To Live Forever

I watched an interesting movie called "The Devil's Climb." In it, two professional rock climbers scale five impassable summits in twelve hours after completing a 2,000-mile bike ride to base camp. Are these guys badasses, or what. 

One of the climbers happened to be 45 years old. Guess who is also 45 years old. 

It goes without saying that I am nowhere near the athlete that these two guys are. That said, I have never really stopped pushing myself. I've lost a lot of running speed since my early twenties, but I've never stopped pushing. Every week, I get two tempo workouts in, or a tempo workout and a speed workout, in addition to a full week of endurance runs and a long run or a long bike ride. This is serious training for most people.

In fact, when I talk about training with most people my age, the way they speak about it is in terms of what they used to do. Back then, they would train hard. Now, they don't. The reasons are varied, but always unsatisfying. They don't have time. They just stopped doing it for a while and need to get back into it. And this is the minority of people who once trained like I do. The overwhelming majority of people my age never trained like this. At best, some of them want to lose weight and are thinking about going to the gym or getting out for a daily walk. 

I exist in what feels like a completely different world. Not only do I still run hard, and bike hard, daily, but I also do strength training, box jumps, hiking, take my kids on excursions that will build memories for them. There will come a day when I have to stop doing things like this, but I don't ever want that day to come. I love to move my body. I love experiencing the health that I have. I love being able to take my shirt off at the beach and not feel self-conscious. I love knowing that I will wake up tomorrow without a hangover, and without the aches and pains that plague so many of my peers. They laugh at how much time I spend exercising. They have always laughed at how much time I spend exercising. But look what it gets me.

In addition to looking and feeling good, I've seen some amazing places in nature, places that one can only ever see from the seat of a bicycle or from the vantage point of a pair of running shoes. I can't even really describe these sites; mountain peaks, hidden waterfalls, corners of the desert, hieroglyphics, ancient ruins, fossils, mountain springs, so many plants and animals. These are all things most people never get to see. I'm so fortunate to have seen them, and so happy that I had the good health and drive to be able to see them.

At 45 years old, people still refere to me as "young man." I show my I.D. card when buying alcohol, and the cashiers look at me with incredulity. They can't believe I'm as old as I am. Sometimes I can't believe it, either.

I'm realistic. Within a very short period of time, the grey will overtake my head of hair, the wrinkles will get so deep as to be impossible to ignore, my speed will evaporate, and I will become just one more uncool old man in spandex, a laughing stock for the younger generations who see an old fool experiencing a midlife crisis. 

I don't know what I'll feel on that day, but the closer it gets, the more I start to believe that I will feel the same happiness, satisfaction, and sense of fulfillment that I feel today. Good health and physical fitness is such a wonderful blessing. It's worth tenfold the effort you put into it. Beauty fades and coolness, if you ever get to experience it, is fleeting. But the strength of your own two feet driving you forward, or your own two hands driving you upward to the summit of a mountain is something that can never be taken away from you.

Go running, folks. Get a bike. Go to a climbing gym. Do your pull-ups and push-ups. Wake up early and eat your vegetables. It's worth it, I promise.

My Passion

The valedictorian at my high school gave a fiery graduation speech about her belief that life was about achievement. "Achievement is art!" she declared, and that statement has been burned into my memory ever since. Partly, this is because I shared that view with her, and partly because I had a huge crush on her at the time.

You can imagine my surprise when she turned out to have become a stay-at-home mom. What of the passion for achievement, I wondered? She explained later that she simply wasn't passionate about anything. Nothing. She does seem happy nowadays. I wish her well.

There is a good lesson in this for youths and adults everywhere: Passion is about as controllable as the tide at sea. There is no explanation for why some people throw themselves into the various activities they choose to pursue as passions. Some like to dance, others to read; some like to swim, others to learn languages; some love baseball, others gardening. 

Difficult as it is for me to fathom, some people really and truly enjoy being Business Analysts -- they go to all the conferences, pursue all the certifications, they wake up early and crank through JIRA tickets for nine, ten, eleven hours, skipping lunch to have meetings about "roadblocks," and so forth. Well, it's not for me to understand someone else's passion.

But it isn't for them to understand it, either. Few of us as toddlers knew that we would grow up one day to be fascinated by baseball... statistics. Maybe some of us always loved football, but none of us imagined that we'd grow up to be thrilled by fantasy football. Most people don't become avid bird-watchers until later than life and, well, how does that happen? Nobody knows. It does happen, though.

As a youth, I believed that my passion was music. I played a lot of guitar. The truth is, though, that I wasn't a good guitarist until much later, long after I had abandoned music as my passion and had embraced it as a mere hobby. After my passion for music started to wane (at least as the driving force of my direction in life), I threw myself into another passion: economics. I loved it, and I did well in my studies at school, but the higher I went in the economics world, the less it seemed to ignite me as it had in the beginning. I graduated and took on a less high-minded form of economics, office work. I've done it ever since.

I'm good at what I do. I have a somewhat narrow set of expertise that is often in high demand, and I have a complete skill set around that kind of work. This keeps me gainfully employed and assigned to projects that I can safely say I do enjoy, for the most part. But I punch in early and go home after I've worked my hours. I have no interest in overtime, I'd much rather be at home, doing something else. I don't hate my work, but I'm no fan of work in general. I prefer fun.

So, that raises the question: Am I like my valedictorian friend? Do I, too, lack a discernible passion? 

No. I do have a very fervent passion. It might sound cheesy, but my passion is love. From the moment I met my wife, I knew I wanted to love her; and from the moment we became committed to each other, I knew that our love was going to be the greatest project of my life. I have genuinely felt that way ever since. Moreover, upon the birth of my children, they became incorporated into this project as recipients and benefactors of my love, too. My project has expanded to include them.

The way other people describe their passions is how I describe my commitment to loving my family. I don't mean this in a "gosh, I love my family more than anything" sort of way. Everyone (who is sane) feels that. No, what I mean is that I drop everything I'm doing and forego all other aspects of my life for the opportunity to help my wife and children feel loved. They do feel loved, and they know how much I love them; but they also know how to receive love and, I certainly believe, are learning how to love the correct way, too. It's not merely an emotion to me or a stirring of the heart, it's a way of being. It's a way of treating people, a way of reaching out to them, a way of taking on their hardships as my own, and a way of relying on others when we need someone to rely on. It is a modus operandi, a manifesto. 

Well, I don't get paid for this. Some people are lucky enough to be passionate about their work, while others happen to be passionate about an outside interest that means a lot to them. Fortune has assigned me the passion of loving my family over and above what most people understand love to be, and has given me a keen interest in the acts of love and their accoutrement. 

Passion can be for anything, you just have to throw yourself into it. You won't always be paid for your passion; in fact, most of us never will be. But that doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't pursue it, and it doesn't mean your life won't be infinitely better for having done so.

This Unhappy Life

Part One: The Reality Of Existence

The reality of life is absolutely brutal. 

We humans mature quickly; in just two decades or so, we reach a physical pinnacle, often accompanied by a peak in our greatest skills. The best athletes, for example, usually peak in their early twenties, and hold on to a career for about another decade. Artists and businesspeople make themselves in their twenties and then spend the rest of their lives slowly fading away. There is something magical about the early twenties. It's a culmination of life's ambition and physical prowess and opportunity.

When those years are over, what we have to look forward to is the ugly fade. Age is humiliating. Our noses get bigger and knobbier, and that's about as emblematic of age in general as anything. Even if we wanted to age gracefully, our noses have other ideas. If we're men, our eyebrows turn into shrubberies and our ears and nostrils sprout. If we're women, all of our curves sag and fill up with fat tissue. We can recover a bit of our former grace with physical exercise and intelligent grooming habits, but we're on borrowed time. Nothing can out-pace the growth of our noses; nothing can out-run the human nose. 

It's not merely that it happens, but that it happens four times longer than it took to grow into an attractive and capable body. The rise is fast, but the fall takes up the majority of our lives. What cruelty is this that nature has foisted upon us? How unkind that we must spend the overwhelming majority of our lives becoming ugly, sickly invalids. Youth isn't merely wasted on the young; it's wasted on everyone. It fades so quickly that it's almost as if it never existed in the first place.

Each of us knows what's coming, because we see it dozens of times over, among all the great people we ever knew, who happen to be older than we are. We watch our heroes and our friends transition from being bright, sharp-witted, attractive people to being doddering old curmugeons with particularities and strange demands, who drive slow and can't seem to find the right words anymore. They don't just fade, they decay. This is the fate that awaits us, too. We won't necessarily realize it as it happens, we'll just reach that point silently as the world spins on and the younger people stop caring that we ever had any ideas worth sharing. And then it will be their turn.

Some people think they can transcend this fate by embracing it. They let their hair turn grey and they endeavor to become the "cool" old lady or man. They're fooling themselves. No one cares, and no one remembers. Even the best people I ever knew were forgotten within a couple of decades of their passing. I still think about my grandfather daily, but my children never met him and will never spend any time thinking about him. Once my generation is gone, so, too, will his memory be. Embracing your old age might buy you some mental peace, but it won't stop the growth of your nose, and it won't change the fact that one day, on your death bed, you'll be grasping for a few final words that no one will ever repeat.

