Everywhere means nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends— Seneca.
In the era of Insta & TikTok, where everything must and will be shared, travel has assumed the mantle of ultimate status symbol. Particularly solo.
Perhaps controversial, I’ve tried both and concluded that I’d rather see the pyramids with my partner, a football game with a friend, or crash a theme park with a fellow adrenaline junkie. These activities by themselves? I’d rather stay at home and watch a chick flick.
2. Movement is the spirituality you are looking for.
I recently learned more about why run clubs are here to stay:
Given the ongoing prevalence of social anxiety, run clubs offer a low-stakes, low-pressure opportunity for interaction. Even lower than sitting across from someone with a coffee.
They mimic how humans naturally (read evolutionarily) form bonds — side by side — especially in the case of men, but I think it’s also true for women.
They put you in flow (just like any exercise). When I say flow, I mean the present moment. Little else in the modern day does this so well.
It’s something craved for.
3. I love lifestyle design.
7 AM this morning, I was listening to MGK’s new album, which soon morphed into Tyler Childers' new album, downed plain porridge and a not-so-plain blueberry-infused Activia yogurt, and shortly after strutted off for the gym, and shortly after that landed in Starbucks beside my mocha and laptop where I now write this.
I have to accept I’m a creature of habit and routine. This is how my mornings look pretty much every day, workday or day off. And I had the sudden realisation.
This wouldn’t change if I were a billionaire.
James Clear spoke about how one should design their life around a desired lifestyle and their interests. Not the other way around.
It’s why an investment banker's lifestyle might mean 100k more, but it would also mean late-night finishes, zero work-life balance, constant fluorescent cubicle lights, and meaningless numbers causing hellish stress.
The mocha still costs the same.
4. The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not — George Bernard Shaw
I don’t have anything to add.
5. The aggressive nature of living well.
There’s something that draws me, like a moth to flame, to ideas of hard-living, suggestive of eeking out every last drop you can from this one life.
There is the true joy of life; to be used by a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; to be thoroughly worn out before being thrown on the scrap heap; to be a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that life will not devote itself to making you happy — George Bernard Shaw
Your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride — Anthony Bourdain
Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride! — Hunter S Thompson
If all of the above sounds hard, you’d be right!
But it’s taxing on the body to smoke fifty cigarettes a day and go on a drug-fuelled bender with your head perpetually high in the clouds.
A better alternative is to wake up and lift heavy things.
This hard is different in that it gives you more energy, not less, to enjoy your great big amusement park.
6. Doing something for the sake of the process itself.
During moments of writer’s block, Joan Didion would physically put her manuscripts in a freezer and return to them at a later time with renewed creativity.
I’ve wanted to get back to writing more frequently over the last couple of months, and struggled to decide where to begin.
It felt as though I needed to have a book idea crystallised in my mind. Or at least to have a concrete reason to sling some ink on white again.
This list finished itself when I decided to just type.
It finished itself when I realised that I wanted to do it for the sake of it. Regardless of whether I hit publish, reached a destination, accomplished something, or struck another line through my to-do list.
Writing for the sake of it is the epitome of the flow and presence I wrote about in the movement section.
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is not ‘brief candle’ for me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations. — George Bernard Shaw