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.
Three of Colorado shooting victims died protecting their girlfriends
Leave your dead past behind; that’s not where you’re going
Whether it makes sense or not, I’ve learned to expect miracles
This mortal life swings between lonely misery and loving paradise
I am angry that life doesn’t work the way I once learned it should
Sad husband: ‘My beautiful wife is dying; I’m so sad I can’t sleep’
Police mistakenly attack innocent man while hunting graffiti tagger
For some of us, loss of trust is a deep existential threat to heart
If romantic love is mental illness, do many of us want to be cured?
