My Mindset and Philosophy at 24—Searching for Greatness and Purpose
I’m turning 24 in a couple of weeks, and in the last couple of years I’ve been soul searching: looking for purpose in life.
And I think a lot of people my age are too.
I see a sense of desperate hopelessness–of feeling trapped–that a lot of college graduates seem to encounter after being shoved into 40 hour jobs with one or two vacation weeks a year until death or retirement does us part.
At least this is something I’ve been scared of.
I’ve taken two breaks from college, changed my major four times, lived out of my car, tried my hand in the Real Estate Business as an entrepreneur, worked in restaurants, binged hundreds of hours of youtube videos, and taken online courses in copywriting and Tik-Tok video creation trying to escape it all.
I’ve been looking for work that feels fulfilling and goes against the grain of conventional money centered systems of ethics and work.
Because right now the economy young people find themselves in is vicious: it’s designed solely for the benefit of the rich, with enough concessions given to us to prevent mass death or revolt.
The conventional advice is to “chase your passion,” but the only jobs that pay enough to afford rent and secure health insurance are corporate slogs: they take all of our industry, creative passion, and forward thinking optimism, and churn it into projects that maximize profits for credit cards, banks, and tech giants who couldn’t care less about the impending climate catastrophe.
The other option is unionized and poorly paid physical labor, or a gig economy full of side hustles and online guides teaching us to escape the hustle and grind by hustling and grinding.
Even starting a business, the dream, the holy grail, the one thing that allows us to create our own good and creative solutions in the world, require catering and selling to customers with expendable income or building something attractive for rich investors at risk of being beaten bloody by large companies with more resources and even the law on their side.
This blog isn’t going to be a guide, or a how-to, or even filled with any concrete advice on where to go.
Because honestly, I still feel trapped. I’m faaaaaar from perfect, oh lord oh no, I have a long-ass way to go and don’t have any answers to the problems I’ve raised above.
Not a single one!
What I do have are experiences, ideas, questions, and mindsets–all taken from people much smarter than I–that have drawn me closer to a more liberating way of being in a world that is constantly bearing down on me with its suffering.
Dream Big
Anthony De Mello, Author of Awareness, a collection of lectures on Waking Up and living our fullest and most present lives, tells a story that goes like like this:
There was an eagle who at a young age was separated from his parents, and found himself adopted by a family of chickens. He grows up into adulthood like this believing that he too, is a chicken.
One morning an eagle flies overhead, cawing, whooping circles seemingly just for the enjoyment of soaring through the air.
A chicken goes, “Wow, look at those eagles! I wish I could fly like that, hunt, race, and see the world from up high!”
The eagle sighs, “Me too. Alas… we are chickens.”
This is how most people go through life.
Every single one of us is capable of soaring through the clouds, of spreading our wings and flying only if we wake up and see that we’re actually eagles!
It doesn’t feel like this though, does it?
Only the chosen ones, the born rich, the beautiful actors and actresses, the blessed Olympian, and all of the rich and famous celebrities we worship–those are the great ones–they are the eagles!
Can you believe that you’re an eagle?
That's what I'm talking about when I say Dream Big!
It’s believing that you are capable of so much more than you’ve ever believed you are.
What’s the craziest thing you can imagine for yourself?
Maybe it’s going to the Olympics, writing a book, owning a business, overthrowing capitalism–whatever it is the bigger the better!
Now, can you believe that you’re capable of accomplishing it?
Really, really, believe that.
Because you are, I fucking promise you.
So remind yourself, keep telling it to yourself, and go and find it out for yourself by living so you can see it happen in front of your very own eyes (or other senses if you’re blind).
“To become a Buddha it is only necessary to have the faith that one is a Buddha already.” - Alan Watts
Act Small
But I’m not great, I’ve never done anything great, I can’t do what those olympians do even if I train for the rest of my life!
Is that what you think?
It may be partly true, and this is the point.
You kind of have to see yourself as you are now, and chances are, you’re not incredibly great or unique or outstanding or revolutionary: you feel like a normal person struggling to stay afloat.
The first thing, and really, ultimately, the only thing, to do, is to become aware.
See yourself as you are–almost imagining yourself in the third person–and open your eyes to the options available to you.
As you dream big with that goal in mind, and look around at where you're at, you'll start to realize the only actions you can take right now are tiny ones.
The only way big dreams come true is after a million little things compound.
Smoking a single cigarette won’t change anything down the line, but 10 a day for 40 years will.
One run won't change anything, but 2 miles a day for 40 years will.
And these changes are drastic!
It is the difference between lung cancer and an easy confident relaxed cruise.
Every action you take you’re taking now.
You can read the rest of this blog post.
Or you can shut it off and go do something else, anything else!
What small action can you take, right now, that leads you in the right direction?
Act really small
For many of us the Eagle or Buddha is buried deep inside.
When you’re very far off from that you, that greatness, when you feel buried alive in a steel coffin under a ton of dirt–relationships that make you feel lonely, work that drains you, empty habits that bring no joy or fulfillment, a tight, weak, overweight, or underweight body, a hurting back and joints–you might have no idea what ‘happy and fulfilled you’ even looks like.
So do something tiny!
Stretch your hips for 20 seconds.
Do 10 jumping jacks.
Write a sentence in your journal.
Start wherever you are now.
At first writing one sentence will be a challenge, but you will do it despite its difficulty because you are amazing.
