Is That All There Is?
by
Marty Nemko
© 2004
Conor has it good. He has a
well-paying job that he enjoys, a good family life, and lots of
friends. He enjoys his hobby of playing the guitar. Yet he says,
“Somehow, there’s a hole in me. Like something’s missing. Passion or
something.”
At some point, many of us
wonder, “Is that all there is?”
Maybe. I first tried to see if
we could find Conor more passion. I asked him, “Does your intuition
tell you that the hole, the missing passion, would likely be filled
by any of these: relationships, fame, creative expression, making
the world better, material acquisition (a nicer house or car, for
example), hedonism (travel, sex, food, etc), being on the cutting
edge?”
He replied coolly: “probably
creative expression.” We kicked around some ideas and in the end, he
thought he’d enjoy buying some airtime on the University of San
Francisco’s radio station, KUSF, so he could host a show in which he
asked ordinary people to tell the most interesting stories of their
lives.
I then asked, “Does your
intuition tell you that doing that would fill the hole, provide the
needed passion?” He pursed his lips and sighed.
Conor is not unusual. I’ve
found, so often, that even if a client and I come up with the
coolest career and life plan, and even if a client has a darn good
life to begin with, there still remains that hole, that feeling, “Is
that all there is?”
Especially those of us who don’t
have a perennially sunny disposition may need to accept that life,
even at its best, will feel just okay, and that, beyond a certain
point, increasing happiness shouldn’t be the primary goal. My
goal is to feel I’m living a life well-led.
To that end, I developed a
personal mission statement and now spend as many moments of my
life as possible in the service of that mission statement. My
statement is, “Use my best skill (the ability to think quickly,
verbally and in writing) in the service of helping people with their
career and other practical parts of life, to expose colleges for the
sleazy businesses they often are, and to openly discuss the rarely
spoken truths about race and gender.”
Pursuing those goals don’t make
me happy. In fact, because they’re controversial, they often make me
sad: I get a fair amount of hate mail, mostly from the people who
claim to celebrate diversity of ideas but lest the ideas not suit
them, they stop celebrating diversity and start being intolerant of
it, often hateful.
Nevertheless, pursuing these
unusual goals make me feel like I’m doing what I was meant to be
doing on this earth, what the Buddhists call, right livelihood.
I deliberately pursue goals that
few other people pursue. That makes me feel special. If, for
example, I had joined the fight against AIDS, I wouldn’t feel so
special—countless people are already doing that. My efforts would be
a mere drop in the ocean.
I also chose goals that use my
special skills and experience. For example, as a former higher
education insider, I know what really goes on behind the ivy façade.
I do something additional to
help me feel like I’m leading a life well-led. Whether I’m
interacting with a rude clerk or with my wife or with a big shot, as
corny it sounds, I simply try to be nice. It makes me and them feel
better. I must admit that I don’t always succeed. I am, alas,
impatient by nature, and I know it comes through, but part of
becoming a contented person is to realize that I can be a good
person even with my failings as long as I’m doing my best.
Finally, I strive to replace
longing and resentment with gratitude and acceptance. I try to
remember to appreciate all of life’s little moments, including all
the moments I’m productive, even when the work is mundane.
But to tell you the truth, even
after doing all that, I still often wonder, “Is that all there is?”
Copyright 2004 Marty
Nemko, all rights reserved
