn’t care what others think is wildly affected by the way those around us perceive us, welcome us, or reject us. As long as we choose to live among humans. And some days I question that, by the way. Social dynamics, risk of judgment and rejection will always be a part of the equation of how we feel about who we are. At least for the vast majority of our lives. And somewhere in that inner and outer soup lies self-esteem. There are tomes written on this topic, especially in the context of kids, and a debate rages about building self-esteem based not on demonstrated merit or internal knowing, but on lavish and universal praise. Everyone gets a trophy. It’s all about waking ourselves up and then building ourselves up. But I often wonder about a different side of esteem here. What if self-esteem was as much about building ourselves down as it was building ourselves up? So this is where the great exhale of levity meets the quest to love ourselves more fully. What if, rather than doing all we can to elevate ourselves to the level of demigod, we actually stepped into the fact that very often nobody’s really looking, not even us. What if our finely honed sense of self-awareness forgot to tell us that we may be the center of our universe, but not so much the universe? That if we show our true, glorious, aware selves to the world, and we will over and over and over, there might not be a whole lot of people hanging around to judge us or even see us. And even if there are, with the average attention span raising somewhere between that of a bat and a gnat, that raised eyebrow, nasty insta comment or internal chatter will very likely be whisked into judgment, lost solid before we even realize nobody cares anymore if they ever even did. And what if have we discovered? We just didn’t matter anywhere near the level we thought. Terrifying, maybe, but also freeing. What if we are a beautiful yet fleeting calamity of consciousness in a vast sea of humanity? And maybe it’d be okay to take ourselves just a little less seriously? What if we can still be respected, loved, do great work, love ourselves, but still not be the center of the universe important in the lives of every person whose approval we misguidedly seek to build our self-worth upon. What if not so many people are lining up to judge us, let alone witness us? And that was actually okay. Can you even imagine what you might do or try or make if you knew nobody was looking, or at least far fewer people than you imagined? What if part of the answer was less about building ourselves up and more about just lighting up? It’s funny, for some reason, when I think about the embodiment of this, Kate Hudson’s character Penny Lane from the movie Almost Famous comes to mind. It was the moment Penny turns to a 16-year-old William Miller, and he’d been posing as a journalist on the band bus, trying like hell to beat a respected. But at that point he just wanted to be home. She gazes deeply into his eyes, the corner of her mouth rising into that muse-like grin as she fans her fingers out before him. Poof! She offers, you are home. What if it was just that easy? What if home, being at peace with who you are was this place, these people, this moment, minus the stifling, self-imposed self-importance we tend to bring to it? What if, just for a day, we could point the spotlight somewhere else, like nobody was watching, even if they were. What if we could take ourselves just a bit more lightly? We just might discover something. Unedited. Unadorned. Unfiltered. You and your bad, self-aware weird self are enough. Always were. Always will be. No one else can give that to you or take it from you. And lighting up is as much a part as building it up and then letting it out. So as always, just noodling on ideas, not preaching a truth no one really knows. Curious, what’s your take? And that wraps up this piece, but we’ll wrap it up, as always with my wake up call. Short call to action. So think about a moment where, even for a hot second, you took yourself a little less seriously. How did that feel? Where were you? What were you doing? Who were you with? How might you create more moments of non-judgmental lightness in your days? Think on it, journal about it, and, if you’re inclined, share it with somebody else. And if you’d like to reread this as always, or really spend more time thinking about this comment and share it with others, head on over to Awake at the Wheel and check it out and then share your thoughts.

