This post comes from one of my reverse bucket list items, cataloged in 2017.
It was my senior year of college and I was the co-president of the Japanese Culture Club with my roommate Ray. The official name was Kouen-Kai for lecture and gathering. Myself and other anime/Japanese culture enthusiasts would gather together each week to watch shows from Japan, talk about Japanese history and learn about the culture. Some of our members had family members who were stationed or resided in Japan. Some were learning the language. It was a way to expand our horizons and share a mutual passion. We might snag Japanese treats from online or local specialty stores or attempt to cook something we found online. It was a causal club of nerds who developed friendships and hung out. We found we had more in common than just a love of anime and so for the next four years, the anime club members became my besties at college.
Over the years, members came and went, but the greatest loss for myself and Ray came in our senior year when most of our closest friends graduated. I was worried the club would feel empty without these people who I had come to know so well. Then in came the freshman, an adorable group of a-dork-able, socially awkward boys who, if left to their own devices, would isolate themselves in their rooms and never see the sun. Naturally, we pushed them to get out and socialize, not allowing them to sit alone for days on end without human interaction or forget what grass looked like.
We developed a semi-mom like affection for them and so in the spring of 2006, we decided to take the club on tour. Each year, there is a massive Japanese culture festival in Washington D.C. when the Cherry Blossoms bloom. Being the nerds we are, it was a natural leap to get down to D.C. and experience a taste of Japan in the USA. We gathered up the troops, hopped in a mini-van, drove to a train station in Maryland and hopped on a train.
Sidenote: I do recommend this for people nervous about driving in D.C. or even other big cities. You can always park outside it and take the light rail in. You often save on parking and you don’t have the stress of trying to navigate a busy unfamiliar place. The light rails are designed to take you to the tourist destinations and most of them are very safe and clean. Plus, walking is healthy for you!
The streets were crowded with all kinds of people. Vendors featuring goods from Japan were around every corner. There were demonstrations of traditional arts from sword fighting, to dance, to tea, to music and more. Food from every corner of Japan was offered. It was a delight for any anime nerd or cultural enthusiast.
We wondered about the festival together taking in everything we could and pointing things out to one another to watch or do. Naturally, we enjoyed looking at the blossoming cherry trees, a gift from Japan to the United States in 1912. A highlight for me was watching the archery demonstration. It was amazing to see the skill up close and to see the differences between the west and the east.
Which is really what such a festival is all about. It’s about showcasing a given culture where they can celebrate their heritage and share it with those of us not from it. We get to experience something exotic to us without stepping into the airport all while remaining authentic to the original people. Isn’t that what we’re looking for when we go abroad? A festival such as this one can bring that to you!
I had a blast leading the gang around and not once did they get lost! Though wrangling them at times was a chore – like herding cats! Still, we managed to have an amazing day together sampling the delights of Japan and having one last hurrah as a group of friends before Ray and I graduated.
How can you complete a cultural festival and get a taste of a different country?
Usually, you can see these events advertised in the local newspapers or on community event websites. Oftentimes they’re on Facebook. There are times when you may learn about a festival after the fact. The good thing is so many of them are annual things, so you can mark your calendar and come back to it next year. As you go, remember you are a guest of your host and should conduct yourself accordingly. They are sharing their heritage with you and you should honor that gift with respect and courtesy.
Completed: 2010
Miles from home: 122
Cost: Attendance was Free – travel was about $20, splitting gas and buying the train ticket, plus lunch $20
In honor of the coming spring, I’ve decided to do a few travel posts. You see dear reader, it seems that with the end of winter with the warmer weather on the horizon, I always get a bit of wanderlust at this time of year and find myself going to far flung corners of the world. Or at least farther afield than is typical as I certainly can’t afford to travel too far every spring. Perhaps, it’s something in the air, maybe it’s from being cooped up in the house during the cold winter months.