Honestly, I've never heard anyone repeat another person's last words. At the moment when we most wish to be remembered and to leave the world with something important to say, we say whatever is most deeply held within our hearts... and no one ever mentions it again.

It's really quite sad to think about the fleetingness and finality of life. No empire that you build or friendship that you make will ever outlast your memory. And your memory itself will expire a couple of decades after you do. Someone might write a book about you, but all the great books were written sixty years ago or more.

You can't change the world. You can't age gracefully. You can't recapture the magnificence of youth. Ultimately, your life is a short rise and a long fall, and that's all there is to it. The end.

 Part Two: How To Live

So, given all of that, how does one make the most out of life?

What most people will suggest is to construct something; either something physical, like an empire, or something meaningful, like an everlasting friendship. Some will tell you that the purpose of life is to reach for the stars, while others will tell you that devoting yourself to the service of others is the highest moral undertaking. As I've already noted, however, you won't be remembered for either of those things, not really. You'll be gone, and so will everyone who ever knew you, and at that point, nothing you will have built will matter to anyone ever again.

Strange as it may seem to think about it, life is not really a source of happiness. Life, broadly construed, can only ever end badly. If you imagine that the end will represent the final chapter in a grand epic, I'm afraid you'll be greatly disappointed. You might look back on a life well-lived, but that will only be a fleeting moment of introspection in a tiny, insignificant story that no one else will ever tell; or remember.

Life, broadly construed, cannot be the source of your happiness. You must find that happiness in life more narrowly construed.

Yesterday, my wife was complaining to me about the lineup of cars she was stuck in as she was driving our daughter to school. When she complained to me, I told her in that in two decades she would give anything to go back to those days. She didn't believe me.

But then, the next day, stuck in a similar lineup, she felt her mind relax. Instead of becoming frustrated by the traffic, she allowed herself to enjoy the one-on-one time she had with our daughter. They talked, they laughed, they enjoyed each other's company, and neither of them wasted any time thinking about being stuck in traffic.

It was a small, insignificant moment in a small and insignificant life. Even so, it was far more satisfying than anything else she could have been doing at that moment. Sure, she could have told herself that she was sacrificing herself for the sake of her child's education and eventual entrance into a better life. But that would have been nonsense. The truth is that a better life was always just staring them both in the face. All my wife had to do was stop complaining and start enjoying her daughter's company.

I'm always surprised when I hear about married people who stop having sex. When you're married, you can have as much sex with your spouse as you both can stand. There is absolutely no rule against it. If you both have some free time and a little privacy, then you both have the ability to do something that a) brings you emotionally closer together, b) improves the quality of your relationship, c) is a lot of fun, d) feels really good, e) instantly improves your mental state... and so on. 

The fact that married people aren't having sex constantly is testament to human beings' tendency to avoid happiness for absolutely no good reason at all. 

It's not just sex, and it's not just traffic. Our whole lives are filled with moments that could either be extremely happy and satisfying, or they could be frustrating and miserable. Why choose miserable? Why not have sex with your spouse? Why not have a good time talking with your daughter when you're stuck in traffic?

Why not turn on your favorite song? Your stereo is right there, for god's sake. Why not read a good book or watch a good movie? Why not have a laugh? Why not play a game or start a nice conversation? 

Why in the hell, when happiness is all around us, do we invest so much time in being miserable? Life is a long, slow funeral dirge. Why on Earth wouldn't we fill every spare moment with a reason to be happy, no matter how small and insignificant that reason might be? Share a kiss, pick a flower, tell a joke, look up at the clouds and appreciate their beauty. Whatever it is that steals you a moment of peace or satisfaction, take it. There is absolutely no reason to spend a moment feeling frustrated or unhappy when you can instantly improve your quality of life simply by taking a look at what's around you and using it to make yourself slightly happier. 

No matter how you choose to live, you will only live this one life, and you will soon be forgotten. Wouldn't it be better to have enjoyed the time you spent here? Wouldn't it be better that you made yourself happy rather than sad?

Isn't that what life is all about?

Mindset

 After having gone through a year's worth of unexplained symptoms and puzzled doctors, in October of 2009, I finally received a frantic call from my primary care physician, telling me to go to the hospital as soon as I possibly could. I arrived at about two o'clock in the afternoon, and was rushed through a series of interviews I can barely remember now. There seem to have been a couple of triage points, several conversations with a nurse practitioner, a lot of waiting around, and then finally a rather anti-climactic visit from an endocrine specialist.

In her Irish accent, she told me, "I don't quite know how to tell you this, but you're diabetic, and..." She trailed off briefly, probably considering whether there was anything emotionally helpful she could provide for me in that moment. Then, apparently deciding that there wasn't, she continued, "We're going to give you an insulin shot today, and--and you're going to be on insulin for the rest of your life."

"What?!"

"Yeah..." she told me. Then she said something that I don't remember, which somewhat conveyed empathy, but which also conveyed the urgency with which she needed to inject insulin into me.

From there, I was led into another room, where another nurse introduced me to my first insulin pen. I hadn't had time to process what was happening to me. This had all happened within about 30 minutes, and the part where I found out that I was henceforth an insulin-dependent diabetic had only happened a couple of minutes ago. These people wouldn't let me catch my breath. I was being rushed from one end of the ward to the next, from room to room, person to person, each one hurrying through a set of instructions that I don't remember; that I never had any chance of ever remembering in the first place. 

The nurse who showed me the insulin pen quickly went through instructions on how to give myself an injection. The tutorial was over in less than a minute, at which point she sort of gestured toward all the paraphernalia in between us and said, "Do you want me to help you with your first shot?"

That was it.

The confusion in my mind suddenly melted away. Everything sort of melted away, everything except a sense of purpose. I said, "Well, I might as well get used to it now. I'll be doing it for the rest of my life." I took the needle and the insulin pen, pulled off the seal, screwed the needle onto the pen, dialed in my dose, jabbed it into my stomach, and pressed the button.

I've been a diabetic ever since.

*        *        *

While I didn't know everything there was to know about managing my diet as a type 1 diabetic, a similar shift happened to me when I got home that evening. One day, I was eating ice cream cake and jalapeno poppers, the next day I was meticulously counting my carbohydrates and denying myself anything that required an injection. 

I don't know how it works for other people, but that's how it worked for me. There was no use crying about every meal I was going to eat from then on. There was no use complaining about it. There was no use comparing my new diet to the freedom and decadence I had enjoyed as a normal, healthy twenty-something only a few hours before. Once my mind had absorbed the fact that I was a type 1 diabetic, my behavior followed. 

Adjusting to a new chronic condition isn't easy, especially if you really enjoyed the life you had lead up to that point. But my thinking was, what other choice do I have? It wasn't as if I could go back to living in a world in which I wasn't diabetic. The task at that point was to figure out how to thrive under my current set of conditions, not despair over what those conditions were. It did take me a long time to fully emotionally accept my condition, but that was a grieving process, not a struggle against reality.

Grief itself is a natural part of human existence. We all grieve. For most people, grief - however emotionally significant it is - does not put a halt to the other aspects of our lives. Grief makes us sad, and causes us to think carefully about the present state of our lives. It isn't a denial of reality, but rather an acknowledgement of it: the person we loved is now gone, the life we led is now impossible, the precious thing we had is now lost. Whatever the cause, grief is a transition from one set of circumstances to another. If someone fails to make the transition, that failure isn't caused by the grief, but by our own refusal to evolve.

*        *        *

Granted, some transitions are easier than others. When a man becomes a diabetic, he transitions from a general identity, like "I am a man," to a new identity that involves the condition: "I am a diabetic man." Seeking out that new identity and discovering what it means on a personal level is a large part of the journey itself. Strange as it may sound to some, I consider this to be an easier transition than when we lose a loved one. I can become a diabetic man, but a man who loses a father cannot become a man without a father. Once you have a father, you are always a person with a father, even after you lose him. 

So, I do understand that some transitions are harder than others, that some grief is more uniquely difficult to overcome, and that one person's struggles don't always map with parity to another person's struggles.

Even so, grief is a transition. No matter how difficult, and no matter how long it takes to fully process, grief is a doorway into another room, a next chapter of life. (Luckily for us, not every new chapter of life requires that we grieve to make the transition!) What some struggle with is acknowledging that the previous chapter has already ended; that room no longer exists. Either we step through our grief, into the new room, or we try to exist in a nothing-space, an emotional nether-region.

What we can't do is go backwards.

*        *        *

A friend of mine recently committed to making a positive change toward better health and fitness. He made his commitment public in a bid to keep himself accountable. I congratulated him and made myself available to him; after all, I do happen to know a few things about health and fitness. He confessed that he felt a little intimidated by me, and said, "Anyone who has run 30+ miles has a different set of mental skills than me."

