The grandfather of Danny Meyer (founder of Shake Shack and acclaimed restaurateur) used to tell him growing up that “man plans, God laughs.”
In the past year or so, things haven’t exactly gone according to plan in my career. If there is a higher force, they are probably having a good chuckle about it all. Some context:
I spent the first four years of my career at a company that I thought I might stay at for my entire career. I was comfortable. But I quit to move on to a new opportunity, walking away from a boatload of money.
I moved on to challenge myself at a scaling company and to make a positive impact in an industry I cared about. I busted my ass for several months, anxiously making calls, scurrying on and off planes, and “spinning my wheels” without anything to show for it. After seven months, I was fired for under-performance.
I spent nearly six months working odd jobs, traveling, and over-complicating my decision about what to do next with my career. I settled on teaching, returning as a substitute to my high school alma mater. I started low on the totem pole to get my foot in the door with the understanding that there would be an opening for the subject that I want to teach next school year. But the position was just recently offered to another candidate.
Man plans, God laughs…
I reflect on my personal life from the same period and am proud of all that I’ve achieved. I’ve found fulfillment by challenging myself in places outside of my career, sometimes without even intending to:
I bought a gently-used road bike from a buddy and broke it in with a helluva maiden voyage, crushing 127 miles and 8,000+ feet of vert in a single day from Newton, MA to Londonderry, VT. People ask me, “why the hell would you want to do that?” My response: “Because I can.”
My trusty steed taking a well-deserved break. Townshend Dam in the background.
In anticipation of travel to a to-be-determined Spanish-speaking country, I dusted off the Spanish that I learned in high school and started taking 30-minute daily lessons. In less than nine months, I can carry a conversation and am now teaching Spanish at the high school level.
I spent six weeks traveling through Mexico by myself. It was a formative experience. Many Mexicans lack the creature comforts that a lot of us have in the US, but they have everything they need – roofs over their heads, family and friends to enjoy the company of, and connection to beautiful landscape in which to enjoy it all. There was an epiphany during my trip when I realized that every single person that I met, I had never met before, and it made me feel small and humbled. “De viajar abre su mente.” Traveling opens your mind.
Chichen Itza, some new friends, and an opening to the Pacific at La Punta, Puerto Escondido
I’ve tackled my fear of heights with a couple gnarly climbs in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. The first, the Eaglet, was the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life. It’s a 200’ tall, free-standing tower on the side of a mountain in Franconia Notch with exposure over the valley floor some hundreds of feet below. The footprint at the top is about the size of a picnic table. Once we summited, I couldn’t wait to get down. The second climb was an ascent up Cathedral Ledge, an iconic, 500’ shear granite face in North Conway that is equally as exposed and beautiful as The Eaglet. One foot in front of the other…
I’m currently training for my first marathon and I wrote the first draft of this post while on a training run.
I asked my adventure buddy, my best friend, to marry me (she said yes).
Tú eres el amor de mi vida!
Forward Motion
So here I am, trying to piece together Plan B, unsure of what the future might hold, but pressing on. The universe moves forward, and I’m doing my best to keep up.
Dante, the Italian writer from the Middle Ages famous for his “Paradise”, said “segui il tuo corso e lascia dir el gente.”
We are creatures of comfort, so we avoid pain like the plague.
“Comfort” food. Fried chicken, mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, each with an extra dose of butter. We know it’s not “good” for us, but we do it anyways. And it tastes damn good in the moment, but the extra lbs. and other adverse effects add up over time. Heart Disease remains the primary cause of death in our country. Quite literally, you are what you eat, and our instant gratification by way of sugar and processed carbs probably has something to do with Heart Disease’s reign.
My sweet tooth is like a black hole. Last night, after a big dinner, I ate a cupcake, and then another, and then some fudge, and then some more. Damn, it all tasted good going down, but the indulgence was fleeting. Did I feel better after having done so? Hell no.
Instant gratification is avoidance of pain. We trade the pain and suffering needed to endure a long term course of action for immediate (and futile) reward out of fear that whatever the alternative is, it’ll be too hard and require too much commitment.
“I don’t have time for that kind of commitment.” “That won’t be worth my time.” “Why would I do that when I can enjoy what I already have?”
As I sit here writing this, my monkey mind is constantly coming up with a new excuse to stand up and stop doing my work. The kitchen is only a few steps away… I could go grab a snack, even though I ate breakfast like an hour ago. Or maybe a cup of coffee, even though I have a glass of water right next to me and I don’t need (or really even want) any more caffeine. Maybe I’ll flip over the laundry – I’m just waiting for the dryer to ding. Then I can put the freshly washed sheets on my bed.