Before we clutch our pearls in shock at such a notion, remember dear reader, I am not against travel. I simply believe that we can live a bucket-list life right where we are and that we needn’t travel frequently to experience amazing things. However, there are times when we do travel, so we may as well do it well, to ensure that it is a wise investment of our limited resources. After all, traveling is expensive and time consuming. As budget conscious people, we certainly don’t want to experience travel regret or wish we had been more thoughtful prior to hopping on a plane and wasting hundreds of dollars on a less than stellar trip. To that end, I hope that these tips will help you make the most of your travels. At this point I believe I am at least a fairly experienced traveler to be speaking on such things.
I shall begin my travel tips with the most fundamental decision of all, where to go.
Now there are many considerations to picking a place to travel. Now you may have a very specific place in mind already. In which case skip this post and read the Travel Tips for the First Time Traveler: The Art of the Deal. In this post, I’m going to share a method of reverse planning or rather than picking a place first and then planning around that. You first plan the big three: time, budget and season and based on those constraints narrow down options of where to go. It can be helpful in managing your budget and ensuring you stay within the constraints of your means. Many people underestimate the cost of their trips and it’s easier to do when blinded by a pre-made decision. This method allows you to place your constraints ahead of time and then plan from there.
My very first consideration would be time, how much time do you realistically have? Time can be a huge constraint. For example, I recently traveled to England after being invited to join a friend in her long term rental down in Penzance. The accommodations were completely free and I naturally took advantage of this. However, it took 2 hours to get to the airport, allowing for the recommended 2.5 hours to get through security and boarding onto the plane before take off, another 6 hour flight, another hour to deboard, get through customs and navigate a new airport, and another 8 hours of buses and trains. I left my house at 2 pm and arrived at 5 pm the next day. The return flight was 7 hours, with almost 2 hours to get through customs, secure our bags, take a bus back to the economy parking and 2 hours to get home. We left the hotel in London at 8 am and arrived home at 7 pm. That wasn’t accounting for the 6 hour train ride back north to London that we took 3 days before our flight to allow us two days in London. Just travel alone was 3 days of our trip. That also didn’t account for recovery days from jet lag which depending on how easily you bounce back from disrupted sleep could take another whole day from your trip. So, I really don’t recommend taking a week to travel across an ocean because you realistically end up with maybe 3 to 4 good days. This is why I took two weeks off of work to allow myself plenty of time for travel to and from, recover, unpack and get ready to return to my normally scheduled programming.
Time really determines a lot of things. It can influence your budget, how far you can travel, what you can do and whether it’s worth adding in things like rental cars and taxis or if you can stick to public transit. After all, public transit adds time to a trip. If I had access to a car that 5 to 6 hour train ride could have been closer to 3 and with the multiple train delays stretching the initial ride down to 8 hours, a car would have been preferable. Time also determines how much you can do. I only had two days in London which meant that I had to be picky about what I did and what I saw. One could spend an entire day at the British Museum but then one will have only seen one museum, granted it packs a lot into one place, but then one isn’t seeing other things. If one rushes through things can one really enjoy it or will you be so exhausted from your vacation you need a vacation to recover from your vacation? It’s very easy to overestimate the amount of time you have which can lead to exhaustion from rushing around and stress from worrying about things like missed train connections, traffic or just getting lost in a strange place.
The other major consideration is of course budget. How much money can you spend on a holiday? Do you have paid time off? If you don’t, then any time off work is calculated into the cost of your trip. The budget can really determine how and where you can travel. Perhaps you can take a 12 hour direct flight to that far flung place, but it costs twice as much as the 20 hour flight with multiple connections. When considering a budget, you should be asking yourself how much are you typically saving in a month, how much have you already saved and how much can you still save? Consider the costs of transportation, accommodations, food and souvenirs. Hint: it is always more than you think, especially if you’re going to places where your currency is weaker than theirs where it’s easy to underestimate how much you’re spending. Just because the flight is cheap doesn’t mean accommodations will be, just because the accommodations are free doesn’t mean the flights will be cheap. I recently read a blog post outlining the actual cost of a trip for a couple who managed to snag really cheap flight tickets. Even though their flight was very affordable, the cost of other transportation, sight-seeing, food, accommodations, etc. for two weeks was still $5,000. So before jumping on that “great deal”, consider the other costs.
