The unexamined life is not worth living
Socrates
I recently turned 30 and for whatever reason find myself more prone to even more reflection than usual. Looking back I see clearly how I spent much of my 20s striving for achievement, connection, and a satisfying response to existentialism. I also see how intensely I experienced everything–my first love, my first taste of independence, my first job, my first heartbreak, etc.–and it seems like all of my best and worst days are confined to this period.
At 30-years-old I am both excited and anxious of the future. I am hopeful that most of my days lay before me and my wisdom will make them markedly better than those that past. At the same time I wonder how many more haymakers I can endure before I fail to bounce back like Sisyphus, Bozo Bop Bag, and Randy Marsh.
These lessons–concerning love, career, friendship, habits, and spirituality–cannot guarantee my victory in the never-ending war against defeatism, however, they can bolster my defenses by serving as a reminder of how wisdom and renewed vigor can flourish in the wake of devastation….even if it takes many years.
Writing these lessons also provide the benefit of forced reflection. The reflection demanded by good writing is helpful in extracting wisdom from experience and polishing it for future consumption like the harvesting of a pearl from an oyster. Wisdom is at its best when we take the time and effort to examine and challenge our perception, gut reaction, and usual ways of thinking.
Lastly, these lessons fortify my wisdom against the human capacity to forget, even that which it would do well to remember.
A few caveats
You may scoff at any sort of ‘wisdom’ coming from a newly minted 30-year old and prefer wisdom from crinkly old men with gray bears and that’s understandable. With age comes more experience and opportunity to develop and refine one’s perspective.
However, opportunity is not the same as success. Old people do not always spend their time well, opportunities are wasted and time can warp good people into bigots, cowards, and fools, who are all the more dangerous because they are cloaked in the benevolence of age. Be more wary of those who have 1 foot in the grave.
Personally, I don’t have a strong opinion on whether the quality of wisdom improves with age. Time provides more opportunity for wisdom to ripen (or not), however, awakening and enlightenment can happen in a flash (the Buddha supposedly became enlightened at age 35).
I think times biggest impact on wisdom is likely the the nature of wisdom. I believe the things I think about now will be significantly different in the future. That’s another reason for writing this post, I want to see what my wisdom looks like when I’m 35, 40, and so on.
Of course, this post is nothing close to a complete repository of my wisdom and by focusing on the ‘greater’ lessons, I ignored perhaps the most important lesson of all: the wisdom of small things. The ultimate litmus test of wisdom is it’s ability to be applied to everyday life. ‘Big’ ideas like be nice to everyone are great as a starting point, but are often ineffective without ‘smaller’ and more tactical guidance such as ‘make eye contact’, ‘shake hands firmly’, ‘ask questions about their life’, ‘find something to compliment them on’, etc. There is no shortage of big ideas, but the path to living well entails breaking down those big ideas into more personal, practical, and ultimately actionable lessons. As Desmond Tutu put it ‘there is only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time.’
Anyways, let’s get into it!
Lessons concerning love
1. Walk–don’t run–into love
One always falls hard for their first love. The inexperienced cannot know what to make of the pleasant vibrations trembling throughout their body. As they run closer toward the source they realize the ground itself is also trembling and they begin to loose their footing. Undeterred they press on until suddenly–far too rapidly to react–the ground beneath them gives way and they begin to fall.
Falling in love is terrifying and strange, but mostly pleasant. I do not know how long one can fall, but I do know it is possible to get so accustomed to falling that they no longer feel like they are falling at all. But all things end, sooner or later, and a common ending is crashing into rock bottom. Indeed, very few are fortunate to die without experiencing a broken heart.
A broken heart is not a medical diagnosis, but is nonetheless a very critical condition. It can take years to climb out of the pit of despair. A full recovery is impossible and some never recover at all…
However, a broken heart need not be terminal, something to be avoided at any cost. A life without love is simply not worth living. The fact that myself and countless others have chosen to love again–with full knowledge of the potential pain that may bring–is evidence of the power of love. Some may argue that love is better understood as an addictive drug like meth or the desire for love is just another craving in the way of enlightenment…and they may be right. But I choose to side with those such as Andrew Gibson who consider heartbreak the sign of a life well-lived:
Just to be clear
I don’t want to get out
without a broken heart.