Then before you know it, writing one sentence will be easy for you!
But writing two sentences will be a challenge…
As long as you keep going towards the challenge, your edge, you will grow.
These are the actions to look out for–the paths to take timid steps down.
People call this the 1% rule. A positive 1% change everyday is exponential! A negative 1% change will plateau.
But it’s not improving; I don’t like that language. It gives the impression that there is a “better,” a “more than,” and “not me” that we’re striving for.
It feels more accurate to describe it as a moving closer: closer to peace, closer to joy, closer to love, at every moment, instead of staying where we are now.
It’s choosing, at every crossroads, to walk down the path that gets you closer to something you usually turn away from.
But maybe don’t start with every opportunity—that sounds exhausting.
Start small, please, like really, the smaller the better.
If you’re young like me you have another 50 or so years to go, so however you deign to live your life, it’s gotta last awhile.
Do one stretch every day for a week, and only do more when you feel like it (which you will).
Or eat something that tastes good and feels nourishing once a day.
Your actions will compound and cumulate themselves.
“Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true” - Billy Joel
Logical Justifications
This is all easier said than done.
How can you hold in your mind a massive dream–a future potential of greatness–and at the same time realize it’s all futile and the only thing you can do is take small actions in the moment?
This is a classic philosophical problem that requires believing in the ‘truth’ of a paradox.
Our western minds are conditioned to logic, so it feels wrong to believe in something logically false.
But why not believe in it?
Why not believe that we are simultaneously the most important thing in the universe and that we have come from dust and will return to dust?
My Favorite Greek Philosopher
I'm gonna bring in some ancient philosophy here to try and justify these belief systems.
These aren’t really “logical arguments,” but more-so analogies to help explain in words the experience of living like you're capable of literally flying, while watching your baby feet take stumbling little steps on hot asphalt.
Parmenides, in his famous poem, describes the world as “What Is,” and “What Is Not,” and comes to the conclusion that because it is impossible to describe or imagine or see “What Is Not,” the only thing left is “What Is.”
“Come now, I will tell thee - and do thou hearken to my
saying and carry it away - the only two ways of search that
can be thought of. The first, namely, that It is, and that it is
impossible for anything not to be, is the way of conviction,
for truth is its companion. The other, namely, that It is not,
and that something must needs not be, - that, I tell thee, is a
wholly untrustworthy path. For you cannot know what is
not - that is impossible - nor utter it;”
How I interpret him is that reality, the metaphysical ‘Truth,’ is defined as “What Is,” and when we try to imagine and define and believe in things that fall under “What Is Not,” we send ourselves down an untrustworthy, impossible, and futile path that leads to falsehood and suffering.
But what is this “What Is”?
“And there is not, and never shall be, any time other, than that which
is present, since fate has chained it so as to be whole and immovable.”
The present is all that there is: fate has chained us to the present moment with no hope of escape!
The past, the future, anything we imagine that is not happening now, and all of our ideas are “It Is Not,” and therefore do not exist.
Yet, as we delineate our dreams and beliefs as “Is Not,” this itself creates another false image.
Because in reality humans do dream and have ideas and believe in things–so this all must be a part of “What Is,” right?
At first I told you to believe in the future; then I said the future is false; now I say even further that believing that the future is false is false.
What the fuck dude?
That's kind of circular, isn't it?
Early Buddhism
“Definition, setting bounds, delineation–these are always acts of division and thus of duality, for as soon as a boundary is defined it has two sides.” — Alan Watts
This creation of “two sides,” a separating of “What Is,” into “What Is” and “What Is Not,” is called maya in early Buddhism.
The Buddhist word then, for “What Is,” would be Brahman (defined again by Watts in The Way of Zen):
“The knowledge of Brahman is represented as the discovery that this world which seemed to be Many is in truth One, that ‘all is Brahman’ and that ‘all duality is false imagined.’ Taken as statements of fact, such utterances are logically meaningless and convey no information. Yet they seem to be the best possible explanation in words of the experience itself”
The argument is circular. Watts admits “such utterances are logically meaningless and convey no information.”
Logic can't accurately describe our experience itself: it's not sufficient.
It seems obvious to create distinctions such as dark and light, hot and cold, but that’s only a result of our training and use of language; they are only attempts to convey the suchness of “What Is” to other human beings with the tools available to us.
It’s important to see then that maya, the tendency to delineate, is only that: a tendency of our minds to divide and define and measure.
Earlier, when I told you to Dream Big, I was asking you to believe in something false: to define something unknown–the future–by comparing it to the present and marking it as “better,” or “closer,” or “happier.”
While it's not perfect, I do think it's a useful and necessary place to start: believing in something more than you are now.
But eventually you will have to let go of those big dreams and ideas you have about the future and the moment.
Because the truth isn’t an idea, it’s how you live and see your unique present.
Only by observing our own lives and our beliefs, and by letting go of our tendency to grasp and understand it all, can we hope to understand any of it, and, if we’re lucky, see some beauty along the way.
Good luck my friends! Everything takes practice, so be patient, and keep working hard!
Sending you peace and love,
-Andy
What did you think of the varying styles here: the reflection, self-help advice, and philosophy?
Was is comprehensible? Confusing? Enjoyable?
Do you have any objections?
Please please comment with any thoughts! I post these so that ya’ll can read ‘em and I want to know what you think!
