I recently finished The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller.
It’s a beautiful reimagining of Homer’s Iliad in which the warrior Achilles befriends and falls in love with his ward Patroclus.
Before the battle at Troy, the two of them are discussing what their future may hold before heading off to war:
[Achilles’s] eyes opened. “Name one hero who was happy.”
[Patroclus] considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason’s children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus’ back.
“You can’t.” He was sitting up now, leaning forward.
“I can’t.”
“I know. They never let you be famous and happy.” He lifted an eyebrow. “I’ll tell you a secret.
“Tell me.” I loved it when he was like this.
“I’m going to be the first.”
Of course, we all know how this works out.
3000-year spoiler warning: not well.
Here’s what we can learn from this:
Humans are unbelievably social creatures – even us introverts (as I write this from my Fortress of Solitude). We are really good at seeing what other people have, and then convincing ourselves that we too need that thing to be happy.
And boy, the best way to guarantee an unhappy today and an unhappy tomorrow: playing life with the wrong scorecard.
We love phrases like “if only…” or “once I get…” and then set our future happiness at that level.
If only we had a six-pack/more money/a bigger house/fame…
Then we could finally be happy and we won’t have any problems and our dad will respect us and our mom will pay attention to us and we’ll get a great relationship and we end up in a green field with unicorns and cotton.
If we’re not careful, we’re permanent time travelers, living in the future and telling ourselves things will be better “if only” or “once I get” the thing.
This creates two problems of our own making:
Problem #1: If we tell ourselves we’re not worthy of something until we reach a certain goal, what happens when we don’t reach that goal? Ruh-roh.
I’m reminded of one of the realist things I’ve ever read. On Reddit, somebody bluntly asked “What’s the worst part about being [overweight]?” and one of the most upvoted answers broke my heart:
“The fact that you put your whole life on hold, telling yourself that you will resume living when you lose the weight. Then not being consistent with said weight loss journey and basically…never getting to truly live.”
We are worthy of love and care and kindness and having adventures no matter where we are on our journey. Yes, health markers like all-cause mortality improve as we get closer to our goal weight, but life is so much more than the scale. We also cannot guarantee what tomorrow will bring, so we must find a way to enjoy today.
Problem #2: Speaking from experience, if we’re unhappy before we get the thing, we’ll still be unhappy after we get that thing. Which can be a brutal wake-up call. Or we just “move the goalposts” and stay unhappy.
Which blows.
Hollywood is full of cautionary tales of famous people who seemingly had it all, only to discover they were hurting and struggling and looking for happiness and acceptance in the wrong places.
In other words, they were playing life with the wrong scorecard. They figured fame and fortune would solve their problems, which it never does.
Personally, I spent most of 2017-2020 living perpetually in the future with the wrong scorecard; I worked way too many hours “until I reached X goal,” only to realize I was never going to get there. I was burned out, running myself ragged. Most importantly, I realized I was heading towards a future and day that I didn’t even want!
I’ve found some meaning in Bruce Tift’s “Already Free” and Jon Kabatt-Zinn’s “Wherever You Go, There You Are.”
This is it. Today. Now.
I stopped thinking about what I wanted the future to look like, and instead started working on what I wanted today to look like.
Unsurprisingly, by shrinking my focus to prioritizing a great day with progress and a bit of joy, it’s actually made things better for future days too.
What area of your life where you keep saying, “Once I get to ________, then I can start living/be happy/successful/stop hating myself?”
Is it when you finally:
- Reach a certain weight?
- Fit into a specific pair of pants?
- See a certain amount in the bank account?
The goalposts are always moving, and we’re always at danger of playing life on the wrong scorecard. The only guarantee, unfortunately, is that reaching our goal won’t solve our all problems.
Wherever we go, there we are.
As author Mark Manson says:
“Don’t hope for a life with no problems; hope for a life with better problems.”
We can develop resilience and confidence in dealing with problems as they arise.
This means doing work on ourselves (therapy for the win!), finding ways to make progress sustainably without alienating friends and family, not shirking our responsibilities, and being okay with a pace that’s slower than we want because we’re not particularly in a rush to get there.
It probably means focusing on how we can have a good, productive day today. Go for a walk. Do some push-ups. Put down the phone and get some sleep.
Let’s focus on what we can do today, and the results will come when they come.
-Steve