Anything to keep me from doing my work. Away from confronting the pain and fear of it. The fear that it won’t be good enough. The fear that I don’t have anything to say of value to other people. The pain I have to endure to prove to myself that I have what it takes to actually produce something. That I have what it takes to make a meaningful contribution to and connection with something bigger than myself.
I’ve been running a lot recently, and ironically, I’m kinda writing this as a means of avoiding the pain of my training. Training is supposed to suck, and it definitely does. The hardest part about it is starting. Lacing up the shoes, starting the timer on my watch. I thought I’d rip some thoughts onto paper first, partly to prolong the inevitable. But once I get going, (most of the time) there’s wind in my sails and it’s over before I know it.
Steven Pressfield says that an artist with a vision is so focused on their work that the “sculptress and the tree-climbing tyke both look up blinking when Mom calls, ‘Suppertime!'” I’ve been tutoring high-school Physics recently, and on multiple occasions, I’ve been so concentrated that I’ve lost track of time. Just like the tree-climbing tyke, the scheduled time for the session has passed without me noticing. The “runner’s high” is similar. In process, we are channeling something bigger than ourselves, without any mind for the finish line. Just like the Bhagavad Gita says – we have a right to our labor, not the fruits of it.
The writing is hard enough itself – why endure more hardship with training for a marathon? Because the pain never stops. We are constantly confronted with things that we don’t want to do. We can circle back to our comfort zone and avoid the pain of confrontation, or we can barrel into obstacles head on and prove to ourselves that we can overcome private, personal adversity, to find meaning in something bigger than ourselves along the way.
When I ship something, it might be a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. I’m 1% better than the day before. 1% stronger. 1% more confident in my ability to continue to confront pain and fear.
Whatever it is that comes through us, it is never going to be perfect. It’s better that we share whatever it is without fear of what others think than to spend countless hours tweaking here and there.
In the words of James Clear, “there are no artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, or scientists who became great by half-finishing their work.”
I cried like a baby at the end of Pixar’s Coco. (Although it was definitely not the first Pixar movie that brought me to tears).
If you haven’t watched it, watch it. You’ll laugh, you might cry, and just like the other Pixar movies, it’ll remind you of the important things in life – in this case, family. In the movie, memories of those gone from this world must be passed down through generations in the stories that those that knew them tell. Either ancestors are forgotten forever, or they never die.
So, in commemoration of my own ancestors, I recently recorded an interview with my parents. Credit to Sahil Bloom’s recommendation (he’s definitely also a Coco fan), in which he said that “our time is finite, but we often fail to recognize it until it’s too late.” My parents shared childhood memories that I had never heard, tales of falling in love, life lessons, how they want to be remembered, and more. Now we have these stories in an artifact that we can cherish and revisit, so they never die.
Here’s what I learned:
Always do the right thing, and stand up for it!
My parents met on a Boston Harbor cruise during Senior Week in college. Two weeks later, my dad moved down to New Jersey for work, and so began their long distance relationship. On his first trip back, they had dinner at his parents’ house. Leaving with my mom to spend the night at her apartment, the good Catholic in my grandmother asked “does she have an extra bed?”
The next morning he told his mother that he had no intention of staying with them while home from NJ just so that she could sleep at night. They hugged, and when he left, he couldn’t believe he had the hutzpah to say what he did. The next day, she called him and apologized.
If you prioritize authentic and independent decisions over those made based on what other people think of you, those who love you will eventually understand and accept, even if they don’t at first.
Always do the right thing, and stand up for it! (Part II)
In the early 2000s, the Department of Defense enacted another round of Base Realignment and Closures (BRAC). The place of employment for my father and thousands of others was in jeopardy of closure, and the only alternative was an undesirable relocation. My dad saw that a high-ranking official was complicit in the closure, and when he sounded the alarm, his boss didn’t want to risk his own career. So him and a couple of colleagues took matters into their own hands.
They got on a plane to meet with the boss of the high-ranking official and present the evidence. Three months later, that general was retired and my dad got “sent off to the corner” because he wasn’t part of the solution. He was humiliated for a couple years and paid the price for his decision.
There’s a silver lining. He dreaded his final years before he retired from the DoD. But when he began working for a contractor that he had previously done some work with, he felt revered and valued from day one, ending his career doing something he loved that he otherwise wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do.
Always do the right thing, and stand up for it! (Part III)
At Raytheon, my grandfather worked closely with a black man. This was the 60’s, a time of civil unrest that even liberal Massachusetts wasn’t immune to. They became great friends, carpooling to work and connecting their families together. Still, some people had a problem with it.
