#47: The journey and the destination.
Finding meaning in each spin of the hamster wheel.
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“When I paused to contemplate the life I had worked so hard to build, I felt a disconcerting mixture of nostalgia, regret, claustrophobia, emptiness, and fear.”
This line from Midlife: A Philosophical Guide by MIT philosophy professor Kieran Setiya made me flinch. I was caught off guard by its bleakness… and its truth.
But I was also confused by my reaction. Besides the whole dead husband thing, my life is pretty good from the outside. And a decent amount of time, it’s good from the inside too. I have two lovely kids in college, I’ve successfully climbed the corporate ladder, I’ve built and live in my dream home, I travel the world, I have a passion project that jumpstarts me out of bed every morning.
Still, I knew exactly what Setiya was talking about. The moment when you look forward at the future and it looks a little bit too much like the past and the present. The moment you realize you’ve been climbing for so long it feels less like you’re on a ladder and more like you’re on a hamster wheel. The moment you see that what you had imagined of life is not what it turned out to be… and you’re running out of time to change that.
Life sometimes feels like a series of projects. Plan. Do. Complete. Repeat.
Setiya calls these goal-oriented activities telic. I train for an Ironman and complete it. I get my MBA, then get a better job, and a better job, and a better job. I have children, I provide for them, I launch them out of the nest.
Atelic activities we do just for the hell of them. Sing along to George Michael’s greatest hits on the car stereo. Bird watch in Great Falls Park. Lazily sip a latte.
Unsurprisingly, as a society we are much more focused on telic activities. It’s how we make money after all. I don’t see a lot of employers offering to pay me for my car-stereo singalongs. But, besides money, telic accomplishments are how we measure success in general. So we fill our time with things that have a purpose, like getting the next promotion, saving up for our dream vacation, buying the house/car/boat we’ve always wanted.
However, Setiya points out that when we are so invested in activities with an end in mind — telic activities — we destroy our meaning every time we complete one.
“The way in which you relate to the activities that matter most to you is by trying to complete them and so expel them from your life. Your days are devoted to ending, one by one, the activities that give them meaning… As if you were to make friends for the sake of saying goodbye.”
This is the dirty little secret behind the achievement ethos. It’s never enough. It’s short-term happiness. It’s a scam. And with our busy lives, we’ve left the atelic activities to atrophy. We can’t turn to them for solace when our telic ones predictably drain of meaning.
Setiya comes to the same conclusion, “If my problem is an excessive investment in telic activities, the solution is to love their atelic counterparts — to find meaning in the process, not the project.”
Ah, yes. Enjoy the process.
It’s about the journey not the destination. Focus on the next step rather than the summit. It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it. Platitudes, you’re up!
If you’re rolling your eyes right now, you’re in good company. I agree that focusing too much on achievement seems unhealthy… but being told to “enjoy the process” feels glib. First of all, easier said than done. The achievement grooves in my brain have been ingrained for 50+ years. Second of all, accomplishment still feels so damn good! When Leona and I produce a great post. When the team closes an important deal at work. When a new recipe turns out spectacularly. When I make a measurable, noticeable difference in someone’s life through my words or actions. I love the telic. I love training my eyes on the telic prize and soon after cradling the telic trophy in my arms.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it. It feels so damn good in the moment, for a moment… then the moment is over. And we are left in search of our next mechanism for fulfillment and happiness. Over and over and over and over. Hamster wheel, baby.
I sigh at Setiya. In my mind, he smiles back. He’s on the ride with us, simultaneously irritated and intrigued by his own findings.
But, seriously… how? How can we pivot our focus from the destination to the journey? From the telic to the atelic?
Yes, we could focus on the atelic things that have nothing to do with accomplishments.
Alien things we’d call “hobbies” (thanks Oliver Burkeman for pointing them out in 4,000 Weeks). But it's easy to make excuses for hobbies: no time, not important enough, nothing I’m into or good at (because, let’s be honest, we’ve let all our hobbies disintegrate in the face of their “productive” counterparts).