To help you plan you may want to check out places like Expatistan, Price of Travel or Numbeo. These resources can help you with your budget to see if where you’re going is actually somewhere you can afford to go. What is cheap to one person may be expensive to another person. If you make 100,000 a year spending 5,000 is only 5% of your yearly salary but if you only make 45,000 then it’s 11% which is a significant difference. However, if you make 100,000 and you’re supporting a family of 5, spending 5,000 is less affordable than if it’s just you and your cats.
The final consideration is the time of year you’re able to travel. My sister’s job requires her to help test major systems updates which happen routinely at certain points of the year. This means there are just certain times when she knows she cannot reasonably take off without it causing a lot of issues for her work and her time off approval is tentative. When I was the Winter Shelter Coordinator for an Emergency Winter Homeless Shelter at one of my jobs, I knew I could not take off during the Winter months for extended periods of time. It was a major job expectation that I would be generally available during that season. There are certain times of the year that just aren’t good for certain destinations. It may look like an amazing deal to go during the off season, but good luck enjoying that tropical beach vacation in Maldives during the rainy season.
Now depending if you’re traveling solo or in a group, you may have to consider what others can afford in terms of time, money and when they can take off. As I previously stated, my sister has a job that semi-dictates when she can take off and I also had a job where I couldn’t take off during the winter months. If you’re traveling with a school employee, you can’t travel much from August through June. Additionally, if your travel companion has limited mobility that can impact when and how you travel. Someone who needs assistance at the airport will most likely need an additional hour or more for pre-boarding. It’s important to have open and honest discussions with your travel companions before you spend a dime.
One subcategory of all these considerations is the type of traveler you are. Do you like museums or the party scene? Do you want to spend your time lounging on the beach or do you want to go hiking? Are you content so long as you have a roof over your head and a pillow under it or do you want a little more luxury? When I was a student studying abroad I traveled as cheaply as I could, snagging deals on Ryanair, booking hostels and buying most of my food at local stores rather than eating out. Are you comfortable flying economy or do you require extra leg room? When traveling to England my mom paid for an upgraded seat both ways because she has had blood clots and decided it was worth having extra leg room and the ability to put her feet up in order to ensure she wasn’t going to spend her trip in the hospital. That impacted her budget.
Once you have your time, budget and season you’ll be traveling, it’s much easier to narrow down where you can go based on your research. Depending on where you’re traveling from you can reasonably estimate how far you can go based on your time. If you’re on the East Coast like me then Europe is a more reasonable flight than from the West Coast. There can be surprises that pop up for example, flying to Costa Rica was a 10 hour flight despite it being about the same distance as the United Kingdom. However, Costa Rica is a lot cheaper to visit. The constraints of your aforementioned decisions can dictate where you’re going to go. If you divide up your budget and discover that you only have about 50 dollars a day then you may need to go to cheaper areas of the world. Once you have your list of possible places to go, you can pick.
At the end of most of my posts, I will write a little “How You Can” section so that if something I have done peaks your interest, you have a starting point. However, one may very well wonder how I’ve gathered this information in the first place. After all, how did I discover the Wolf Sanctuary or the Firebird Festival or the Wine and Cheese Tasting on the Train? How have I cultivated opportunities for myself to check off my list or to add new things?
Simply put, I have a few go-to places for inspiration that I regularly check and encourage you, dear reader, to do the same. The first is Onlyinyourstate or atlas obscura to discover unique things that are in my area. Now, Onlyinyourstate isn’t exactly the most accurate name, after all there are many states that share common experiences, it would be more aptly named “collection of cool things to see and do in your state” – that is understandably less catchy, but some of us are sticklers for accuracy. The website is semi-easy to navigate. You click on your state and it brings up a long list of various posts of interesting sights to see and things to do. What makes it difficult is many posts are repetitive, and some of the listed items have closed or are no longer available to the public.
Since at this point, they’ve pretty much covered most of the things to do, newer posts just tend to rehash what has already been written about but as new things do get added occasionally, one still has to sift through to find the gems. Atlasobscura is similar in both scope and difficulty of use. There are other websites that are similar, such as PAbucklist.com, but I have yet to find one that organizes itself really well. I review these sites maybe once every 6-12 months. Despite their difficulty in use, I still recommend visiting at least once, especially if you are at the start of your Bucket List journey. They not only can help you discover how to check off your list, but also can open your eyes to new and novel possibilities you’ve never even thought of before.
