It’s not transcendence, it’s avoidance.
The way to measure a good life is by how much you still want to change it, which is proportionate to how much you inherently know it can be better.
You measure a good life by your capacity to feel discomfort. The extent to which you’ve questioned yourself. How many times you’ve changed your mind. The series of dogmas you’ve adopted and left. The family you chose for yourself.
The number of coffee cups over which you’ve had funny and serious and hurtful and beautiful talks. The depth to which your empathy extends. The number of long walks you’ve taken by yourself and journal pages you’ve filled with the incoherent thoughts. The evolution of the way you philosophize your existence. The evolution of the way you perceive other people.
The days you’ve soberly worked despite the shards of passion having dissolved. A good life isn’t passionate, it’s purposeful. Passion is the spark that lights the fire; purpose is the kindling that keeps the flame burning all night.
The number of relationships you’ve had the courage to end. The easy way out is to stay. The comforting idea is to settle. The liberation is how many times you reach for something more even though you can’t conceive of what that could be. That unnamable feeling is the mark of a good life.
You measure a good life by the time you sincerely felt the sunlight across your bed sheets in the morning was awe-inspiringly divine. The ways you can count you were a better person than before. The ways you can count you’d like to be better in the future.
The number of things that you lost and learned how to not attach to anymore. The number of moments in which you were almost at the end of
your capacity, only to find that there was another ocean’s worth once you were pushed beyond the surface.
A good life is not measured by what you do, it’s about what you are. Not how many people you loved, but how much. It has nothing to do with how well things turn out or how seamlessly the plan is followed. It’s about the bits of magic you stumble upon when you dive off path. It’s not about the things that didn’t work out; it’s about what you learn when they don’t.
Those bits and pieces, awakenings and knowledge, are what build and make you able to perceive things greater than you can currently imagine. A good life is not how it adds up in the end, but what you’re counting along the way.
44
THERE IS
A VOICE THAT
doesn’t use
WORDS;
this is how you
LISTEN TO IT
The voice you have to listen to will rarely make sense. It won’t use words.
It won’t use logic. It won’t fit within the neat trajectory of the storyline that you imagined. It will be subtle, and it will speak to you without you ever knowing that it is.
The feelings your inner voice gives you will be unjustifiable. You won’t have reasons for them. You’ll know you love someone not because they’re attractive and smart and interesting, but just because you do. You’ll want to live somewhere or do something not because it’s “cool” or everybody says you should, but just because you do.
The unjustifiable things, the illogical things, the things that are genuinely unexplainable, that’s where the magic is. The “right” stuff always just is, it’s the illusions and fears and things we force that have to be justified and made sense of in our minds.
If you are making a choice that you can only feel good about when you back up with a list of “because,” you’re not really listening to what you want.
This is probably the biggest secret (and most important fact) of all: If your little, inner voice were telling you that you weren’t interested, or you were on the “wrong path,” it wouldn’t say anything at all…you’d just let it go.
Consider the people you aren’t romantically interested in. The career paths you know don’t call you. Do you sit around and belabor whether or not they’re right? Nope, you don’t. You just don’t acknowledge them at all.
(The opposite of love is indifference, eh?)
There’s no difference between the things that pain you and the things that please you—they are both intended to teach you something. You have
brought them into your experience because you want to learn from them.
Illusions have to be justified. Half-truths have to be made sense of. The genuine things, the best things, the “most right” things, truly just are. If it’s in your life, there’s something to be learned from it. The process of unlearning the reasons to justify the illusions is how you reacquaint yourself with the voice that doesn’t use words.
It’s ultimately why you choose to get lost in the first place.
45
EXPERIENCES
we don’t have
ENGLISH WORDS
FOR YET
01. When sunlight shines through the trees, the interplay between light and leaves.
02. When you’re with your friends and decide “who is who” in a show or movie you all watch and then laugh hysterically about how
“them” that character is behaving. (2a.) The running joke that develops around you characterizing the members of your social circle based on some cultural stencil. (Think: Sex and the City. ) 03. The feeling of your skin on someone else’s.
04. The temporary, beautiful high of deciding you’re going to change your life in some aesthetic, easy way. (4a.) The conviction that this will change anything or everything else.
05. The inability to grasp the fact that we can’t grasp what we don’t know yet.