There are 168 hours in a week.
There are a few ways to live those hours. One way is to let them pass by as soon as possible, racing to a finish line where you can begin your real life. Another is to live each moment as if it’s your last, clinging onto what will inevitably become the past. And the last is to live in each moment and take it for what it is.
This Thanksgiving, I felt exhausted. There wasn’t a specific reason why. But somehow, somewhere in the last few months of personal growth and development – picking up new hobbies, developing broader and deeper friendships, working through emotional baggage – I stopped enjoying my life. By all accounts both through the kind compliments from my friends and my own self-reflection process, my life was objectively going the right direction across all fronts. Yet I still hit a massive wall that made me realize I had lost myself somewhere along the journey.
I’ve always found personal growth to be a double-edged sword. In the long run, it’s clearly constructive, that by working on yourself you can become closer to the version you want to be. But in the short run, the constant anxiety and discomfort of change causes a consistent, mild state of suffering. That if you stitch together all the various periods in the “short run” to form the “long run,” the question becomes even though you are objectively better off than you were 5 years ago, does it really feel better?
This blog post isn’t going to resonate with everyone, and even if it doesn’t resonate with most people, the person who I’m really writing this for is a younger Jerry. Someone who is too tough on themselves and often tries a bit hard. That despite all the effort, he’s still lost on what the “right” path forward is. And despite his fair share of mistakes along the way, he knows there are plenty more to come. If any profound life realizations have happened between “younger Jerry” and now, they can be rooted in the fact that even sometimes when I feel more lost on what the right path forward is, and despite barely recovering from one mistake I know there will be another to come – that’s okay.
Spending some quality time with family and unplugging has been helpful to regain some lost perspective. I’ve started focusing too much on racing towards the finish line, and I need to remember it’s okay to put your foot off the pedal once in a while. Even if you stop for a week, a month, a year, life moves on by itself and nothing terrible is going to happen. That during these periods of rapid personal development, feeling tired is normal. The only thing you’re guilty of is being human.
And above all else, just remember to enjoy life again.
Random Musings 