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.
What does it say about my life if my biggest motivation is a dog?
Continued collapse of competence points toward decline of a culture
You’ve been lied to: Freedom and democracy are different things
Sad, but true: Neither Ron Paul nor any libertarian has chance to win
Cycles of our lives sometimes bring us back to places where we’ve been
Slow culture changes might mean skin color matters less in future
City rushes to demolish $4.5 million transit station after only 13 years
Thugs attacking private property aren’t anarchists; they’re vandals
Experimentation produces beauty that won’t come from slavishly following One True Way