One of my biggest go-to’s is Facebook Events which I will typically review once to twice a month as it is being continually updated. It’s where I’ve discovered most of my events, festivals and workshops.On almost any given week, I could log on and find something that would interest me for the upcoming weekend and many of the events are relatively cheap or free. It’s become one of the main things I use Facebook for. That’s how I found out about the Christkindlmarkt and Eco-dying. I pay attention to my local newspaper as well checking out announcements from my community which the Facebook algorithm may have missed.
I also keep a running list of the museums, colleges, universities and theaters in the area making sure to check at the beginning of each season. Depending on the venue, most of the time this means the beginning of the year in January or in July. That’s how I discovered the Da Vinci Exhibit at the Reading Museum and the performance of Drum Tao at Millersville University. Even smaller universities and colleges can have amazing events and opportunities. In 2016, my small Christian College hosted a presidential debate for the DNC primaries between Obama and Clinton. I have often been surprised at what a small venue can pull off and because of their smaller size many of their events are more intimate affairs. So don’t write off your own smaller venues just yet, dear reader.
Consider other attractions in your area: aquariums, zoos, community centers and even parks may play host to your dreams. Longs Park in Lancaster City has a summer music series that has brought some serious talent to its small stage for free, opening the opportunity for many to enjoy live concerts and other performances. It was the stage that introduced me to Shakespeare as a child. You will be surprised at the wide variety of opportunities these places offer and often for free or greatly reduced cost.
There is also a simple google search. I will do this for things that may take a little creativity or require me to go a little farther afield than my typical roaming grounds. For example, I read about grape stomping in Italy. It seemed like it would be a fun thing to try. I hadn’t seen it on any previous intel missions to my usual corners of the internet, so I did what any good millennial would do, I went to google to start to see if there were any wineries nearby that would indulge in this ancient tradition. As it turns out there is one in the neighboring state of New Jersey.
Once I discover a place in a reasonable vicinity (typically no more than 2 hours away unless I really want to make a day of it), I will make a note on my list for future reference. I won’t necessarily rush to go do it just that moment, but I will keep the information tucked away until I have need of it or for when the time is right. Perhaps, if I find myself making plans and I will be in the area anyways then I will tack on my item to the trip. I may also make specific plans to complete the item but cross reference my list to see if there are any other items that may be nearby. I am after all all about being efficient with my time and resources.
The final way is that my friends and family know that I am always on the hunt for new and novel things to try, so word of mouth goes a long way. When they see something cool that they know I might like to try, they tell me or even better invite me to join them!
As you can see, dear reader, I am not someone who sits around waiting for good things to come to her. Sometimes the fates need a little nudge. It’s about keeping your eyes and ears open, seeking opportunities and being mindful of what might be around the corner. It doesn’t mean that I can necessarily jump at every opportunity that comes my way or thing that I discover, I have (as of this writing) yet to go indoor skydiving, learn to pole dance, spend time at the alpaca farm, learn a signature dish from a cook or go grape stomping. However, I have pretty good leads on where I might do those things. Which is half the fun! I always have a list of potential adventures I could go on. There’s almost always something new around the corner waiting for me to discover and with only one glaring exception are all within a hour’s drive from my house (most are within 30 minutes). Who needs to dream of escaping your corner of the world to far flung places when it’s so full of excitement?
I’ve now espoused upon cultivating your talents and exploring your calling as pieces of a purposeful life or applying your y amounted to applying your talents in support of your calling to serve others in some nebulous manner. Of course in my post about your calling, it was basically looking at your passions and applying them to helping others. But what does it look like to help others? How does one help? Who does one choose?
It really does depend doesn’t it? On who you are helping and what you are helping them achieve. How do we choose who to help? Does the who have to be another human being? There are plenty of people who dedicate themselves to helping animals. Jane Goodall is often hailed in the same breath as Martin Luther King Jr or Ghandi and she concerned herself primarily with gorillas. Julia Hill was lauded for her activism to save a tree from a logging company. Yes, their actions certainly helped the human race as a whole later on but in the meantime their energy could have been put forth in other areas.
