Live in the Present.

If you ask somebody straight out, what do you want from life? It seems to be this massively complicated question that they'll come up with. Oh, I want my job to be like this and I want to be happy. What does being happy mean? What really gets me out of bed in the morning is, there's a good Japanese term for it, Wu Wei. What is over that ridge? I can see this mountain. I wonder what's behind it. Or there's this little dirt road. Where does it lead? And why that's exciting for me is, it's that spirit of adventure. It's also entering the unknown. And that should be an exciting thing, not, you know, a thing you dread. I'm not saying everybody should quit their jobs and be hedonistic and just, you know, roam the earth. But certainly, every now and then, ask yourself that question. If this is, you know, the last day, how would I spend this? And, you know, if that's doing what you want to do right now, that's good. That's a good answer. If you start saying no too often, it's time to do something different. Modern life, we all, and certainly I, was sold the dream. Biggest house, biggest car, you know, fastest, greatest, most wonderful. I did find out later that, although it's a dream, it wasn't my dream. I think I got somewhat disillusioned, sort of latter part of my career. Because you've now achieved all these dreams, you know, yourself and your parents and society has specified for you. But there's this, I don't know, this like hole. And how do you fill that? When you're sitting around a boardroom table and you're discussing paradigm shifts and all of these buzzwords, it just started feeling empty. It's like, what is the point of this? You know, in here, it's not touching anything. It feels plastic. It feels, you know, superficial. I got really, really angry in sort of a traffic incident that could have resulted in the typical road rage thing. And it's like, your baseline is not right. Because you're sitting with all this stress, you don't know where to direct it. And something as simple as that can become this massive issue. So it's that underlying frustration is over the top. You know, feeling like this feels very caged, captured. And I think that's a modern man problem where we feel stuck. That's like, you know, I don't like this job. I don't like this system. But I'm stuck. How do I do it? You know, is there a way out of here? And usually you don't see it at that stage. I think this was a case of, let's take a break at the very least. Let's take a sabbatical and re-evaluate all of this. Because if you're in that system, if you're in the process, it's very difficult to have some space around it. Give it some space or distance. I took the sabbatical about six years ago. And at the end of the sabbatical, I didn't go back. And this raised many an eyebrow. You've got this great job, you know. It's like, you're going places. Why do you want to do that? Why do you want to, you know, give all of that up? You have to realise you're not actually giving something up. It's this thing that you've convinced yourself, or others have convinced yourself, that this is it. Wherever you go, you're still taking yourself with, a lot of times, with baggage. And, you know, if you're not careful, that baggage will, you know, bring you to the floor. Baggage is different for different people. For me, a lot of it stems from my childhood. I had a very aggressive father, to the point where I had a .45 pointed at my face once at 11 years old. It's natural, especially as a kid, to think, OK, I caused this. And it's this downward spiral. Because you don't have distance from it. It is so overwhelming. And it starts to rule your life. Sometimes what you fear the most meets you halfway. And I certainly struggled with a temper problem myself. And it's that, you know, father 2.0, you don't want to be your father's son, but you end up exactly there, because it's, you know, you're grasping. And now you may be getting this high pressure job, because I'm performing. Yeah, I'm not that. And you become exactly that. But the realization is that if you carry this baggage the whole time, you're stuck in those past moments. You've got to let go. This concept was the biggest breakthrough I could make ever, is letting things go. Letting go doesn't mean giving up. It means I'm not giving this any more energy. We make things all too complicated. It's like sitting here. That's it. That's all you need. It might be as easy as taking a breath. Feeling vulnerable is not a bad thing. And it certainly doesn't detract from my masculinity. But, you know, how we grew up, at least my generation is like, man, doesn't cry. Yeah, don't cry. Suck it up. And certainly, you know, I've had to become a lot less hard on myself. Getting out of that little voice in the head and understanding that when you observe a feeling, rather than just getting caught up in it, it starts to become easier. So what do I want out of life? That's the existential question, is it? I just want to be. When I'm sad, I'm sad. When I'm happy, I'm happy. But being present for every moment, regardless of what the moments are. Douglas Adams said, I might not have gone where I wanted to go, but I think I've ended up where I needed to be. And that's a nice summary of all of this because you think X, Y, Z will bring you there. And sometimes that's not where you're supposed to be. And if you let it just be, sometimes you end up exactly where you should be. When I'm truly present in the moment is when I feel at peace. So my purpose is to, you know, be aware of what I'm doing, showing up fully, being aware, be kind to others. Because that's the thing, we don't live in isolation either. We're part of this thing. I'm part of that person. And as much as we deny it, it's just so. I think if you're outside a lot, and especially like this amazing landscapes we have around us here, you do feel small. But not just small part of it. As massive as it is, as insignificant as you are, you're still part of this. I feel most alive when I'm out here. This feels right. I don't have to explain it. I don't have to intellectualize it. It's just, this is where I'm supposed to be.