I intend to leave this life
so shattered
there better be a thousand separate heavens
for all of my separate parts
A selection from royal heart by andrea gibson
That said, we should not be reckless with our hearts. It is unwise to risk heartbreak when there is little to no hope of love. The fundamental problem is that your heart cannot be fully trusted. Love is not an infallible emotion. It can lead us astray. You can love the wrong person. We all know people who are intractably bound by their love to toxic and even abusive partners. Harder to see–yet nonetheless highly prevalent–are the insidious relationships where nothing is ‘wrong’, but neither person is truly satisfied. These relationships have a tendency to drag on a long time and rob one of their time and vigor. And even if you realize your heart has led you astray it can take a long time to extricate and recover from a relationship.
So what are we to do? Ignore our hearts completely? No! Do not forsake your heart–because what is love without a heart–but do not blindly trust it either. Proceed with caution. Challenge your feelings. Do you like things beyond their physical appearance? How well do your life goals and values align? Is this someone who can respond well to adversity?
Some may argue that caution and prudence cannot coexist with love, and I believe there is some truth to their argument. You cannot remain cautious, non-committal, and judgemental forever. At some point you must make a conscious decision to commit and surrender a good portion of your rationality in hope of being swept away by love.
But before you give away your heart, measure the risk and reward. Before you make a leap of faith, be sure the person will catch you. Walk–don’t run–into love.
2. Love is not enough
Love is an essential component in any romantic relationship, but it is not the only one.
A lover also needs to fulfill other roles such as friend, partner, and potentially parent (I believe this framework is from Esther Perel, but I cannot find the exact source, but her interview with Tim Ferris will show you why something she likely said offhand is embedded in my brain years later).
And even if a lover can meet all these needs, there are more mundane matters that can jeopardize an otherwise healthy relationship. Proximity matters, family matters, friends matter, values matter, and unfortunately money matters. There is no debate whether these things matters, the debate is how much they matter and whether we should try to overcome them.
And I tried to overcome them all in the name of love. I wanted to be noble like the heroes in so many of the popular love stories.
Somehow I failed to notice that many of these love stories end in tragedy. Romeo and Juliet die. Cleopatra and Mark Antony die. Paris and Helen survive (in some tellings), but at the expense of thousands of lives. Rose watches Jack freeze to death instead of scooching over a few feet.
I’m glad to report that I did not die, but I did waste 8 good years fighting against the cruel injustices imposed on my relationship. This time was not wasted because the relationship ultimately failed, this time was wasted because I could have found love elsewhere with much less suffering. Unfortunately, back then I believed in one true love and the power of love to overcome all (and if love did not overcome all, then it was because my lack of virtue).
Perhaps love can overcome all and there is a theoretical ‘best’ lover out there somewhere, however, these ideas have serious practical limitations. It is extremely difficult and time-consuming to cultivate and exercise the capacity to love unconditionally. Even more time-consuming would be sifting through ~8 billion people to find your best match. Cultivating love and searching for a good fit are noble pursuits, but taken to the extreme they become the work of a lifetime and you may have other things you’d like to accomplish.
Practically speaking, developing deep love for your partner will do just as fine as developing unconditional love. It is very unlikely your partner tests the limits of your love with truly heinous acts (and if they do maybe it’s wiser to leave than continue to love).
Additionally, while there may be such thing as ‘one true love’, you can love more than one person. And the love of someone who is your 3rd, 4th, or even 100th ‘best-fit’ does not feel like a consolation prize. Love has a way of inhibiting such comparisons or making their results invalid.
So try your best to choose well and love well, but if it’s not working out, do not hold on at any cost. Protect not only your well-being, but your other goals. A failed relationship does not mean you are a failure. Let go and cast another line, there are other fish in the sea.
3. Blind yourself
Human beings are comparison machines. And not only can we compare two things that exist side-by-side, we can compare the present to the past, future, and imaginary. This comparison is a default behavior, constantly occurring, often without our awareness.