As someone who has worked and interned at non-profits one of my favorite interview questions to ask people both when I was being interviewed and when I was doing the interviewing, was “why this issue”. Why out of the hundreds of social issues and concerns this one. Why Haiti? Why the homeless? Why mothers and children? Why not Kenya? Why not veterans? Why not people suffering from addiction? Why not cute, cuddly puppies? After all, if you devote a majority of your time, effort and resources into a given area that means those same resources aren’t being spent on another area of importance and naturally one cannot reasonably support all areas of importance. In a way, that means you are saying that this thing here is the most important thing to me to be doing. That’s a pretty big statement when you think about it.
Now it may be that there were numerous things that were important to you and this is the one that happened to have the opportunity for you at the time to use your gifts and passions for it. When I did an internship for a non-profit that worked in Haiti it was because I needed an internship and that happened to be the one offered to me. It wasn’t because Haiti was the top of my list of countries that needed my support and I was particularly passionate about Haiti. I have become more passionate about it for my experience, but I also understand it is because I now have a personal connection to that country whereas previously there was nothing to push Haiti higher on my list than any other developing country. I wanted to help others and this happened to be an opportunity that opened up for me – but remember my job isn’t necessarily my calling (we already discussed how the two shouldn’t be conflated).
Still, one can find that one has stumbled more or less into something that is calling adjacent. That doesn’t make it wrong necessarily. After all, one may be called to something and then discover the opportunities just aren’t there or you haven’t found them yet. The point is that one should not leave it unexamined. Why this population in this particular part of the world? Why this issue and not another issue? Is this really your top priority? There are, after all, a near infinite array of issues facing us today that all scream for attention from climate change to housing issues from substance use disorders to lack of access to healthcare. There are different ways to approach these issues as well from a one on one individual level to pushing for larger social and political changes. Which one do you pick?
In social work, we have this adorable story of a boy walking along the beach picking up starfish and throwing them back into the ocean. Around the boy there are hundreds of starfish all struggling to survive. An old man asks the boy what he’s doing telling him sadly that there is simply no way for him to save all the starfish so what does it matter? The boy responds that it mattered to the one that he threw back. It reminds those of us working in a system that is always throwing more “starfish” on the beach not to stop fighting, not to give up because it matters to each person we do help, each life we’re able to impact. Personally, I like to add that there’s another child, a girl, who has climbed onto a boat and is out in the water looking for the reason why all the damn starfish are washing up on the shore in the first place. I call those people the macro-level social workers who are trying to fix the underlying issue.
Now, I’m not saying the people on the shore are doing something wrong. The macro level people may remind us that you can feed a man a fish and he will eat one day of his life, but if you teach a man to fish, he will eat every day of his life. My flippant response is he can’t learn if he’s dead so many you should feed him first anyways. In other words, you need to triage the problem and fix the underlying issue. Some people are there to prevent an issue, some people are there to stabilize one diaster hits, others are there to fix underlying causes and other are there to repair damage. It’s like how in the Intensive Care Unit you often have a patients who require multiple different specialties in order to recover. If all the doctors had said that only the heart is necessary and to forget about pesky other organs like lungs then a lot of us would be dead. If the only science anyone cared about was chemistry we wouldn’t have gone to the moon. Each of us is part of a bigger whole trying to triage this patient called human society.
Some of us have been called to fix plants and save trees. Others of us have been asked to focus on the cute fuzzy creatures or not so fuzzy creatures. Some of us need to answer the call to our neighbors here in our backyard, others are to be called away to lands far from home. There are many, many different areas of the world that desperately need your time, talent, attention and resources. The question is which ones are you most drawn to help? Which ones need your talents the most? My great uncle was an amazing statistician and helped work on projects like calculating where the fish in the ocean are to help guide international fishing laws and treaties through the UN. He also worked with astronomers to help unmask the mysteries of space.