A neighborhood friend’s mother called the house one day. “We won’t think much of you if you keep doing this,” she said to my grandmother Mig. She responded, “Well, we don’t think much of you,” and promptly hung up.
(s/o @datrascaldakota)
At the time of defying his mother’s wish to stay in a separate bed than my mom, my dad claims he wasn’t sure where those kahunas came from. But today, knowing that his mother wouldn’t hesitate to stand up for what’s right, I’m sure he would agree that he was just giving her a taste of her own medicine.
There was a viral video from Halloween this year of a young brother and sister putting their candy into an empty bowl on a doorstep for others to have. No one was around. There was no potential acknowledgement from anyone else for their good deed, but that didn’t matter.
Just like those kids, both my dad and grandmother would do it all again, without any regard for the opinions of others, simply because they knew it was right.
Family is everything.
One afternoon while playing in the yard with his brothers, some punks from the neighboring town drove by yelling profanity towards their rivals. At 5 or 6 years old, my dad couldn’t do much, but his older brothers were quick to return fighting words. The kids in the car slammed on the brakes, and my dad had one of those “Oh boy, it’s about to go down” moments.
My two uncles retreated into the house and returned with their respective weapons of choice. One, a cartoonish-length antique bayonet. The other, a BB rifle, carried by my uncle as he climbed out onto the roof, baseball cap backwards like a sniper (definitely not messing around).
Dad stood by like the little kid who pops the bubble gum in his face when he sees Mr. Incredible – an innocent bystander who can’t believe what he’s seeing.
My grandfather stormed out, told the punk kids to scram, and yanked my uncles by the ear. Dad told this story with a big ol’ smile (without a doubt my favorite story I had never heard).
Their father didn’t approve, but they were standing their ground. Protecting their turf, their younger siblings, and their mom and dad.
Family is everything. My grandparents gravestone even says so.
Keep an open mind.
At the beginning of the pandemic, dad had some worries about the future. He had made some prayer beads with the kids at Sunday School awhile back and recalls thinking that he would never use them, forgetting them in a corner. So he dusted them off and started meditating each morning, sending positive thoughts to family, friends, and everyone else he loves.
Soon after, my sister suggested that he meet with an energy healer. With reluctance, he went to see her and was blunt in his greeting – “I just wanna let you know that I’m an engineer and I don’t believe in any of this bullshit.” Six months later he was on the Board of Directors of her non-profit.
Be willing to say yes, even if you’re reluctant at first. You never know what you might stumble upon.
Develop your own beliefs.
My mom grew up attending a Unitarian church and married my father in the same one. Soon after, they decided to raise my brother, sister, and I in one. My mom said she likes being a Unitarian “because there’s no answers – they’re not telling me what I have to believe.”
It’s always felt more like a place to share stories and lessons from human experience, rather than embellished accounts from books written thousands of years ago. People from all walks of life come together to share how their experiences have shaped their beliefs and to challenge their beliefs with new ideas shared by others.
Bruce Lee had a similar philosophy: “Research your own experience. Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is essentially your own.” Maybe he was a Unitarian too.
On Halloween night in 1990, my 19-month old sister couldn’t be convinced to wear her puppy costume without a candy bribe. By the time she finally had it on, my very-pregnant mom was in tears of laughter. She was laughing so hard that it sent her into labor, and only a few hours later, my brother was born.
Never miss a good laugh (or party). Just like open-mindedness, you never know what it might bring into this world.
Reflections
Reviewing the footage, I am immensely proud of my parents and grateful for the path I was given and to have had the opportunity to do this with them.
Kahlil Gabran’s beautiful poem On Children says that your children “come through you but not from you.” My parents are “the bow” from which my siblings and I, “the living arrows,” have been sent forth.
The stories they tell remind me of how I’ve become the man I am today. We now have new stories and lessons that we can tell to remember them, perhaps with children of our own someday, letting “our bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness.”
As life goes on, many of us see our parents less – maybe once or twice a month and some of us only a couple times a year. In any case, the total number of times that you’ll see them again is smaller than you think.
Our time is short. Take advantage of the precious moments. And if you can, commemorate those moments so you can remember those passed as you also grow old. You’ll be glad you did.
In our age of connectedness, it’s never been easier to compare ourselves to others. It’s something we’ve been doing for tens of thousands of years. We’re programmed to run in packs and define ourselves in hierarchies. 50,000 years ago, if we didn’t assume our position in the tribe, we were banished towards our demise. So our ancestors put their heads down and did what they had to do to be accepted. The stakes couldn’t have been higher – survival depended on it. Today, there’s a much lower chance that we’ll be eaten by wolves, but our desire for acceptance prevails.