Unfortunately, this constant comparison can cause problems in the realm of love. Comparison is useful when evaluating potential mates. However, comparison is less useful when trying to develop a monogamous relationship.
There are a few factors making our propensity to compare particularly problematic in the realm of love:
- Biological imperatives: women to choose the best mate, men to pursue many mates
- Preference for novelty: in some cases novelty is preferred over familiarity and quality
- Thinking the best of people: we often assume a stranger is awesome and problem-free
- Thinking the best of yourself: we often assume a stranger would be interested in us
- When it rains it pours: when you are ‘taken’ you suddenly become much more desirable
All this means that even when our partner is just as desirable as someone new, we often still prefer the new person.
So what to do? Constantly hop between partners until you find someone so awesome that they decidedly win all comparisons? You could try like I did, but I’m here to tell you such a person doesn’t exist–for no one is perfect and your mind is always capable of imagining something better. And even if such a person did exist, they are at the top of the sexual food chain and not going to be interested in you…
While it may seem perfectly rational to remain open to the possibility of a better option coming along, in reality you will drive yourself crazy and your relationship will fail, probably painfully.
I have a much more reasonable solution: blind yourself.
Consciously commit to noticing and stopping comparison of your partner to others. In addition to this commitment and exercise, a few shifts in perspective are also helpful:
- Understand that wandering eyes and being attracted to others is natural and not an indictment against your relationship
- Challenge your assumption that an attractive stranger would be interested in you. How frequently has this happened in the past?
- Challenge your assumption that an attractive stranger will be perfect. In your experience how many people you’ve gotten to know do you even like?
Of course, a certain amount of reflection (and comparison) on your relationship is healthy, but try to limit it to a few times a year or in response to an extreme events.
If you’re neurotic like me, you can schedule a meeting on your calendar every quarter to do so.
4. Don’t marry the wrong person
At first glance it seems nothing more needs to be said. Especially when we consider that the actual divorce rate is closer to 2% than the 50% commonly reported.
But divorce is just one measure of the quality of a marriage. Far more common than divorce are miserable marriages where people want to get divorced, but do not for one reason or another (staying together for kids, fear of social fallout, financial difficulties, etc.)
This is difficult to measure, but we all know at least one couple who is in such a marriage.
Yet people continue to get divorced or trapped in bad marriages.
Why? The same reason as most people rate themselves as above average. Because people think they are special, unique, that the same forces that impact everyone else somehow don’t apply to them.
When awareness alone is not an effective solution, deeper reflection is required. Even if you are sure that this does not apply to you, take 5 minutes to do two exercises. First, imagine an awesome version of your life where you are NOT married. Where do you live? What do you do for fun? Who are you close with?
Now imagine an awful version of your life where you are unhappily married with kids. How does it feel pretending you are happy around others? How oppressive is the silence of a dead bedroom?
If you lack the imagination to envision your life without a partner, take inspiration from others in your life or famous people (if you must). Emma Watson, Chelsea Handler, Leonardo DiCaprio all seem to live pretty happy lives.
5. Don’t demand someone be your everything
It is tempting to dream of a lover who is attractive, funny, intelligent, shares all your interests, and just generally gets ‘it’ and gets you, but guess what? You don’t even get you so that’s a lot to ask of someone else.
The best relationships I’ve seen are those that acknowledge their limitations. Your partner may be a great support system, but dislikes being firm and doesn’t share your interest in 20th century European social movements. And that’s okay! It’s unreasonable to expect a partner to fulfill all your needs all the time. That’s why we have friends, mentors, and other social relations. The best relationships not only acknowledge unmet needs, but also encourage spending time with others to fulfill those needs.
So stop expecting your partner to be your workout buddy, travel partner, artistic muse, parent figure, role model, rehabilitation project, intellectual sparring partner, and confidant in all things. Enrich your love life by engaging with others. Who told you all your needs to be meet by one person?
6. Do not get a dog if you are single
I’ve written more in depth about this here, but basically it’s not worth imposing limitations on your dating life for the sake of a pet.
More lessons to come
Stay tuned!