As always it’s important to reflect on these things when talking stock of your own life. What have you been doing with your time? Does it line up with your values? Was it something you just sort of fell into? Have you looked around more recently to see if there are opportunities that more align with what you feel called to do? Do you know why you’re supporting this particular cause over others? Some of us are lucky and obtain a singular vision that helps guide them forward. The majority of us are left stumbling about grasping at whatever happens to be near and hoping it’s the right thing. Although truthfully, it might not matter that you land on precisely the right thing. There are many different passions one can pursue and there are many different causes by which one can apply one’s talents and passions to.
Perhaps, we spend too much time wondering about our purpose in life and worrying about it when the truth is there are many different paths to living a purposeful life so long as you are able to do meaningful work where your talents and skills are utilized. Some people are meant to be devoted their whole lives to a singular issue. Others are meant to move between issues. After all, my great uncle didn’t spend his whole time focused on the movement of fish in the ocean. He helped them figure out how much they could reasonably fish and where so that we wouldn’t run out of food. A huge contribution to the human race if I do say so myself. However, he was one of several people who prepared reports and of course, he wasn’t the one who drew up the final agreements, so it was a group effort. However, he moved on from that project and applied himself to the next. Which was fine! There are some people out there whose sole purpose is just to start things and let others take over once they’ve started a project. The point is to reflect on your own personal journey toward meaning and allow yourself to shape it without preconceived notions about what it should look like. The most purposeful life is not necessarily becoming a nun and spoon feeding the starving orphans of some wartorn area of the world. A purposeful life is one in which we can develop our interests into skills, to apply those skills and gifts to alleviate a deep wound in the world that we are passionate about healing in whatever way that may be.
In my last post, I referenced how living one’s best life is in part living a life with purpose or a life in which one applies ones talents in support of a calling to serve others. I went on to wax poetic about the first of three parts, mostly about talents and how to cultivate them. In this post, I shall attempt to unpack the second part of that statement, mainly one’s calling. This is probably the trickiest part of the whole thing. The first part is rather simple, just consider your interests and start to develop them, they’ll become skills and later talents. Yes, there is a certain difficulty in the discipline required to do that, but in general one is not sitting around with no idea of what one’s own interests are. The third part is also fairly easy, find other people, utilize said skills/talents to assist them.
So what is a calling? How would we even know what it looks like? What does it mean? I am no philosopher and certainly lack the wisdom of the sages to give a definitive answer. Still, if one seeks enlightenment then one must learn to wrestle with such questions and start to consider the answers for oneself and not merely rely on the elders who have come before to answer for us. We are not here to merely echo the philosophers that came before otherwise we would have been satisfied with the answers of Plato and Socretes and Descartes and Vonnegut would have needed to occupy themselves with other diversions. So that is what I shall do here and perhaps, dear reader, you shall wrestle with this question yourself. I certainly hope so, otherwise how shall I become wiser if no one challenges me – I digress.
So first what is a calling? Often people will feel a strong desire towards a certain profession or job that feels fulfilling. Passion + meaning = calling. However, I question the idea that it should be connected with a particular profession. At risk of coming off conceited or judgemental, I doubt that most people would consider being a garbage man or grocery work a calling. Do not mistake, dear reader, the statement for condescension. It takes little stretch of the imagination to see how vital these roles are, but our society does not hold such roles in high regards despite their inherent importance. When the pandemic shut down much of the world, it was not the garbage collectors and grocery workers who stayed home. Yet, I doubt that many of those in those positions would say that such a profession is their calling even though these are vital to the functioning of society. Those jobs are meaningful in that they help others, but few people are passionate about them.
Contrarywise, many people in higher paying and higher status jobs lack both passion and meaning. They may push papers around a desk, crunch numbers and complete tasks for the corporate overlords. Many may not even really understand why their position is vital to the company, some may even struggle to articulate what precisely they do when their friends and families ask. If their job disappeared tomorrow would it have a negative impact on society? Would others miss it? Would they even notice it’s passing? When mass layoffs occurred in the tech sector, were many of us concerned about it? Did any of us outside the industry truly worry that vital goods and services would be disrupted? That isn’t to diminish the pain of those who were part of that, it is merely to illustrate that those jobs most likely do not have much meaning associated with them as it requires the stretch of the imagination to consider how they are all that helpful to society as a whole.
