Today I got a much deeper subject I want to share my thoughts on. A question that has been plaguing philosophers since the dawn of time. “Why?” Why are we alive? Why are we here? Is it God that put us on this Earth? Are we just meaningless toys for a much more intelligent extraterrestrial species? Why anything, really?
I turned 20 back in October and since then I just kind of had the idea for this post in the back of my mind. Instead of celebrating my survival of life and the fact that I’m not dead, I did what any other normal human being would do and I had a quickie – that is a quick existential crisis. What else is there to do after a birthday, am I right?
Anyway, for the next couple of days, I kind of just had a difficulty being productive, writing, reading, studying, et cetera. Anything I did felt meaningless. I felt like there was no point to my existence. I mean why the actual fuck would me playing Rocket League or not actually have any impact on the world or whatever, you know?
And then I remembered something Gary Vaynerchuck said on Instagram. I saw this on his page like a year ago if not more. I don’t really remember the exact context but he said the words “Trust the process”. In fact, if you’ve ever watched motivational videos on YouTube, you’ve probably heard these words more than one time. Trust the process. Enjoy the process.
But what does this mean?
The way I see it, it basically means that the your goal in life shouldn’t actually be the final objective, or the final destination if you will, but the activities, the habits, that are making it possible for you to get there. For example, if you want to build a social media following, you have to fall in love not with the idea of having a million followers, but with the idea of waking up every day and interacting with your followers, or posting a picture.
I learned this when I first started to try to lose weight. I was training everyday and eating healthier so that I can achieve my goal to be at X amount of kg. It was hard to go to the gym every day, so I had a lot of days where I just wouldn’t get there. To motivate myself more, I had to change the narrative. Instead of my goal being about reaching that goal weight, it became about living a healthier lifestyle everyday to the best of my ability. Of course, that made the whole thing a bit more challenging in a whole other way, since now I had to alter other sides of my life, but that’s not the subject of this post so we’ll get back to that some other time.
Why did I feel so empty when turning 20?
I believe that in a world where people become millionaires before being able to drive, people have become obsessed with being “someone” as soon as possible, so birthdays have become a milestone-like thing (duh). So, every year, on our birthdays, we rethink what we’ve done in the past year – how much did we really achieve besides, well…not dying.
So, I did that, and as per tradition, instead of actually analyzing my 20 years alive, I’ve just jumped to the conclusion that I didn’t do shit and that “time flies so fast” as you’d say (and I’m sure I’m not the only one guilty of doing this). Then after some more pondering, I (big surprise) realized something – that’s not how I really feel. While I can’t say I have a great career or I finally transformed my hobby into a promising source of income, I did in fact gather lots of special or valuable experiences in my life.
How did to do this?
Well there’s a couple of things that contributed to this. The 3 main points, that I, at least for now, came up with are:
- Curiosity
- Extrovert behavior
- Travel
Curiosity
I think I should start with the fact that I’ve always, and I mean always, like since I was born, have always been curious. Always asked questions about literally everything. Didn’t understand something? The first things that came to mind were why and how. I always had this hunger for knowledge.
My favorite type of books were Encyclopedias. Reading facts about anything in the world made me who I am today. The more I learned – the more I wanted to learn. Even in school, I never really cared about grades, like at all, but I’ve always enjoyed going to school and learning new stuff.
Extrovert-like behavior
Most of my friends know me as an introvert, but the truth is I’m more of a extrovert than I’d appear to be at first. In fact, I think being an introvert is just an unevolved extrovert. Sure, the whole depression era of my life kind of set me back a bit on this front, but I’m regaining my ability to interact with other people.
Travel
This is probably the most fulfilling thing in my life. I will acknowledge first that I am and have been pretty darn privileged to be able to travel. Before Corona that is. Before turning 19 years old, I had already been to over 40 countries and 3 or 4 more times that cities. That means I’ve experienced all types of cultures, languages, weather. It’s seeing different types of struggles that has opened my eyes and made me realize that I’ve got it pretty good. I’ve swam in like most oceans I think and a lot of seas and lakes/rivers. I skied on a lot of mountains. I tried a lot of weird foods, especially when I went to Thailand. Also, that’s when I tried all kinds of fruits. I mean fruits really are like the main reason why someone should go there in my opinion. That, nature and cheap electronics.
I think most of all, travel offers perspective. A DIFFERENT perspective. Or at least that’s what it did for me. Going to some places made me realize how good I’ve got it. Other places got me to set higher standards. Made me dream higher. At the end of the day travelling is basically a metaphor of life.
August 