When I was young, I wanted to be great. I wanted to be important, successful and powerful. I wanted to be put onto a pedestal, where I could get the adulation and approval I craved.
I wouldn’t have put it that way then, of course. I just thought I wanted the things my culture presented as normal goals for someone like me. (I understand now the degree to which being raised by a narcissistic father left me craving approval and attention.)
As I’ve gotten more emotionally healthy and psychologically mature, I’ve been surprised to find out that my desires in life have changed. It’s not that I’ve “given up.” It’s not that I’m settling for something easy after failing to achieve things I wanted.
My desires today are healthier and far more likely to make me happy. You see, I want to be ordinary. I want to be a good man. I want to be kind and loving and content with the joy of living an ordinary human life.
But I’ve recently discovered a fascinating paradox. As an ordinary man, I won’t have the things this world and our culture have always promised me. I won’t have wealth or power or adulation. But it turns out that the people who gain what the world and our culture promise won’t have what I have.
They won’t have the peace and contentment and joy of a man who’s living a simple and ordinary life.
Lesson of ‘judgment day’ error? Certainty doesn’t indicate truth
Caine’s Arcade: Watch a 9-year-old boy have the best day of his life
A year later, my father’s death looms large, but I have no regrets
Maybe it wasn’t correct choice, but I’m not having surgery Friday
When times turn too dark in my life, I’m grateful for furry antidepressant
I was agonizingly slow to ‘get it,’ but the joy of music changed me
A culture which defines itself by consumption has lost its values
Legislator trying to legalize medical pot because of sister’s suffering