This is a good friend, but clearly he doesn't read my blog, ha ha...

I wanted to tell him about the power of mindset. I wanted to tell him about my firm belief, confirmed again and again in a variety of different experiences, that everyone has all the same stuff. After all, we are all human beings. While our genetics all differ slightly, none of us is so different that he has a completely different mental skill set. 

I also wanted to explain to him that this very notion, the idea that something immutable between us has caused me to pursue a lifetime of fitness while causing him to pursue something else entirely, is the belief that limits his progress. The worst thing we can ever tell ourselves as we pursue a goal is that we are fundamentally incapable of being the kind of person who excels at such goals. 

No, the first step toward achieving any goal is acknowledging the reality that such a goal is achievable by people like us. Why pursue something if, by definition, you're not the kind of person who can attain it? Instead, we must reach for our aspirations under the belief that, truly, we can do it. That doesn't mean for certain that we will, but isn't it nice to know that it's possible? Indeed, isn't it necessary to know that it's possible? Has anyone ever achieved the impossible?

I don't recall ever hearing an Olympian explain in an interview, "I knew all along that everyone else was faster than I am and that I didn't have the right stuff to win an Olympic gold medal, but by the end of the race - gee whiz! - I had won!"

*        *        *

Of course, mindset isn't merely about achieving something. The reason that sorting out your mindset has the effect of helping you achieve something is because if we fixate on our limiting beliefs or on transitions we haven't been able to make, then new things we want to do are just off the table. In a way, it's less about having a "positive mindset" than it is about not having a negative one. 

Any pessimist realist will tell you that positive thinking isn't enough to get you where you want to be. You also have to put in all the hard work, and get a few lucky breaks along the way, and eventually serendipity happens. However, negative thinking will definitely screw you over before you even get started. 

And if that's what negative thinking does to your attempts at achieving something, think about what it does for your daily life. We don't always want to get up and get ready for work in the morning, but who do you think is going to have a better day: the man who groans and grumbles and frowns and complains the whole time, or the man who focuses his attention on whatever he has to look forward to that day? 

I can tell you from experience that my days pass a lot more quickly when I get to drive my daughter to her ballet class once a week. Those are simply wonderful days. We hurry to get ready, and then we drive together, just the two of us, to her class; we listen to our favorite music as we drive, or else we have a nice conversation together. Then she goes to class, and I go for a walk around the scenic neighborhoods surrounding her dance studio. When it's over, we drive home, she tells me about her class, and then we get takeout from a favorite restaurant and everybody sits upstairs eating and watching our favorite TV shows. It's become a whole ritual, one that we all look forward to, and one that we all find very satisfying. 

Not every day can be that fun, but simply by virtue of the fact that my Wednesday evenings are so nice, my Wednesday work days pass by quickly and happily. That's a positive mindset for you.

You might have had a "divorced friend," a friend who went through a particularly bad break-up, and it soured his or her perspective on everything. So every time you talk with your friend about your own spouse or partner, your comments are met with derision, or sarcasm, or else steered toward a rant about your friend's ex and how bad they made everything. How much fun is it to spend time with these people? 

A few days ago, I wrote about how, after going through my own break up, I decided to turn myself into the kind of person who my ideal partner would want to date; unlike other people I knew, who allowed their break-ups to make them cynical. I think the results speak for themselves.

*        *        *

All of these things come down to having the right mindset. Whether you're trying to overcome a bad situation, trying to achieve something remarkable, trying to lose weight, trying to find the love of your life, or just trying to make it through Wednesday, having the right mindset is the power that will carry you through.

And if it doesn't? You're still not out anything, because you will have spent most of the day thinking positive things and being happy, rather than thinking negative things and being sad. I'm not a fan of Pascal's Wager, but in this case I think it works. If you maintain a positive mindset, and things don't go your way, then you haven't really lost anything. If you maintain a negative mindset, things still might not go your way, but what you've lost is the happiness you could have felt if you had a better attitude. And in the meantime, that positive thinking really could end up paying off, and then you have both the happiness your attitude brought you, along with whatever victory you were hoping for at the end of the day. 

How To Meet The Love Of Your Life

When I was fresh out of college, I was working at a place where lots of young people my age worked. It was a lot of fun, because we all liked to laugh and hang out together. Every day at work was like spending time with a big group of friends. Those are always the best workplaces, at least when you're young.

One of my fellow coworkers - let's call her S - was something of a workplace stereotype: she was young, very beautiful, had recently been through a breakup, and had thus started to sleep around a lot, and consequently a lot of the young men in the workplace had started to pay a lot of extra attention to her. She enjoyed the attention, and they enjoyed giving it to her, and the rest, as they say, is history. 

At the time, I didn't fully understand this dynamic. It wasn't until a few years later, after I had worked for a few different employers and observed the same phenomenon again and again that I finally wrapped my head around it. I remember working in a big office in Ottawa, and there was one very attractive and newly hired young woman there. Let's call her L. L spent half her time joking innocently with the men in the office and the other half of the time talking about her boyfriend. But she was 22 years old and fresh out of college, and all the creepy old men in the office knew she was going to soon break up with her boyfriend and inevitably start sleeping around. They were hanging on for their chance, when it inevitably happened. And it did. 

I don't fault anyone for "shooting their shot," but it bothered me a lot that many of the guys surrounding L all the time were twenty years older than she was, and married. They were creeps. L couldn't see it, because she was young, naive, and convinced that all these creeps were just fun guys to hang out with at work. It was a path to being used.

That was years after I met S, but S was in a similar situation. S had a lot of other issues going on with her, as well: she had unresolved parental baggage, had experienced a certain amount of abuse, was possibly bisexual in an extremely conservative community, and so on. But she was also a very nice young lady with a terrific sense of humor, and she made great conversation. So she and I became fast friends.

One time, S and I were talking. She mentioned that she gets lonely, and that was one of the reasons she got attached to so many guys. I suggested that she try hanging out with friends instead. I told her that she had lots of friends, and she should spend her time with them if she felt lonely.

When she heard this, she laughed, and said, "And what if I feel like having sex? Should I call up my friend Breanne and say, 'Hey, can you help me out with this?'"

I laughed, too. But I didn't reply.

*        *        *

Although S and I were good friends and very compatible at the time, we never got together. I ended up in a relationship with a very different kind of woman. Let's call that woman M. M was funny, smart, and one of the most terrific friends I ever had.

M was also depressed, a fact I didn't initially notice or understand about her. Being with M gradually slid into a very difficult relationship. Prozac Nation is one of the most accurate portrayals of depression I have ever seen on film; being in a relationship with M often times felt a lot like being a character in Prozac Nation. Perhaps a better man could have persevered in a relationship like that. As for me, I didn't have the right stuff. M and I went our separate ways.

Building a life together with someone involves creating a trajectory for yourself. Your mutual aspirations fuse together into a coherent plan forward, and everything you do becomes a march toward your aspirational goal. Or, one of you is crushingly depressed and neither of you can see beyond the fog descending all around you. A bad relationship - even between good people - will rob you of your sense of self and steal from you any kind of trajectory you once had. You become a very different person than you are used to being, a very different person than the one you always wanted to be. Your life becomes a game of perpetuating the relationship, of always trying to save it from the inevitable.

Truly, you can live your whole life that way. What happened to me, however, was that I made a sort of rational realization one day: If I fight this hard in a relationship this bad, imagine what I might be able to achieve if I fought that hard for a relationship that was even just a little bit better. I knew what kind of effort I was capable of; I had been putting in that effort for years. What if there was someone out there who was capable of putting in even a fraction of that effort... for me?

*        *        *

Like many people who go through break-ups, I had spent months breaking up with M and not even realizing it. I got out of a dead-end public service job and into a really exciting consulting job. I stopped shaving my head. I started training hard as a runner again. I wrote a dozen really good songs. I even changed what soap I was using. It was a metamorphosis I simply didn't recognize until M and I called things off, and I moved out. Moving out even entailed getting a new apartment, and buying a new car. And of course that new job required a new wardrobe. An outside observer might have said that I had become a completely different person, but the truth is that I had become more of myself. 

That in itself is a whole story that needs telling, but what matters here is that I had stripped myself of the pieces of my identity that weren't actually mine to begin with. Those pieces belonged to the relationship I was in, and the identity that went along with it. The new pieces were the ones I put there by choice, deliberately, based on my own beliefs about who I really am.

This was my crossroads. At this point, I could go the way of S or L. I was young, gainfully employed, fit, attractive, and surrounded by beautiful people who also didn't mind being surrounded by me. 

*        *        *

I had already undergone a significant metamorphosis. It occurred to me that I might take it further. What if, instead of just becoming a better person, I decided to shoot for the moon? What if, instead of living a better life, I aimed to live an ideal life? 

I thought about what an ideal life might actually be like. If I could be doing anything with myself, what would that be? What is the kind of thing I've always dreamed of, but which I've never dared to attempt?

