It’s here—2022. We burned the effigy with neighbors on New Year’s Eve and turned in early. From under the covers, I hoped the rain would dampen the cacophony of fireworks as I fell to sleep. It may not feel like it, but the new year has come. Maybe it’s just the January blues, but I feel stuck in 2020.
The journey since Profit & Pilgrimage was born 2 years ago has thrown me off. We now wade into another year of this endless global pandemic which has shifted travel and investing priorities significantly. And the rules keep changing. More shots. New variants. Strained relationships. Economic unknowns. How do we live well this year in the midst of all these variables?
I don’t know what your coping mechanisms are, but when uncertainty strikes, my quirks go wild. I obsess over spreadsheets, overeat Tillamook, and (as my wife will confirm) incessantly clean and banish clutter to Goodwill. I browse job postings and startup websites, dreaming of a super-me that could overcome all this. These escapes offer a temporary high, but it always wears off.
Arthur Brooks, a happiness researcher at Harvard, talks about this irony in his writing and podcasting. The things we think will satisfy us—money, power, pleasure, and fame—always leave us wanting. We imagine they will give us a certain control, relief, or respect leading to security, but it’s the opposite. Ironically, his studies show that faith, relationships, and earned success through work are what create happy, content human beings.
The first two—faith and relationships—are helpful affirmations, but seem a bit obvious. None of us expect to reach our deathbed regretting having taken spiritual journeys or loved others well. I find the third one, earned success through work, more complex and intriguing. Whether your earned success is making music, designing bridges, alleviating hunger, raising babies, or curing patients, this leads to a sense of satisfaction that wealth, power, and prestige can’t touch.
It’s why my brother’s basement bar he built from scratch will always bring him more satisfaction than if he inherited a multi-million dollar business. It’s the reason my little housing endeavor, much as I can barely hang drywall or snap together PVC, gives me such joy. Though scrappy as hell, but it’s a model I created through my own blood, sweat and tears to empower others—which brings contentment. Though this year is shaping up to be full of unknowns, one thing is becoming clear to me: a happy new year will be one where I shun external metrics of success, and lean deeper into congruency with how I’ve been created.
But this isn’t easy to figure out. Thankfully, the poets offer us a third way of seeing—as does the late Mary Oliver in her poem The Journey. Breaking away to find your own voice may be a dark and wild road:
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late enough,
and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world
determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life you could save.
I’m not one to make resolutions, but this new year, I’m ready to move toward living wholeheartedly. As DeGroat says, to “nourish your very life that serves as a conduit of grace to others”.
I want to nurture my faith and relationships. To visit the monastery, to make fasting a rhythm again. To say yes to more kids books. To get on the phone and on the trails with old friends, to sneak my wife away for happy hour dates. If it facilitates more love in the world, count me in.
And, I’m pressing mute on the compelling yet banal voices I’ve been giving ear to. Instead, I’ll throw myself into projects that aim at satisfaction and success more deeply aligned with that voice I am learning to recognize as my own.
Will you join me?
Just now getting a chance to read this. I resonate so much with what you wrote. Thank you for sharing!