“Gee, if only I could be like that cool dude on Instagram with the shiny sports car, a fat stack of cash, and a hot babe, I’d have everlasting happiness.”
That might sound kinda sweet, but while I sure as hell haven’t “figured it all out,” I do know that we will never be truly content as individuals by looking outward. “Comparison is the thief of joy,” says Rich Roll. We each have to find our own answers within.
There’s this idea called “The Arrival Fallacy” – if we reach our destination, then we’ll have the everlasting happiness that we so desperately seek. It’s a fallacy for a reason – it’s false. As I’ve mentioned before, if we’re constantly chasing something that we hope arrives in the future, we’re just postponing fulfillment to a time that never arrives.
Of course, everyone should strive to grow and improve in service of a better tomorrow. But we can’t forget how lucky we are simply to be alive today. My lovely Aunt Barbara told me recently that “It’s not human doing, it’s human being.” BOOM.
It’s not human doing, it’s human being. (s/o Auntie Barbara).
Practicing gratitude is a gentle reminder that every single day is a gift and that sometimes it’s o.k. to just simply exist. We are souls suspended in a bag of meat, on a floating, spinning rock, in the middle of an endless universe. What a freaking miracle! I usually start by remembering that, then the little things follow. I’ll commemorate them with a jot in a journal or tell other people about them. No matter how they’re recognized, it helps me to find joy in the normal and to remember all of the reasons to enjoy the ride.
Here are some of my other recent notes on gratitude:
A walk. For me, there are two different kinds – with and without technology. I’ll take my phone with me when I want to be connected, taking in the thoughts of others from a podcast, jamming to some tunes, or taking Spanish lessons. I’ll leave my phone behind when I feel like I need to clear my head or I want to be present with the people and places that I love. My girlfriend’s parents live next to a beautiful park and there’s also a nice one down the street from my parents. Green space is a blessing, and so is the opportunity to soak in the fresh air on foot. Not everyone can.
Peanut butter. Au natural, just peanuts and salt. Teddie’s is the undisputed GOAT.
Rekindled friendships. There’s nothing like hanging out with a friend that you haven’t seen in a long time and feeling like you never skipped a beat. I’ve had a couple of these recent encounters – kids I grew up with, teachers I now call friends. Each one has been unique and fulfilling. Kinda feels like a relationship where everyone gets the most bang for the buck – it’s easy. You enjoy the juice of life together without having to squeeze as hard as you do with other relationships and commitments.
My amazing girlfriend. She’s always up for an adventure, often with some spontaneity sprinkled on top. She’s the best and most thoughtful friend (and gift-giver) I know. She was understanding and encouraged my recent solo travels in a foreign country while others disapproved. She’s never afraid to knock some sense into me when needed, whether I’m out of line or over-complicating. She has helped me recognize the importance of this very activity – being o.k. with doing nothing to be grateful in the present moment.
My grandmother. I was blessed with the opportunity to live with her for nearly two years after college. At 91 years, her wisdom never ceases to amaze. Above all, she’s an exceptional listener. Whatever is on my mind, she lends an ear and it’s obvious that she cares, and that it comes from a place of curiosity and compassion. I hope to be like her some day.
New England IPA. Juicy, relatively low ABV, and most importantly, *FROSTY*. Delicious.
Mexican Lager. Also delicious. They’re all pretty similar, but equally crisp and refreshing. There’s one in Mexico called Victoria. I think it’s brewed by the same company that brews Corona, but I haven’t seen it in the US. For all I know it could be the exact same beer in a different bottle. It tastes exactly the same but, ya know, better.
Fresh tortillas. In just every city and village that I stayed in in Mexico, there are convenience stores with the classic little red Coleman coolers on display, without any labels. The first time I opened one, I thought why is this thing giving off heat? So I stuck my hand in to investigate and grabbed a fat stack of hot and fresh tortillas. They say that the first ingredient in Mexican cuisine is corn, followed in a close second by… corn. So, these goodies became the foundation of my diet during my time there. I noticed daily deliveries at the crack of dawn by young men on mopeds containers strapped to the back and old women carrying baskets at their sides or on their heads. I enjoyed everything about it. Watching the locals, eating like the locals, conversing with locals. It just felt like the essence of travel.
When one door closes, another opens. Having the perspective to see the loss of one opportunity as the acquisition of another. The TIME to try new things – traveling alone in a new country for an extended period of time, volunteering at a local community farm, hundreds of miles on my bike including a ride to Vermont, summiting some incredible climbs in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, and more.
