“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Last week, I celebrated my birthday. In addition to enjoying a few gifts and some great meals, I took time to reflect on my life – especially the last five years of it. It felt like a good time to take a clear look at where I am, and to reorient – to chart the course for where I want to be in another five years.
Among the bigger realizations I made in the last half decade is that for most of my time on this earth, I was not living my own life. Like so many of us, I was living the life I thought I was supposed to live, rather than the life I wanted to live.
If you’re anything like me, this absence of agency, this passive approach to life, doesn’t make for much of a life at all. At the risk of sounding a bit dramatic, it’s more like a living death.
Once I reached that conclusion, I began to take ownership of my life in a different way. That meant learning to ask myself why more than ever before.
Why am I doing this? Why do I feel this way? Why do I want this? Why is this important to me?
A couple weeks ago, a came across this Charles Bukowski poem . . .
The Laughing Heart
by Charles Bukowski
Your life is your life Don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. Be on the watch. There are ways out. There is a light somewhere. It may not be much light but It beats the darkness. Be on the watch. The gods will offer you chances. Know them. Take them. You can’t beat death but You can beat death in life, sometimes. And the more often you learn to do it, The more light there will be. Your life is your life. Know it while you have it. You are marvelous The gods wait to delight In you.
So many line’s worth repeating . . . and, worth remembering.
Remember. Your life is your life. Don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. The gods wait to delight in you.
Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
Glossary of Feelings entry VIII
Exhilarated (adjective)
very happy and excited or elated
This Week in History
February 25, 1957 - Buddy Holly and the Crickets record their smash hit "That'll Be the Day" in Clovis, New Mexico.
February 26, 1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte and his supporters leave Elba to start a 100-day re-conquest of France.
February 27, 1963 - Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees signs a baseball contract worth $100,000.
February 28, 11906 – Bugsy Siegel, American gangster who created casinos in Las Vegas, was born in Brooklyn, New York.
February 29, 1968 - The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" wins Grammy Award for Album of the Year, the first rock LP to do so.
March 1, 1954 – United States explodes Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll, which accidentally became the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated by the U.S.
March 2, 1962 - Philadelphia center Wilt Chamberlain scores 100 points, most ever by an NBA player in a single game, in Warriors' 169-147 win over NY Knicks in Hershey (36-of-63 from field, 28-of-32 from free-throw line).
What I’m Reading
Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy
Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, by David Sedaris
What I’m Watching
Rome on HBO
Jazz, a film by Ken Burns
What I’m Listening To
Blues & Roots, Charles Mingus
Electric Warrior, T. Rex
Journaling Prompt for the Week #9 of 2024
Who is the person you want to be? How does this person spend their time each day? What is something you can begin doing now to become this person?
Check out this episode of The Path to Authenticity with my friend and colleague, the author Jessica Baum.
Have a great week. Thanks for reading.