Setiya instead recommends slowing down and noticing the process of accomplishing things.
I think about this in terms of mentoring people at work. Yes, I want to be the best mentor I can be, as measured by the thriving of my mentees, their personal success, their career growth. But what I’ve come to most relish about mentoring is just the minutes spent together. Talking to Mark about his son. Talking to JeNean about her family. Talking to Sarah about books. Talking to Mac about his team. It is in the moment — the moment of connecting, the moment of laughing, the moment of being — that I enjoy mentoring most. Not at the end of the job. Not staring at the measuring stick to know I have succeeded.
So… wait! Maybe I am not as accomplishment-oriented as I think. And maybe you aren’t either. Maybe the process of getting to our accomplishments holds all the magical moments we need to create meaning and have a fulfilling life. But we don’t notice these moments. We cannot relish in them. Because our foot is to the floorboard, and when roaring through life at 200mph, it’s impossible to appreciate the scenery whirring by.
Have your accomplishments. Strive for your goals. But slow the f* down in getting there. Pause. Notice. Look around. Whenever you can manage to remember, be in the moment as you climb the mountain, rather than assuming that only the summit is worth your presence. This will not take you out of your life. This is life.
“Living in the present is not a suspension of ordinary life, but a way of being immersed in it,” as Setiya puts it.
(This also buffers us from the blow when we don’t achieve our goals. We still had the magic moments along the way giving us meaning. A lack of achievement cannot take those away.)
“How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.”
Annie Dillard’s famous words may be horribly overused but are still true.
If you look at your life to find only a string of days focused on desired outcomes — an endless slog to reach endless goals — that cannot possibly spell happiness or contentment. Foregoing the sprint, slowing to a stroll, we can take the nectar of each moment and nourish ourselves with the meaning that lives there — meaning that will carry us through the ups and downs that chasing purpose will always include.
Next summer I am planning to do a pilgrimage walk across Sweden and Norway. Thirty days of walking from the Baltic to the Atlantic. Sounds pretty telic; it literally has a beginning and an end. But the atelic moments inspired by this journey have already started to flower in the space between here and there. Conversations with the shoe department lady at REI about things other than hiking boots, blisters, and socks. Goofy jokes with my trainer Kavon as I do 1,000 box-step-ups in preparation.
And even more are on the horizon: during the trek when I sit down to dinner with a Scandinavian family hosting me overnight and learn about their life. Noticing barns and churches, brooks and streams, open vistas and foothills. Processing my loss without worrying about the kids for the first time.
We have this subconscious narrative that if we are too happy with the here and now, we’ll stop wanting to climb mountains and achieve goals. But it’s the other way around. Immersing ourselves in the process makes the summit so much more satisfying.
And, when we look back at our lives, we won’t just see pinpoints of accomplishment surrounded by emptiness and wonder where all the time has gone.
We’ll see an entire Milky Way of both accomplishment and enjoyment, purpose and presence, satisfaction and fulfillment.
To the journey and the destination,
If you resonated with this post and want more, check out these:
Post #18: Purpose isn’t the destination. Frustration and the feeling of being alive.
Post #24: Skin in the game. Relying on our senses to get us out of our head and into our lives.
Post #35: Enough waiting to “rest in peace”. Appreciating the good things in life while we’re still around to do it.
Post #41: The epic power of an inspired heart. Adding fuel to the flames of our goals and desires.
Post #46: It’s all possible now. Awakening to freedom at the top of the world.
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There are some amazing visuals in this post. "Pinpoints of accomplishment surrounded by emptiness and wonder...." I'm going to save this!
I also love learning about the atelic and the telic.
Love this perspective—one I needed to read this morning! And the pilgrimage sounds like such a special experience...one that I’m sure will make the torture of box step-ups worthwhile. ☺️