Coffee!!!
Cumbies’ $1 hot or iced. I’m pretty sure I know the location of every single Cumbies in Essex and Middlesex county from thousands of miles on the road covering a territory in a past job. Real New Englanders know that Cumbies is where it’s at.
Oxxo. This is Mexico’s 711. They are everywhere, and they don’t mess around with their coffee. Each one has a legit Italian espresso machine. Press a single button and you get a delicious double shot of espresso for 29 pesos (~ $1.50).
Breville Barista Express. Bought it “brand new” from a girl on Craigslist (think it fell off the back of a truck). Something delicious that I look forward to every morning.
Billy Strings. An incredible musician and person. He is the definition of cool. First thing he said as he stood on stage in Martha’s Vineyard this past summer? After a long pause… “man, I f***ing love lobster rolls.” He just recently released an album with his once-estranged father featuring their favorite bluegrass covers. Despite fame and fortune, he has his eyes on what matters most and put the past aside to share something new with the world. What a treat.
The list goes on – it’ll never be finished, and we can add something new everyday. Sometimes we just have to stop and smell the roses.
Our kitchens are cluttered with tools that beg to be used – the toaster, the air fryer, the electric tea kettle, the espresso machine, next to a stove and oven that does it all. And don’t forget the 3-in-1 avocado tool. You can cut, pit, slice, and scoop, all with a single tool?!? My grandmother would probably call it a 3-1 dust collector, but sign me up!
Packing for a trip? Don’t forget the sleeping bag. Or the mini inflatable pillow. Or the pillowcase for the mini inflatable pillow. Or the case for the pillowcase for the mini inflatable pillow. Or the zipper-fixer-upper kit, you know, just in case.
A warning light has been on in my car for ages. I don’t think twice about it now, but at first, I thought I had a flat every time the thing beeped. One more thing to worry about. Ask your greasy neighborhood mechanic and they’ll tell you that “they don’t make ‘em like they used to.”
Consider language. Preparing a report for work? Let’s include as many big words as possible so that they think that we know what we’re talking about. There’s corporate legalese, or a military memo – as William Zinsser points out, the Air Force missile didn’t crash, it “impacted the ground prematurely.”
Clutter bogs us down.
Moving? More stuff = more time. And once all those boxes are unpacked, all the extra stuff can be moved again, to a shiny new storage unit. That stinks!
Personal ambitions, a desire to learn new things? When the going gets tough, let’s move on to the next one. We can work on the entire to-do list at once, right? The more “flux capacitors” and “recursive network architectures” we can add to our vocabulary, the better understanding we’ll have, and other people will think we have (and boy do we care what other people think about us!).
I’m calling BS! Pascal said that our unhappiness is because we “cannot sit quietly in our chamber.” Our desire for mental and material growth has us racing forward, often forgetting to stop and smell the roses. The clutter it creates prevents true understanding and sucks up the most precious thing that we need to live – time.
Simplicity gives us freedom.
My girlfriend and I moved recently and donated a third of our belongings. That’s a third less stuff to move, a third less time spent moving, and more time to do what we want. And it felt goooood.
That new thing you’re learning? Simplicity also allows for true understanding of what interests us. That means that you can explain it to the five year old with the dripping popsicle and rainbow colored hat with the spinny-thing on top (IYKYK), and even he gets it (Nobel-prize winning physicist and life junkie Richard Feynman had plenty to say about this).
So how can we be more simple?
Clearly, more stuff and more information is not the answer, or else “we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs,” says Derek Sivers. And we obviously aren’t all Jeff Bezos (he’s kinda jacked). More, more, more (!!!) causes anxiety and places us where we don’t know what to do with it all.
We have to be better at doing and consuming less.
Oliver Burkeman, in his excellent book 4,000 Hours: Time Management for Mortals, says that if you feel that every moment should be spent in service of future goals, you’ll postpone fulfillment to a time that never arrives. Constantly working on a project or upgrading those kitchen gadgets makes gratitude harder to feel now. I’m guilty of this – reading that was one helluva lightbulb moment for me.
So next time you’re banging your head against the wall writing that report, get it all out first, and admit that it’s probably more complicated than it needs to be. Remove anything that doesn’t help you say what you want to your audience. It’ll be easier for them to understand and will also improve your own understanding.
Or if you’re dreading a move, ask what you really need, and give the rest to others that are needier. You’ll feel better for helping others and you’ll gain the one thing that can’t be bought or given – time.
Enjoy every sandwich. 