In fact, there’s an anthropologist who theorizes that up to 40% of our jobs are “bullshit” jobs or a job that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, the person doing it can’t justify its existence. These are jobs usually taken up by meetings and emails and are so bogged down in paperwork that one is left wondering if you’re doing anything other than existing. Elon Musk fired 90% of people at twitter and it had almost zero impact on the service it provided. Do you see the danger in tying a calling to one’s profession? These jobs are still important, some are quite meaningful if not readily recognized and others lack passion and meaning are nonetheless important in other ways. I won’t go too far down the rabbit trail of the sheer amount of job bloat in corporate America. It is only that there are very few professions that will allow a person to pursue a passion and have meaning.
For most of human history, one’s profession was the way to keep a roof overhead, food in one’s stomach and clothes on one’s back. It truly wasn’t until much more recently that we started hearing the message that we should follow our dreams and surely good things would follow. Most of my generation grew up on stories admonishing us that happiness was to be found in pursuing jobs that were our “calling” and the reality came crashing down on us. While others may waggle their fingers at us for pursuing “underwater basket weaving” as majors, who was it that told us we not only could by offering it to us in the first place as a legitimate major but encouraged us that we should do it from our earliest years? I know I certainly grew up on stories that one should follow one’s passions as the path to happiness. A lovely notion perhaps for a different time.
As with many ideals our society pushes, we must free ourselves of the shackles that bind us to them. Our calling need not be our job – a good thing too, considering the constraints upon us otherwise. That isn’t to say that one cannot find a profession that exactly matches one’s calling, simply that it isn’t necessary. Your job does not have to be your calling or even your passion. It’s nice when that happens and there are a few lucky people who “never have to work” because they love what they do so much. If you are one of them, I raise a glass to your good fortune friend! However, there will always be people who are needed to complete the passionless work – whether that be the necessary paper pushing bureaucrats who shuffle the necessary government forms about or the oil rig workers who risk life and limb to ensure we have the necessary fuel for our modern world. It is a rare person indeed who finds either one of those to be their passion.
Now that we’ve dispensed, such a silly notion that our calling must directly lead to our job, we discover that there is in fact quite a wide range of things we could do in those hours not spent on the job. Your job could help fund your passion or otherwise help connect you with the right resources be they monetary or social to pursue them. So long as whatever you do arises from things that you are truly passionate about and works towards the benefit of others. Perhaps, you have a strong talent for sports and take up coaching youth soccer in your hometown. Perhaps, you have strong feelings about conservation and turn your efforts to going to your town meetings to make your voice heard or you go around collecting signatures on a petition.
You may not even quite know yet how to figure out which one of your many passions to pursue. There are a myriad of things to be passionate about, music, art, sports, politics, the environment, trees, air quality, public health, homelessness, the law, philosophy, teaching, psychology, and well, pretty much anything in existence. I am rather passionate about cats myself, but are they my calling? I have adopted several of them and care for them, they certainly enrich my life, but I don’t know that I’d call it a calling. I don’t feel called to be a pet parent. I merely enjoy being one. A calling is the match of your deepest passions and beliefs with the deep needs of the world around you.
It can take many years to discover one’s true calling or path and one must be willing to pivot with new information. Most people simply do not have the necessary introspection or knowledge base at 18 or 19 to decide what their calling truly is. Most have some inkling of interests if no actual skill set or talent and they certainly don’t know enough to be truly passionate about anything. If you, dear reader, are of the younger sort, put down your pitch fork before you angrily respond to the above statement in the comments. There is simply far too much to know about the world in order for you not to go down some well-meaning and perhaps misguided path. There is some evidence to suggest that you don’t really have a good idea of your true calling until you’re about 40 years old. Which is honestly a bit of a relief for those of us who are younger than that. You may dear reader, be breathing a sigh of relief – “Oh good, I’m not supposed to have it figured out yet”. Perhaps, I really am meant to open up that cat cafe and spending my days with my feline friends is actually my calling after all!