Well, people have all kinds of dreams. Some dream of being rich and famous, others dream of being captains of industry or CEOs; some want to become artists and undertake the Bohemian life, others have wanderlust and set out to see the world. Some have simple dreams, like being parents or living in an old farmhouse; others hatch complex schemes of achieving a list of accomplishments at specified points in their lives.

When I thought about the kind of life I dreamed of living, I thought about a peaceful little beach I saw in Central America. I thought about the humble but beautiful coffee estates in the mountains of El Salvador. I imagined a life in which I could live in one of those nice, small little open-air villas, drinking coffee, picking up groceries on a motorcycle, and spending my days strumming my guitar on the beach. It's not for everyone, but it's what I wanted. Maybe, while I was there, I would meet a local woman who wanted to spend her time similarly. 

With this thought in mind, I started taking small steps toward my dream. What would it take to accomplish something like that? I knew I needed a lot more money, and so I started working on my professional development. I started practicing my Spanish daily, and listening to Spanish language music and radio programs. I got rid of my TV and spent that time reading books and bettering myself. 

For a while, that became my life. I worked hard all day, put in overtime, went home and worked out, ate dinner, and then read and studied. In a way, it was lonely, but it was also extremely productive. I felt optimistic for the future, and each small thing I did in a day seemed like a tiny step I was taking in the direction of my dreams.

That was when I discovered the secret.

*        *        *

I had a vision of the future and a small amount of momentum taking me toward it. What I soon discovered is that people gravitate toward these kinds of vectors. In the dating market and the market for friendship, people are attracted to those who know where they're going, even if that destination is different from what they themselves prefer.

You could think of it like this: millions of other 28-year-old men in the world had good jobs and a reasonably sunny disposition; only a few knew what they wanted out of life.

Of course, here I must pause to point out that many 28-year-old men know what they want out of life, and what they want is lots of casual sex and some good times. That's not a vision for a lifetime, that's a vision for next Saturday night. People aren't attracted to a great vision of next Saturday night - at least, not the kind of people you want to spend your life with. People are attracted to a great vision for a lifetime. 

I met many women during this period of my life, and more to the point, many women met me. That is, I suddenly found myself the center of a great deal of positive attention. That was great. Although I met many women, I did not date many women. This is where my path diverged from that of S and L.

I had another friend we'll call A. A lived thousands of miles away, and was in a similar situation as I was. We both had our own chosen visions of the future and wanted to achieve them. We were both interested in finding a person to share it with. But, while I was searching for the kind of woman I definitely knew wouldn't hurt me like M did, A was not being as deliberate in her search.

Then, one day, we were IM-ing about our respective dating lives. While I was working my way closer and closer toward the kind of women I felt really good about dating, A had been on a string of dates and was casually having sex with a number of men, with no serious prospects on the horizon.

I started telling A about my philosophy, about how I had devised a vision of the future that I wanted, and about how the women I wanted to date were all people who respected that vision and wanted to be a part of it, people who could nurture me as a person as I nurtured them, people I could fall in love with. And the more I held that in mind as my ideal, the closer I seemed to get.

Then my friend A said, "I have physical needs, and I need to get those met." She sounded just like S. And just like S, A was taking herself further and further away from positive, nurturing relationships, positioning herself to be used by opportunistic partners who were not interested in her long-term vision.

And the kicker is: A was willing to give it all up to get her physical needs met. I've been horny, too, but Jesus Christ.

*        *        *

Flash forward some thirteen years.

I am married to a wonderful woman I met during that phase of my life. We moved somewhere warm and pleasant, and possibly temporary. We still share that vision of the future that I developed long ago, but we also recognize that if we achieve the same headspace in a different location, that will be okay, too. But we are still taking steps toward it. Meanwhile, we have two beautiful children, a comfortable living situation, all of our basic needs are met, and we have a wonderful, loving relationship.

A is doing okay. She could be doing better. Her ambition is a shadow of what it once was, and she went through a long period of very mentally difficult years.

S is also doing okay, but she never went anywhere in life. She's a single mother. She's still beautiful, but she lives a hard life.

I didn't keep up with L.

I also didn't keep up with M, but by all accounts, she is doing okay, too, and I'm happy about that.

It's easy to compare myself to people who are doing a lot worse than I am, and of course that isn't really the point. At the same time, I also can't deny that my life is going really well, and my choices and philosophies have played a direct role in achieving that result. I'm still on a positive trajectory, and I'm the one who put myself on that trajectory. Life is good for me in large part because I chose a good path.

And I met and married the love of my life. I achieved this by arriving at a vision of what kind of person I wanted to be in an ideal state, and taking consistent steps toward that goal. In doing so, I instantly became a more attractive person to the people around me. People are hungry for positive directions, they want to be a part of a good thing. Even if they don't want to be a part of it, they want to spectate.

So, developing a dream of what kind of good person you want to be, and attempting to become that good person, is how you meet the love of your life.

Texas: The Ups And The Downs

Over at Econlog, Bryan Caplan has written a post about his impressions of Texas, based on his recent trip/speaking tour of the state. He correctly identifies many of the multiplicitous positive aspects of Texas and life here. 

 Texas has a lot going for it, but there are a few downsides. The main downsides are:

(1) Sprawl: I'm all for new development, but a sea of identical-looking houses interspersed by the occasional fast food chicken restaurant does not make for very pleasant living.

(2) Antipathy for plants? The older areas of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex are very nice indeed, with enormous oak trees and beautiful parks. In the newer, sprawling areas, all trees are instantly mowed-down and replaced with lawn and concrete. This makes the landscape uglier, hotter, and more prone to flooding.

(3) Government corruption: Many of Texas' infrastructure projects are simply boondoggles, transfers of wealth from the taxpayers to the construction-company friends of politicians. Road construction is the classic example, in which miles of highway are torn up, and then rebuilt exactly as it was before. Rather than improving or widening the roads, they simply tear them up and rebuild them again, over and over, in an endless transfer of taxpayer money to construction companies.

There are a few other things I could point to that I dislike, but the simple fact of the matter is that no location is perfect-perfect. But, for a happy mix of good weather, fine people, excellent economic opportunities, and low cost of living, Texas circa-2020 is about as good a place as you're likely to find out there in the world. 

I think most of the people who dislike it here have what I would call niche criteria when it comes to choosing a place to live. You won't find purple mountain majesties or a large Lebanese diaspora here, for example. Most of what Texas is lacking consists of these sorts of niches. If someone were to say, "I'll never live in a place where I can't have a weasel as a pet!" or "I insist on paying a state-level income tax!" then, okay, Texas might not be for you.

Still, for the average Joe, Texas is a great place to be. No wonder people keep moving here.

The Fountain Of Youth

It's hard to write a post like this without either bragging or sneering, but I assure you, I am doing neither.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at the grocery store. I opted to use the self checkout kiosks, but because I was buying wine, a store clerk had to come check my ID. When she saw my date of birth, she said, "Oh my god!" I asked her what was the problem, and she said, nothing, only that she was surprised that I was as old as I was. "I would have believed '89." In truth, she had thought that was more than ten years younger than I really am. In other words, she thought I was in my twenties.

Yesterday, we spent the afternoon in a local park. The park has a short trail down to what passes for a "waterfall" in flat Texas prairie country. It's a nice, short hike, and somewhat steep in parts. My GPS watch had it that the whole thing was 0.88 miles round trip. I checked it when we arrived at the waterfall itself, and it read 0.36. As you can see, this is not much of a "hike," but much more of a short walk down the hill and back up.

To be sure, it was hot outside, and the path is steep in some places, requiring us to choose our steps carefully in order to make it back up. But a 0.4 mile walk up the hill can only be so gruelling. I'd call it pretty much nothing.

So, I was surprised when I noticed that a solid majority of the other people in the park that day came up the hill panting and gasping for air, plopping themselves down in the nearest shady spot to catch some oxygen. I mean, they were really out of it. By all appearances, they looked as though they had just finished an 8-mile tempo run or something.

Later in the day, I went for a run. It was very hot outside, so I was running shirtless, with my hair pulled back under a bandana, and a pair of sunglasses on. As I crossed the street at one busy intersection, someone from a passing car called out a question to me: "Hey! How old are you?" I didn't have the impression that they thought I was extremely old. I didn't have a chance to answer, because I was running fast and in the opposite direction of the passing car, but I smiled to myself as I thought about what that person would think if they knew I was 40 years old.

A few years back, I was doing box jumps at the gym. A twenty-something fellow gym-goer came up to me between sets and told me, "I hope I can do stuff like that when I'm your age!"

"It's use it or lose it," I told him. "The only reason I can do this is because I won't stop."

Like I said at the outset of this post, I'm not saying this to brag about myself or to criticize other people. I take all of these situations -- and the many more I could list -- not as evidence of my great fittness, but rather evidence of how far people will let themselves go.