Jonathan Fields: [00:24:46] And that brings us to the spoken word essay number three, a little piece called Don’t Try to Be Good, Be True. It’s 4:30 a.m. and I am not sleeping. For years people have told me they love listening to the Good Life Project. podcast. I learned so much. Your voice is so soothing. It just puts me right to sleep. I Always wonder how to respond to that last part. By the way, my version is the lovely and learned insight teacher Tara Brach, who I have had the great pleasure of interviewing, just so alive with kindness and wisdom. But when I listened to her podcast, I learn a bit and then I’m pretty much out, like Tylenol PM with a lesson. Sorry Tara, I love you. So I decided to listen to Tara’s recent interview with Colorado poet Rosemary Wachtel. Drummer. Hoping it’ll put me back to sleep. It’s a moving conversation rooted in an exploration of grief, and Rosemary reads from her new book of poems, The Unfolding. Before she gets there, though, she shares a bit about her impulse toward poetry, why she writes and shares a poem a day and has for many years. The practice began in 2006 as a dare from a friend. Write a poem a day for 30 days and then send it to two friends who would do the same. It continues, but to a larger community to this day. And here’s where she adds in her words, what I learned in those first 30 days was that I couldn’t write something good every day. This was something that had been really important to me to write something good before that, which meant I often didn’t write at all. So when I started writing every day and realized, oh, you can’t write something good every day, I started to realize, well, then what am I doing? And it shifted the whole reason for writing, and even maybe just the way I showed up at a piece of paper and I thought, okay, could I write something true every day? And that I could do. It opened everything up about it as a practice, and it began changing the way I saw the world. And ultimately, over the years, I’ve come to decide or to know that the poem itself is this byproduct, and that the real practice is sitting with a blank page and wondering what’s there, what’s true, what’s the next true thing? I think if it weren’t that, I couldn’t possibly have continued, but that is infinitely sustainable. So hearing this, I lie in bed at 430 in the morning and I start to tear up. Maybe it’s the fact that actually it’s now 438 in the morning. I’m still awake, craving something sweet and questioning if I have to pee. Still, I feel the deepest nooks in my being. Just exhale as a maker, a writer, a creator, someone who feels and in turn expresses not only as a way to share my inner life, but also an attempt to weave a thread of collective experience that might help others feel less alone. I so get this. Good is hard. As someone with a clearly defined or read unmeetable sense of taste and an often indefensible bent towards closing the gap between what I feel and my ability to share it in a way that meets tastes bar. I can be wildly unforgiving to myself. Not good enough was a common theme of my youth. Still is. Now, not in the imposed voice of a mother, father, teacher or preacher. This voice comes and came from within. Though with age it’s definitely finding more kindling for grace along the way. Rosemary’s words I can’t always be good, but I can always be true. Changed something in me for me. What if the metric was true? Not good. That bar I can meet far more readily and consistently. Even on days when my head is pounding, I’m burned out, cranky, overtired, and woefully under chocolate. Often the reason for all of the above, by the way, in those moments I’m not capable of good but true. Sure, not a day goes by where I can’t honestly take a beat, to feel, to witness, to inhabit. Then incant what is real for me to give it? Words. My words. And then if I choose, give it away. I mean, what a relief to believe that just might be enough, not only as a maker and a writer, but as a father, a husband, a brother, a son, a friend, a co-creator, a human trying to be. What if the measure of your unfolding was truth, not excellence? What if life’s invitation was not to fly higher, but to get closer to the bone? And that’s what I’m thinking about today. And for the wake up call. Take a beat. Take a breath. Look around. Listen. Feel. Then go inside. Right. Ask yourself what is real for you in this moment? What is true? Big thing, little thing. It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about whether you feel skilled or resourced to offer it in a way that makes others feel or clears the bar your judgy inner critic sets. Don’t worry about whether it’s good, artful, beautiful. Just notice what is real, what is true, what is alive for you. Give it words. Speak it. Write it, then reflect on it, not whether it’s good, but simply true. If it is, that’s enough. And as always, if you’re inclined to share what’s coming up, then go ahead, share it with others or head back over to a wake at the wheel and share it in our beautiful comet community there. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. And next up, we have got a spoken word piece that I call the Three Delusions of Becoming and how to avoid them. So there’s a lot of talk in the world of personal growth and spirituality about the process of becoming, who do you want to become? What kind of person do you want to be? What kind of life do you want to live? Now, there’s nothing wrong with thinking about how you want to show up and feel down the road, how you want your sense of self and your world to unfold, whether through intentional act or allowing or some organic blend. We love to believe that we have agency in the shape of our evolving identities and lies and what they take. And to a certain extent, we do. My own 2×20 project, which I’ve shared recently, is built upon the notion that the future is not entirely an act of hope and faith. That said, the way we often seek to create that future to become can be pretty fraught. Enter the three delusions of becoming. So, number one, elevating control over serendipity. It’s tempting once we realize we have some level of choice in how we live and grow, to believe that we can just entirely control it. So if I can decide X, then do y, the outcome will be Z for certain. Very simple, short-term, kind of me focused aspects of life. Sure, that can work. I mean, if I brush and floss daily Safe bet. I’ll have better dental health and hopefully breath both today and long-term winning. But once