Ten years ago, I used to be amazed by the fact that most people my age had no idea what their own bodies were capable of; that most of them had no idea what their own bodies were supposed to look like, because they had never taken the time to get in really good shape. The human body performs differently, and of course looks differently, when it's fit. Overweight people, people with "dad bods," skeletal waifs, and the like have really never experienced things like agility, being sure on their feet, being able to lift heavy things with confidence and carry them across the room or something. And they don't know what their own bodies would look like if they did.

But nowadays, I don't really think about that anymore. Nowadays, I am struck by how much faster most people are aging than I am. I watch as friends and acquaintences slowly put on more and more weight, unable to tame their cravings or counteract them with physical activity. I watch as even young people give up on sports and fitness, except the few who go to the gym, mostly to look sexy, attract a mate, get married, and then ultimately do what they had planned on doing all along: let themselves go. I hear people talk about their aches and pains, their inability or unwillingness to walk any short distance, their struggle with having to climb a few flights of stairs.

It's the practical problems they all have that make the biggest impression on me. The atrophy of their bodies has made even the simplest aspects of life difficult. Small wonder so many of them drive their cars even when they're only going to the park a block away. Small wonder they all seem to be aging so much faster than me.

I spend a lot of time in the sun, and I have a chronic disease that is aging my body at an accelerated rate. It should be I who looks older than others. But I don't, and my best guess is because I have always adhered to the adage of "use it or lose it."

The fountain of youth is real. It is simply the act of sticking with a good diet and a high level of physical activity throughout your life. Don't stop. Don't let yourself go. Don't put on 15, 20, 50, 100... pounds and then turn around one day and realize that you look 40 or older when you're really 30 or younger. Keep yourself healthy, well into old age. Use it or lose it.

A Belated Thank-You

Yesterday, while running, I thought back to an old experience I had as a teenager.

Like many teenage boys, I suffered from Osgoode-Schlatter syndrome, which is basically a severe case of "growing pains." It's worse than it sounds. The overactive growth plates in my knees were producing so much bone tissue that they swelled up painfully, and I was unable to run for almost a year. My legs were constantly in pain. To this day, I still have lumps of bone on my knees as a result of my condition.

In Autumn of the worst year of my Osgoode-Schlatter syndrome, I had big plans to run on the high school cross-country team - or at least with the team - despite my being only in the eighth grade. The pain dashed my hopes, but my sister was still on the team, and so I still found myself attending all the cross-country meets and watching my friends run and have fun on the team. For a young man whose only connection to joy was running, it was difficult to watch.

One day, at a cross-country meet, it became a bit too much for me, so went back to my parents' car, sat down in the passenger's seat, and cried. I just wanted to be alone and cry. To my chagrin, the head cross-country coach - an incredibly gentle and kind-hearted man - saw me crying in the car and came to console me. He put a hand on my arm and did his best. I don't remember saying anything. I think I was trying so hard to hold back my tears and make it look like I wasn't crying, that I couldn't do much but make monosyllabic grunts to everything he said. He stayed with me a long time, then caringly said good bye with a few more words of encouragement and went back to the team.

This got me to thinking about another coach at my high school. He was a football coach, and I didn't play football, so I only knew him as my history teacher. He was a very witty guy, and always seemed happy. I enjoyed his history class a lot, and I figured he must like me okay, mainly because I laughed at all his jokes. But one day, at a parent-teacher conference, he very seriously and very meaningfully told my mother that if she ever wanted me out of the house, she should send me to his.

I don't know why my mother told me about that. I also don't really know why he said that, what he could have seen in me that would give him any indication that that was something that ought to be said. At the time, I found the whole situation confusing. But now, with 25 years of hindsight serving me, I'm overcome by that man's kindness.

The truth is that I was slipping further and further into depression when I was in high school, a depression that would stretch across the next decade of my life. When you're suffering from something like that, and especially when you're a teenager suffering from something like that, it's common to scapegoat your problems. Thus, at the time, I ascribed all of my "depression" (I didn't call it that back then) to the rather oppressive religious-conservative community and their relative inability to relate to a somewhat eccentric, differentiated person like me.

As I had it, "people hated me." A look back with better hindsight, though, proves otherwise. Here are two important members of the community who could see how much I was suffering, and who did reach out to make my life better. The truth is, my community could have been there for me, if I had only allowed them to be.

Of course, that would have required a more complete understanding of my situation. I was emotionally stunted and ill-equipped to have normal social relationships of any kind with any person whatsoever. I was a broken human being. I needed years of personal growth to achieve whatever semblance of normalcy and mental health I've managed to achieve. (I am certainly no longer depressed, and haven't been for a long, long time.) It's too much to ask of my teenage self to recognize what was being done for me, on a completely kind-hearted and unsolicited basis. I didn't have the emotional tools required to recognize it.

But I recognize it now. Furthermore, I recognize that these two examples I've provided aren't the only examples. Many people would have helped me, if I could have been helped. It's not their fault that I couldn't be helped at the time. All the same, 25 years later, I appreciate what they did for me. It stuck with me. I'm thankful for it. And I'm very sorry I couldn't see it then and avail myself of the support that was being offered.

I'm sorry that I wasn't the person then that I am now. But to those who ever extended a hand and tried to help a young man who needed it, but couldn't see it, I offer you a belated and very heart-felt thank you. Thank you.

You Don't Need A Reason To Break Up With Someone (So Don't Wait For One)

I answer a lot of questions on Quora. One of the major topics of my answers is romantic relationships. It's not that I'm an expert player or a really great Don Juan, and that's not generally the kind of question people are asking about, anyway. No, people are asking a different sort of relationship question on Quora.

What seems to stump people is what I would describe as "the basics of common decency." In short, how to be nice to your romantic partner. This is apparently a mystery to some people.

A good example is a question I answered yesterday. A woman wanted to know if she should issue an ultimatum to her boyfriend: Include me in your social media life, or I'm dumping you! There are two components to this issue, and both of which are completely incomprehensible.

In the first place, the woman's boyfriend was a real piece of work. They'd been together for three years, and in three years, the man had kept his girlfriend blocked on social media. Blocked. He never posted anything about her on social media, and he kept her blocked, while for three years she begged him to unblock her and to post a photo of her from time to time. In a Quora comment to me, the woman explained why she thought he was doing this. I won't include that information here, because it's not necessary to include her speculation when the facts alone are bizarre enough and incomprehensible enough to tell the story.

People, if you're keeping your significant others blocked on social media for three years, you're headed for a break-up.

But that's just one incomprehensible component to this situation. The other is the woman's response to the situation. She thought it was time to issue an ultimatum. I probably don't need to explain here why ultimatums are a bad way to conduct oneself in interpersonal conflict. They're aggressive, threatening, and manipulative. But, for three years, this woman was blocked from her own partner's social media and her response to this was to ride it out, ride it out, ride it out, and then finally issue an ultimatum! This is wrong.

What I think is going on in the woman's situation is something that seems common in romantic relationships. People don't break up for the right reasons, even when it's right to break up.

The right reasons to break up are: "Your values are incompatible with mine," or "Our relationship does not make me happy," or "Our lives are on two different and incompatible trajectories." Note that there is not much to explain here. If you ask your partner, "Why are you breaking up with me?" and they answer simply, "This relationship does not provide me with the kind of happiness I'm looking for in a relationship" then the conversation is over. You could try to follow up with, "But why??" You won't get a useful answer, though, because there is no useful answer. One partner's life goals aren't aligned with the relationship, that's why.

It doesn't mean that one person in the relationship is "bad" or did something wrong. It doesn't mean that there was a bunch of conflict in the relationship that couldn't be resolved (although there might have been). We don't need any more specific a reason to break up than the simple fact that we have other ideas about what constitutes a satisfactory relationship and other preferences in a relationship. This doesn't have to be "justified" with evidence or a catalog of unacceptable behaviors. We can walk away from a relationship for any reason at all. No one needs to be told what they did wrong; they might not have done anything wrong. It doesn't matter.

In this woman's case, however, the man had indeed done something wrong. It was bizarre, suspicious, and emotionally closed that her boyfriend blocked her on social media. The woman should have walked away from that relationship early on. Somehow, she got it into her head that if she just resolved the social media conflict, the rest of the relationship would have been fine. But that couldn't have been true. In the end, the two of them wanted different things out of a relationship.

And so, the woman didn't need to issue her boyfriend an ultimatum. She didn't need to take to Quora to find out "what to do." She didn't need a specific reason or a final cataclysm to justify her break-up. She just needed to break up with the guy. For all I know, he might be a great guy with a very quirky way of managing his social media. That doesn't matter at all if his girlfriend wants something else out of the relationship. It's no offense, it's just a difference in relationship needs. Au revoir.

Imagine how much time this woman could have saved -- and how many years of fond memories she could have had -- had she simply trained herself to recognize early on that her relationship wasn't giving her what she wanted. Imagine how much happier she could have been if she had simply allowed herself to break up with a man for the simple reason that the relationship wasn't doin' it for her, whatever "it" was. She wouldn't have needed to construct a narrative about his social media habits, and she wouldn't have felt the need to design a break-up rule and rig an ultimatum to illustrate the breaking of the rule, to justify a final break-up.

What a waste of three years.

Exciting Times

I've been listening to a lot of Sublime lately. Sublime sold 6 million albums shortly after their frontman and principle songwriter, Brad Nowell, overdosed on heroin. The death prompted many people at the time to wonder what might have been, since Nowell was a gifted singer and lyricist, an excellent guitar player, and a great songwriter. Sublime was a really good band.

Listening to their albums, I have become absolutely engrossed in the artistic world created by these recordings. Sublime's use of recorded speeches and clips from movies, fused with their deft hip hop sampling techniques and punk and reggae rock served to make their albums feel more like movies than like a mere sequence of songs. Each album is a little treat, from beginning to end; we step into Sublime's world for an hour or so, we enjoy ourselves, and then we wave goodbye. It is an extremely good use of the album platform, showing us how albums can be works of art unto themselves, over and above the songs themselves.

In that context, it is interesting to note the lyrical subject matter of Sublime's work. A lot of their songs are autobiographical. "I don't cry when my dog runs away" is not just a chirpy mantra; Nowell's dog really did run away. He really did have a dalmation. He really did get high. He really did pawn all his gear. I don't know how much of Sublime's lyrics are fictitious, but I do know that a lot of it comprises stories of their lives on the southern California punk/ska scene. It's gritty, and it's real: crime, drugs, sex, poverty, addiction, and lots of music.

What strikes me about this, however, is that when someone actually lives this kind of a life, it is not nearly so glamorous or exciting as it sounds when Sublime sings about it. When you're dog runs away, it's not an adventure; it's just a lot of feeling bad and being unable to do anything about it, and maybe hanging some posters around the neighborhood. Music is awesome and performing is great fun, but there is nothing about performing music that is really worth telling stories about. You get up on stage, you perform the music, you exit. And I do not suppose I need to go into detail about how utterly boring the life of a drug addict is. The only exciting thing a drug addict experiences is the high, and by the time addiction really sinks in, the high isn't even worth much anymore. It's more like misery-avoidance, especially when it comes to heroin.

In short, Nowell lived a life that was not exciting, but he wrote songs as if it were the most exciting thing that ever happened. That is a wonderful skill, and more to the point, it is a wonderful attitude with which to approach your own life.

I once found myself drinking at a bar in Edmonton, Alberta. A large, jovial man approached me and struck up a conversation. He was an interesting character, from Norway, who had some bombastic ideas, or perhaps it was the liquor talking. Either way, we entertained each other for hours over many beers, and then parted ways.

At one point during our conversation, he naturally asked me what I did for a living. At the time, I was a bank teller. I told him this, and he asked what that meant, so I explained how bank tellers in credit processing centers in Canada in the early 2000s stamped, counted, and sorted transaction receipts. (This kind of job probably doesn't exist anymore -- thanks, technology!) It was a dumb job and not particularly interesting to explain to gregarious drunken strangers, but the man took it all in. Then, he said, "You shouldn't say it that way. You should put it like this..." He then proceeded to describe my own job back to me, using much more exciting language, and making it sound like truly interesting work.

His point was simply this: No matter what dumb, boring thing you have to do in life, make it seem amazing.

Brad Nowell and this Norwegian stranger I met had a similar approach to their own existence. Whatever it was they were doing, they wanted it to be exciting, even if it was just sorting transaction receipts or lying around in a drug-addled stupor in a shitty apartment while the dog runs away. Obviously, I don't recommend getting addicted to heroin. The lesson to take from this is that the difference between your life and a more amazing, adventurous life is often not in what you do, but how you tell the story to yourself. You might live a pretty mundane life; but you might also live a pretty exciting life and just not realize it.

I think about this a bit when I'm running. From my perspective, a 6-mile run around one of my usual loops is a pretty mundane way to pass the time. I can't hardly even get excited about it anymore. It's just part of my day, no different than pulling on a pair of pants. But what would an onlooker see? He'd see a guy in a bandana and a fancy pair of sunglasses coolly striding down a scenic river path with the Fort Worth City skyline as a backdrop. It's practically a postcard, if I could only see it from that onlooker's point of view.

This is really nothing more than finding meaning in your life. If you see your life as a bunch of boring routines, or as an unremarkable thing not worth talking about, then you will probably tend to live your life that way, too. If you instead frame your life as a series of exciting adventures, it's possible to grow more enamored with what you're doing.

Kiss your wife when she comes home. It could be just a kiss to say hello. It could also be an integral part of your epic love story. Make your usual breakfast in the morning. It could be just an almost automatic process of pouring cereal and milk into a bowl. It could also be an indelible part of your idiom:

This is especially important for children, because children haven't been alive very long and haven't yet reached the point where absolutely everything is potentially mundane and boring. Fostering in them a sense of story-telling in their daily lives could potentially help them construct a more satisfying personal narrative. But you'll never instill that in a child until you know how to instill it in yourself.

On Not Going Through The Motions

Here's a comment I left at Marginal Revolution: 

Right, just like reading a book confers no knowledge. You have to do more than just get through the book. You have to pay attention to what it says and think about it. Same deal with exercise. I know people who have been running 10-minute miles for 30 years. Imagine running for 30 years and never once breaking a 6-minute mile. They're putting in the time, but not mindfully. 

Now, the wrong conclusion to draw from that is "Exercise doesn't help most people." The right conclusion to draw is, "Don't just go through the motions when you're living your life. Do things deliberately." But do you think the average person even wants to become aware of the difference? Inevitability is the mental inertia that drives all other psychological defense mechanisms.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to re-blog this comment... 

If I had a nickel for every time someone said to be, "But Ryan, not everyone wants to be a fast runner!" I would be a multi-millionaire. This level of whining has always missed the point. I'd like to take a moment to explain why.

I know people who have cooked almost every single day of their adult lives, but who have never put forth any effort into becoming a better cook. On one level, I understand this, because I usually have to cook dinner for everyone in my house, and that daily task quite often becomes a chore and a time-suck that I'd rather trade for the chance to practice my guitar for an hour or get a bonus workout in.

But on another level, I think it's crazy. How can you do something that you have to do pretty much every day of your life, and not make some minimal effort to turn it into a more pleasant task? How can you steam vegetables every day of your life, and never wonder what it might be like to saute something in garlic and olive oil for a change? One does not require a cooking class to sprinkle some rosemary on a sprig of broccoli.

It's not from a lack of talent, skill, or knowledge that people wind up in a situation in which they are completely incapable of substantive life-improvements. It's a mental block preventing them from making a change, and most likely a defense mechanism belying an unwillingness to change.

In order to make your life better -- better in any way whatsoever -- you have to identify a problem that needs to be solved, along with specific steps that will solve the problem.

If you date someone for another year and don't end up getting any closer to marrying that person, you're not dating them correctly. If you dedicate yourself to diet and exercise for a year and don't feel healthier, then you're not working out correctly, or you're not eating correctly. If you run every day and never get any faster, then you're not running correctly. If you study Spanish for a year and can't carry on a simple conversation with a Spanish-speaker, then you're not studying Spanish correctly.

This is not an attack on you. This is not my proclamation of moral or didactic superiority. This is a simple set of facts. If you engage in a skill that never improves, then you are not building that skill the right way. You are merely going through the motions.

But, you protest, why does it have to be about improvement? Why can't I just be happy with where I am? The simple answer is this: You can be, but you're just going through the motions.

Imagine being married for twenty years and you never get any better at pleasing your partner in bed. Wouldn't your partner have a legitimate grievance? Couldn't he or she say that you just go through the motions and never spend time on your partner's needs? Well, I'm here to tell you that everything is like that. Running, cooking, learning, parenting, being a better friend, whatever it is. Any skill that can be honed must be honed, and if you're not honing it, then you're going through the motions.

Is it bad to just go through the motions? Not necessarily. I'm not very good when it comes to playing Settlers of Catan, and I don't have any desire to be very good at it. When we play that game, I go through the motions, I enjoy it for what it is, and I leave it at that. One cannot hone every imaginable skill. One must prioritize.

But, if you're not prioritizing some of your skills, chores, relationships, or etc., then you're living your entire life by going through the motions. That's your right, but it won't make you happy in the long run.

Focus On What You Control

Needless to say, it was devastating to be diagnosed with type 1 diabetes after living thirty years of healthy, active life, but I woke up the following morning and proceeded to live, not as a "newly diagnosed type 1 diabetic," but as someone who was living with diabetes. What I mean is that I didn't carve out adjustment time for myself, I simply switched "cold turkey" to a lower-carb diet and a more routine lifestyle. I credit this decision for insulating me from some of the depression that many other diabetics often grapple with.