we move beyond simple acts, short time frames, and experiences that involve only us, when we bring in more of the truth of interaction with people and our environment, control is more of an illusion than anything else. Even if we could lock down what we think and do on an individual level, we have a limited ability to do the same when it comes to those around us, or the litany of micro and macro elements of the world that we inhabit, and that in turn inhabit us. Truth is, we spend our lives in a divine pinball game. Someone else pulls the lever that rockets us into the madness, and then we stand fingers on flipper buttons trying to make magic happen. Enjoy ourselves and play for as long as possible while bumping up against ricocheting and bouncing off all manner of doodads, bands, bumpers, divots and chutes. Now imagine a thousand other balls, each representing another person, all in the same game, fighting for control over the flippers. This is the full, glorious, catastrophic reality of life. We exist in an ever-changing calamity of circumstances, places and people, all led by their own aspirations, senses of taste and identity, needs and desires, relational styles and quests to not just stay alive, but rack up points and go for a new high. Much as we might believe and actually sometimes do control some aspects of our own play, trying to lock down the rest is a fool’s game. A fast track to tilt control, especially at scale, is an illusion. Fighting against is trying to manufacture. A level of certainty that can never be found is an exercise in futility. The more we seek control, the more we build our lives around something that can never be had. The more we suffer by our own hands. But there’s something else. We don’t actually want to control every aspect of our lives, present or future. Life’s greatest moments invariably unfold in the wake of the unknown. Sure, some of what can become the scariest moments of life are the things we didn’t see coming. Then, once apparent, we don’t want what Bruce Feiler calls life quakes that shake and change us. Illness or injury? Loss of a loved one? Getting fired. We’d love to do whatever we can to avoid them, to control or at least minimize the likelihood of their arrival. And sometimes we can. Other times we can’t. But the unforeseeable and An uncontrollable part of life isn’t all about the bad stuff. When we infect the process of becoming with too much control beyond the inviting of futility and trying to live into an impossible ideal, we unwittingly crowd out the space needed for a depth and volume of goodness that can and will only manifest when we loosen our hold on the reins of certainty. So much of what gives life meaning and joy and aliveness is about what happens when we surrender and let predictability yield to serendipity. When we allow life and our own sense of self to unfold in ways we never could have anticipated, in ways that lead to enduring love and laughter, adventure, growth, creative expression, unbridled moments or seasons of abject joy and connection and presence. Still, that’s not the only downside to a control-driven, relentless attempt to become. Which brings us to that delusion of becoming number two. Living in the friction of push rather than the lushness of pull. So I tend to see life as a blend of impulses to think, to feel and do. And these lead to experiences, relationships, and stories that define not only the moments, but the seasons and eventually the narrative arc of our lives. Our impulses can be loosely divided into push and pull. Now the push is about force will. These are the impulses that lead us to want to make things happen, often without regard to what our lives want for us. We may make them happen and get what we want, but the journey requires almost constant aggression. So will this approach help you check boxes on the list of items that seemingly represent a life well lived. Well, maybe. But still, it is a brutally hard way to live. Everything is you against something or someone else. It’s just exhausting. Living in the push annihilates ease. Do we sometimes need to step into that mode? Well, sure. But to live there? No. Then there’s the other side. The pull impulses. These are the ones that often start as whispers. Curiosities. They speak to us, nudge us toward certain experiences, activities, and relationships in ways that we can’t easily explain. We step into them for no other reason than the way they make us feel. And sometimes they even lead us to pay for the opportunity to do things. Others get paid to do. The more we say yes, the louder the whisper becomes. Yeses beget bigger yeses. Growing into calls and we give more energy to these things because the very act of doing them nourishes us. We are working, exerting effort, but in a way that feels organic, intrinsically enlivening. We’re pulled into them, riding ever deeper into the slipstream of fully aligned and expressed essence. Push and pull. These are the two major undercurrents of becoming. The process is never purely about one or the other. It’s always a blend. But the more we can lean in the direction of pull rather than push, the more ease and joy the experience delivers. Fiercely attaching to the push of what we want ourselves and our lives to become, rather than listening to the pull of what our lives call us to be, leads to friction and suffering rather than ease and joy. Which brings us to that last third Delusion of becoming. Forsaking the present in the name of shaping the future. So much of the headspace that we allocate to our lives exists in the future and the past. We linger, regret, and rehash what is now unchangeable, and we fret about a someday that doesn’t yet exist. Learn from the past. Fix what’s fixable. Build wisdom to sidestep avoidable mistakes as you plan for and then bring into being your vision of the what’s next? All well and good. Except for most people, this spin cycle leaves no space to just be here and now to see what’s within you, beside you and all around you, this moment and this and this. To savor, to revel, unfold, to relate. Love, see, taste, hear, feel. Now. End of the day. That’s all we really have. Truth is, the quest to become is littered with the remains of those who missed the grace in being. Don’t just become. Be. And that brings us to our call to action for this particular piece. So bring some vision of what you want to become to your mind. Now ask, what part of that can you experience even in the slightest taste today? What part of this is