What worked about this wasn't that I made a quick adjustment, and therefore everything turned out fine. Rather, I employed a well-known trick for fostering resilience: focusing on what I control. My diagnosis and my new state as a disabled person with a chronic, life-changing illness was beyond my control. Grieving for that kind of change is worthwhile, but ruminating on it is bad for resilience. What I could control was my diet and my lifestyle habits. I could control which foods I decide to put in my body, what and how much exercise I got, what time I went to bed and got up in the morning, how to plan my insulin doses, and so on. By making these control points the focus of my new diagnosis, I adapted quickly and avoided emotional pitfalls that could have been a real challenge for me, and that have understandably been a serious challenge for others like me.

Quite obviously, this concept applies to all aspects of life, not just chronic disease. In fact, it applies to small discomforts every bit as much as it applies to major life-changes.

The other day, for example, I was driving in rush hour traffic when another motorist suddenly decided to do something inconsiderate of me. The fact that I don't even remember what happened is strong evidence to me that my reaction was precisely as it should have been. Rather than getting upset, swearing, and thinking of all the reasons the other motorist shouldn't have done what he did and should have done something else instead, I told myself the following: "Rather than thinking something negative, why not think of three positive things instead?" I'll admit that it was difficult to think of three positive things about an unpleasant traffic situation, but I managed to do it. (One of things was pretty thinly positive, but positive nonetheless: "I'm happy that I'm raising my daughter to be a more considerate person than that.")

Sometimes, at work, I'm asked to compensate for the poor work of someone on another team. This could be really frustrating, and in the past I've grumbled to myself about it quite a bit. In truth, however, there isn't much I can control about a situation like this. If my boss tells me to work on something, I generally have to work on it. I can't fully control my work assignments, so I'm better off not ruminating on whether certain assignments "should" fall to me or not. Instead, I can invest that energy in thinking of the things I can control: my personal scheduling, my ability to take advantage of peripheral opportunities, the extent to which I can delegate some tasks, and so on. By focusing on these things, I can avoid dwelling too long on the emotional sunk costs of "unfairness" and keep my work moving in a positive direction.

I imagine that something similar will crop up next week, when my daughter starts school for the first time. I'll have to rearrange my work hours so that I can pick her up on time. Working earlier, and then watching over her in the afternoon, means that I'll have fewer viable hours during which I can exercise, so I'll need to think of a way to stay as fit as I want to while still meeting my responsibilities to my daughter. I could waste a lot of mental energy mourning the loss of my current routine, or I could focus on the things I can control to maximize the time I'll have. I mentioned calisthenics at work, but I have more options. I can go to the gym on my lunch hour, I can jump rope at home. If I can't sneak out for a run or a bike ride, I can use an indoor trainer to get a good ride in. I can re-vamp my breakfast so that it takes less time to prepare. I can work out with my daughter, too.

Well, these are all examples from my own life. What examples from your life can you think of? 

Painless Micro-Changes

A good number of my recent posts have involved making small changes to improve your overall quality of life. We might call these "painless micro-changes."

This morning, I read an article about the fact that the flagship cell models released by the likes of Samsung and Apple are indeed the best phones on the market, but that they are likely not worth the marginal cost for anyone other than cell phone enthusiasts and tech geeks. He made the point that one can get an admirably equipped cell phone for $400 or less, which is more than half the cost of the latest flagship model. The real question is how much a slightly better screen is worth to you? $100, maybe, but $400 for a better screen? The author wasn't putting this out there as a universal truism, he was just pointing out that, for a lot of people, "pretty good" is often "good enough."

That nice. Suppose you're someone who has decided that your next phone need not be the latest flagship model. When the time comes to buy a new phone, you could take that writer's advice, and buy a less expensive model, and you'd be slightly better off. You'd be slightly more better off, however, if you implemented a simple micro-change: If you were paying $40/month for your old phone, and your new one costs $25/month, you can now take the difference ($40 - $25 = $15/month) and set up a monthly deposit into your savings or investment account. You're not going to retire early on a $15/month savings plan, but it's better than the $0/month plan. What's more, you won't even feel the difference because you're already paying $40 per month. This way, your lifestyle stays exactly the same, but you end up with money in the bank. Now that's a micro-change.

The real power of micro-changes, though, is that they stack. Saving $15 per month on your cell phone bill won't make you a millionaire, but if you manage to combine that with the savings you get from shopping around on your insurance bill, your utility bills, down-sizing to a more affordable car, and so on, before you know it you'll be saving hundreds of dollars per month and investing in financial security with virtually no cost to your overall lifestyle.

For this to work, however, it's important that you choose line items that reflect your values. If you're not the kind of person who can get away with an inferior cell phone, then you're better off spending the extra $15 per month and being happy! The cell phone isn't the point. The point is that there is something in your life much like a cell phone, something that you won't mind buying the cheap version of. Buy that cheaper version of whatever it is and invest the difference.

Micro-changes can be applied to so much more than personal finance. Consider the office. You're stuck in one place for hours at a time; you may as well get a standing work station or an under-the-desk exercise bike, if you can tolerate either. You'll never get a real workout that way, but it's a low-cost way to make your health just slightly better than it might be otherwise. Or take a break every hour and do a set of push-ups. You get two legally mandated 15-minute coffee breaks per eight hours of work; maybe you smoke or like to drink coffee, but you might consider spending that time going for a brisk walk. That's two miles of walking per day, for some people, and the only lifestyle change you'll have to make is bringing a pair of sensible shoes with you to work.

Modern technology facilitates micro-changes like these so well that there's almost no excuse. A bread machine can make you a fresh loaf of bread that's warm and ready-to-eat when you wake up; it makes it while you're sleeping! Coffee machines can be run on a timer, too. Suddenly, you don't have to waste time making breakfast in the morning; there's a micro-change for you. (If you like, you can even program this into your "smart home" machinery.) Crock pots can make your dinner for your while you're at work. Life is so easy!

But in order to capitalize on it, you have to identify your life's potential margins. Where are you willing to give up a little? Where are your pain points? Where do you lose the most time? What gets in the way of your savings or your health the most? Find these things, and make micro-changes on the margin. Before you know it, your life will get much better!

Inherently Good

Some people say that something is inherently good. For example, knowledge is often said to be inherently good, good for its own sake and for no other reason. It is better to know something than not to know it, because just expanding your mind and your knowledge is good. Just because.

I am skeptical of this view. In fact, I can't think of a single good thing in the universe that is merely inherently good. Every good thing I can think of is good for a particular reason. Food is good because it keeps me alive; producing more food is good because it keeps more people alive. Love is good because it produces positive feelings in human beings that can be reproduced time and time again by mere exposure to the object of that love; and, because it binds human beings into a cohesive society, which itself is good because it helps human beings achieve more of their individual goals than they could ever achieve alone. As for knowledge, any knowledge that can be called good is good because it helps people figure out how to solve their problems, remove their disutility, and so on.

Suppose something were inherently good, and not good for any other reason. How would we know that this thing is good? We couldn't look at any tangible benefits provided to us by the inherently good thing, because then we would be tempted to say that it is a good thing because of those benefits, and not because of the inherent nature of its goodness. How would we differentiate that thing's inherent worth for something that is inherently bad, but likewise has no tangible impact on our lives? That is, by what standard could we call the thing good?

Well, by no standard at all, because standards are external. Standards aren't inherent, they're imposed on a comparison from the outside, based on some list of criteria. Usually those criteria are tangible if not physical. Good things produce good feelings, at the bare minimum, and do so reliably.

The most likely explanation for the inherent goodness of a thing is that it reliably produces good feelings, despite producing pretty much nothing else.

Suppose I draw a picture of a cartoon cat, for example, and I think the cat is cute. Maybe just looking at this cat produces nice feelings. I didn't otherwise gain anything from the drawing; it didn't improve my drawing ability, it actually cost me money in terms of paper and ink resources, it cost me time to produce, and because I drew it in my own private office, no one will see it. It's also unlikely that I'll ever tell anyone about the cat drawing I made, that I enjoy. Is this an inherently good thing?

Actually, no. It's not "inherently good," because in order to enjoy my cat picture, I have to spend some time looking at it, or at least thinking about it and remembering what it looks like. The time I spend looking at or remembering my cat picture is a diversion from some other task. In other words, it's leisure time. Maybe other people prefer playing the flute in their leisure time, or going swimming, or having a snack, or playing a game, or any number of other things. But whatever else anyone does, they're spending their time on leisure, and when I look at my cat picture, so am I.

Some would say that spending too much time on leisure is wasteful, but I don't know anyone who would claim that leisure serves no practical or tangible purpose. It serves many purposes, from giving our brains and bodies time to relax between more strenuous physical or metal tasks, to generating social conversation and thus strengthening social bonds, to helping us prepare for a good night's sleep. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, so Jack needs to invest at least part of his time in leisure activity.

My point is that I cannot think of a single thing that is inherently good, but not good for some other reason. And this, to me, suggests that there is no such thing as "inherent goodness." Anything worth being called good has some sort of tangible benefit to someone. Otherwise, it's not really good.

Nothing Is Stopping You

Not too long ago, Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution shared a link to an article about how shade has been reduced in modern American cities, possibly as the result of zoning regulations. I do not know enough about zoning or history to comment intelligently about the veracity of that article's claims, so I won't.