within your control, even in the smallest, most immediate way? Maybe you want to become kinder. How can you simply be kind and savor how that shapes your interactions today? Maybe you want to be fitter. How can you take a simple action that not only moves you towards it, but lets you experience even a taste of the feeling of being someone who moves their body today? Maybe you want to become a writer. How might you write a sentence today that makes you smile, knowing you’d have written the same words so much differently a decade from now? And how can you hold it all lightly? Even the tiny steps to allow for growth and serendipity to enter and potentially change both the moment and how it might shape you and your world down the road. So, as always, noodle on it. Feel into a journal if that’s your way. Act. And then, if you’re inclined, share what you’re thinking. Wherever it feels right to you. And as always, you’re always welcome to head on over and share in our comment community at Awake at the Wheel.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:17] And that, my friends, brings us to our final spoken word share from awake at the wheel. I’ve got a short and sweet piece called The Curable Ache of Not Loving. So I’m prepping for an interview, watching video, and happened to notice the guest has three French words tattooed on her left inner arm. Curious. I do a bit of digging there. The final three words in a sentence from Albert Camus lyrical essay Return to Tipasa, that appeared in the book Summer, published way back in 1954. English translation An invincible Summer. The full sentence reads in the midst of winter I found there was within me an invincible summer. Pretty yummy and hopeful to the notion that we are not just recipients of the warm glow of possibility, but also even when it’s hard, the source. Still, I want to know more. So I look for a translation of the full text and dive in, and they’re seated comfortably. A few sentences above the oft-cited summer quote, 16 words stop me in my tracks, they read. For there is merely bad luck in not being loved. There is misfortune in not loving. Oof! We spend so much of our lives seeking to be seen, to be known, to be loved. When it happens, it’s magical. The world coalesces into something akin to what it should be. Breath, joy, ecstasy, ease all come easier when it doesn’t happen. The ache builds till it’s almost too much to bear. And for all the talk about self-love, yes, of course it matters. It’s another thing entirely to be loved by another. And not romantic love. Just straight-up love. Still, central to the experience of being loved is being exposed, laying bare your essence naked and vulnerable, at least enough to risk being seen and wanted. Savored. Craved. Also. Rejected. Abandoned. In left. It’s a dangerous business that beckons the potential for a more beautiful, albeit less safe, life. We never quite have control over the experience because we never have control over the other. All we can do is show up as ourselves, whether and when another finds and in turn loves us is never fully, and some might argue, even remotely within our control. It’s supposed to be this way, gloriously so. Which is why, as Camus said, there is merely bad luck in not being loved. But that latter part there is misfortune in not loving. Maybe this is where both the bigger tragedy and the greater opportunity lie. This is the side of the loving equation where agency takes its seat. We need not wait around, hoping to be seen or embraced as a precondition to offering our love. Possibilities abound. A hug, a smile, a kind act, a simple text, a note on the screen, a rub on the back, a word of praise, a passing hug, a gentle nod. And the universe of recipients. A lover, a child or a friend? Sure. But also I mean a pup, a bed of flowers, a stranger online, a customer, a diner, a random tree, a student, any one. We’re often so caught up in the quest to be loved. We forget the life-giving grace of giving love. The feeling of knowing we’ve made even a momentary difference. And while we may not always have a say in when and where we’ll be loved, we can avoid the misfortune of not loving. And that’s what’s on my mind today. And that brings us to our final wake up call or call to action before we wrap up this episode. So you may or may not feel loved in this moment as you hear this. If you feel it, how fortunate. Savor it. Drink it in. If not, do the thing you still can do. Become love. Be love. Give love. One simple gesture. Ask. What can I do today? And who can I offer love to? The simple is nod counts. Noodle on it. Walk with it. As always, journal about it. If that’s your jam. And then act upon it. And if you’re inclined to share, then go ahead and share with others. So that wraps up this second edition of our spoken word compilation from recent essays that I have been writing and sharing over at my awake at the wheel publication and newsletter. If these resonated with you, if you feel like there’s a message that you’d like to share with others, and please go ahead and share this episode with others and then use it to start a conversation. These are ideas and questions, provocations even, that help us become more alive and feel less alone. And if you would love to just take more time and read these, or dive deeper into the calls to action and explore them a little bit more, then we’ll drop a link in the show notes, so you can just click right over to awake at the wheel and spend more time lingering in them as well. So excited to be able to share this with you! I’ll see you here next time!

Jonathan Fields: [00:48:04] This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers. Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. And Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project. in your favorite listening app. And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable, and chances are you did. Since you’re still listening here, would you do me a personal favor? A seven-second favor and share it? Maybe on social or by text or by email? Even just with one person? Just copy the link from the app you’re using and tell those you know, those you love, those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better so we can all do it better together with more ease and more joy. Tell them to listen, then even invite them to talk about what you’ve both discovered. Because when podcasts become conversations and conversations become action, that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.