As a result of reading that article, however, I did take notice of how little shade there is in my local neighborhood, and in similar neighborhoods across North Texas. Even in the city parks, the most typical layout features large, expansive green grass fields surrounded by patches of trees and vegetation. It's nice being in a park like this during the winter months, when the added sun keeps you warm, but it's oppressive during the summertime. And considering how long and how hot Texas summers are, this strikes me as being a design flaw.

A better design can be seen in some of the area's older parks, such as Burnett Park in downtown Fort Worth, or some of the oldest parks in Dallas. There, grass fields are interspersed with enormous oak and cypress trees that cast shade over everything. Often, these parks are built where there is some elevation change (rare in a prairie state like Texas), so that trees on hills cast even more shade than they otherwise would.

Intelligently designed landscapes can offer a tremendous respite from the burning summer sun. With a little forethought, a space can be made into an inviting and worthwhile place to spend hours even during the hottest parts of July and August. I notice this immediately when I'm passing through older, wealthier neighborhoods in the area. Mansions are beautiful places to begin with, but even a small, modest home looks luxurious when the owners take design cues from the rich. Wealthy home owners make ample use of large, thick trees that cast shade over their entire yard. I strongly suspect a major reason mansion owners like these trees is because they are large and provide a great deal of privacy to anyone on the property; but my interest isn't in more privacy, but in more shade, and these large trees provide shade in spades.

You can spot other helpful tricks in the old parks, botanical gardens, and wealthy mansions. One is ground cover: low-lying shrubbery for use in landscape beds in lieu of traditional coverage such as mulch or gravel. Obviously gravel, being made of stone, conducts far more heat than mulch, which in turn conducts more heat than foliage. So if one wanted to create a cool and inviting yard, one would prefer mulch to gravel and foliage to mulch. It's so simple. Another important trick is to cast shade across all the windows of the home, either with awnings and pergolas, or with small, decorative trees like myrtles.

The reason I bring all this up is not to enthuse about landscaping, but to draw a contrast between the article I read and the situation in front of me. One can become very frustrated reading articles like the one mentioned above, but at the end of the day, how likely is it that we'll ever be able to make a widespread impact on the city's zoning laws? Perhaps a vote, petition, or city council meeting here and there is an important civic duty, but that's not a very efficient use of your time.

What's a more efficient use of your time? If you want more shade, plant more trees. Make some changes to your yard, and enjoy the benefits of your work almost immediately. Surround yourself and your home with pleasant things that make your life tangibly better. There might be some screwed up laws and regulations out there, but generally speaking there's nothing stopping you from making your own home a marginally better place. So do it.

Home Economics

I wouldn't say that my wife is a "couponer," but she does love to maximize her savings when she buys things. By contrast, I have spent most of my life loathing coupons and considering time spent collecting coupons essentially time wasted. I'd use any coupon that fell into my lap, but I'd never do as my mother did, spending Sunday mornings going through all the mailers, clipping good coupons, and putting them in a box for use at the grocery store later. All that work to save 25 cents on a can of soup? That's not a good investment of my time...

The advent of coupon apps changes the economics of the situation quite a bit. I might hate investing time in the pursuit of coupon savings, but I have absolutely no problem outsourcing that work to app developers. For that matter, considering how much my wife enjoys saving money on regular purchases, I also don't mind outsourcing that work to her. It's not labor for her, anyway, it's leisure.

This is a somewhat trivial but no less powerful expression of the whole purpose of marriage: division of labor, specialization of task, and an increasing production possibilities curve. And if you're lucky enough to have married an extremely attractive person, as I did, well that's a benefit, too. And then there's our child!

Ordinarily, I do the family's grocery shopping on the weekends. It's part of our division of labor at home, and interestingly enough, it's a task I enjoy, so not much of a burden. Still, it's always much more fun when my wife tags along, and this past weekend, she did. Not only that, she was inspired to hunt down a few great money-saving apps for us, and we not only lowered our grocery bill by 10%, she also found some way to earn 10% of the value of our bill in "points." (What we get to spend the points on later, I have no idea, but there they are.)

Life can be quite seamless when it all comes together. I think the way to have a happy home life is for everyone in the family to embrace their strengths, and divide labor accordingly. Even my daughter got in on the action, providing me with a much-needed extra pair of hands while I was cooking dinner later. With everything running smoothly, everyone has the most time to do what they want, everyone gets to contribute to how happy the others are, even at minimal cost (since, again, we're all focused on tasks that that we generally enjoy).

Part of the success of this involves shouldering your responsibilities. We were not as happy a family, for example, when my wife and I split the cooking 50-50. She dreaded having to cook, and consequently the meals weren't as satisfying as they could have been. (You try cooking a delicious-tasting meal when you don't want to cook!) One day, I decided to let her off the hook. I could see how much it was bothering her, and even on days when I don't want to cook very much, it doesn't bother me all that much. I can throw something tasty together in 30 minutes if I'm not feeling particularly culinary; and if I get ambitious, we all really enjoy what I come up with. But in order to enjoy our current routine, I had to recognize that taking on more of the responsibility in this one area was something I needed to do for the whole team.

And if you're managing things correctly in your own home, all this becomes a rhythm or a pattern, and before you know it, everyone's happier.

Keep It Positive

The Gottman Institute put together some famous research that demonstrates that successful marriages have a so-called "magic ratio" of five positive interactions for every negative interaction. It makes perfect sense that people in successful relationships would have more positive interactions than negative ones. The Gottmans' research simply quantifies that.

If you're in a long-term romantic relationship, or you want to be, then keeping in mind the "magic ratio" is a good idea. Go out of your way to interact positively with your partner, and not only will you improve your odds of relationship success, you'll also give yourself an important emotional buffer of sorts for whatever inevitable negative interaction that may occur in the future.

Like so many other things to come out of relationship research, however, this one is a lesson that can be applied to all of your relationships, not just your marriage. If you want to be popular and well-regarded at work, make an effort to ensure that most of your interactions with your colleagues are positive ones. If you want to maintain strong friendships, make sure you're interacting positively with your friends. If you want to get along with your roommates, keep interactions mostly positive. It's just good human advice.

Recently I had to remove a couple of people from my life because their reactions to me were consistently negative. I know that deep down, both of them are good people, but it was becoming difficult to keep reminding myself of that fact when they spent so much time insulting me. Good people sometimes do bad things, and sometimes they do bad things persistently and for a long period of time. In a short while, I will have forgiven them. In the meantime, though, there is no reason to keep exposing myself to insults, irritants, and downers. I have to live my life, after all. I interact with more people over the course of a day than just these two. If I allowed them to bring me down so often, it would eventually spill over into my other relationships and ruin my life. I can't allow that.

It's a twin lesson to learn. On the one hand, it's important to keep negative influences at bay. On the other hand, it's important to remember that if you're the negative influence, people will begin to keep you at bay, too. As aforementioned, if you want to maintain good relationships, you have to manage your interactions ratio.

Remember, too, that negative interaction is inevitable in any long-term relationship of any kind. If you spend enough time with anyone, you will eventually have some kind of conflict. But these conflicts can be more easily managed and recovered from if you're generally accustomed to interacting well with one another.

Or, on the flip-side, if you've been going through some stuff lately, and you know you've been a pill, take some time to foster positive interactions with the people around you. Maybe you can't undo what you did, but you can send people a reminder that you're not a pill.

The "magic ratio" is such a powerful idea that it extends to everything. I've written before about how I don't use Twitter because I consider the social environment on that medium to be hostile and unpleasant. Instead, I use Instagram and follow a bunch of outdoorsmen, pro athletes, and models. When I open up Instagram, all I see are photos of beautiful, smiling people in beautiful landscapes. I see models hitting the famous landmarks of major European cities. I see mountaineers summiting gorgeous, remote mountains in pristine ranges. I see professional marathoners training in the African high plains, or in Mallorca, or in Flagstaff. I see local runners logging miles on some of my favorite local routes. No matter whose photo I see next, it's a consistently positive experience for me. Whatever I'm doing and whatever the world is like for me, out there, in athlete-celebrity-model world, there are beautiful people having lots of fun in beautiful places, and so will I be soon.

It's the perfect demonstration of how surrounding yourself with positivity can improve your life, but it's also a reminder to keep your own social media posts positive. Reconsider sharing that angry political meme, and instead share a photo of you and your family doing something fun. Think twice about posting yet another selfie and instead turn the camera around; show the world the beauty of wherever you happen to be standing at that moment. No matter who you are, there is someone out there who could see your post and think, "That looks like an interesting place!"

If you see a social media post about exercise, give that person some kudos! Let them know that you admire their work. And if you're in the gym or out on the trails and you happen to see someone trying to take an exercise selfie, offer to snap that photo for them instead. When you see someone wearing a cool hat, tell them how cool you think it is.

Spread the positivity around. It feeds on itself and helps make the lives around you a lot better. You'll feel better doing it! Let's keep this world a positive place to be.