I encourage you dear reader to take some time to journal and explore your passions. Think about the things you used to enjoy or were once interested in before the world got in the way and told you it was dumb or not valuable. Perhaps, your calling lurks in there. Consider what you enjoyed when you were quite small. Think about your heroes and people you really admired. I find that a lot of good things comes from journaling, especially when you let go and just let the thoughts come forth. It’s like your subconscious builds a bridge to your unconscious and everything just sort of flows out. You may be quite shocked at what you put to page once you let it go.
The key is not to let whatever you think your calling is become part of your ego. Don’t get too attached to any one path or idea because it will change and evolve. After all, I just said that one’s job is probably not one’s calling. Money is necessary to do things like eat and have a roof over your head. And the expression of ones calling can take many forms. A person whose calling is working with the youth may become a teacher, a coach, a youth pastor, a therapist who specializes in children, a volunteer for big brothers, big sisters, a mentor, a foster parent or something else not listed here. However, if one is too stuck on a singular idea or path you may miss the boat entirely. If you think that you must be a teacher because you feel called to prepare the next generation and you objectively suck at teaching larger groups of students, you will be miserable and your students won’t get your gifting. If you instead volunteer for big brothers, big sisters after becoming an accountant, you will find that your gift is working as a mentor for disadvantaged youth and perhaps tutoring them in math thus helping shape their futures in a much more meaningful and powerful way.
I’m not exactly sure if this post is all that useful, since finding one’s calling is rather tricky. I only hope that I have helped dispel some of the misconceptions that people have around their calling to help free you to be a bit more creative and open to the possibilities of how it might manifest itself. Truth be told, I’m still working out exactly what my calling is, but I keep getting closer with each trial and error that I make and with each new experience that I have. After all, part of my bucket list is to help me explore and get to know myself better.
I’ve written earlier about how living one’s best life is in part living a life with purpose. It was truthfully a small paragraph at the end of another post which mostly amounted to applying your talents in support of your calling to serve others in some nebulous manner. A trite piece of advice which commits to almost nothing and leaves you saying “yes, yes, very nice, but how exactly is one supposed to do that?!” An understandable response, dear reader. I beg your indulgence as I did not wish to make a long winded post.
There are some clues in my nebulous statement. The first is understanding and cultivating your talents. The second is understanding your calling, which is probably the trickiest part and the “meat” of this series of posts. The third is service to others. Which can honestly range from your next door neighbors to strangers on the other side of the globe.
Depending on your level of self-esteem, finding and cultivating your talents may be as easy as taking a walk or as difficult as learning to do a 360 flip on a snowboard. Although, those with an inflated sense of self may find reality is a cruel teacher when faced with the truth that one is not as “smart” and “talented” as one first believed. When reality inevitably smacks one in the face, there can be an understandable re-examining. This can lead to questions of whether one really has a talent worthy of cultivating and the temptation to “throw in the towel” or “give up” may soon creep in. It may be better to replace the idea of talents with skills or interests. These may be less daunting to consider and our egos are not as tied up in a skill or interest allowing us to be more honest in our current abilities.
Given that most of the population is on a bell curve for almost any given trait, the best most of us can hope for is slightly above average, maybe, if we are quite lucky, gifted in a certain area. For those of you unfamiliar with the actual definition of gifted when discussing the overall population, it means that a person is above 84% of the population in a given ability. I can assure you dear reader that neither yourself nor me shall find ourselves in that coveted 26%. To be a true “genius”, one must be greater than 98% of the population. Can you truly say, dear reader, that you are better than nearly 8 billion people in anything?
Now the pessimistic reader will most likely be throwing up their hands in defeat at these facts. If one cannot expect greatness why even bother? Should we not leave such things to those who are our betters? Let those with the gifts toil away and leave the rest of us to our petty amusements. If you are one of those, do not despair just yet! As most people are not innately talented in any given area we can free ourselves of a false assumption that people are talented because they are born that way or that we cannot better ourselves. However, talent is often just a skill or interest that someone has built upon with consistent practice and coaching. It is not a matter of “having it or not”, it is more a matter that you are born with inclinations towards certain skills or interests and then in building upon those they become talents.
One does not need to be a child prodigy or the world’s “best whatever” to use talents for a calling. The world famous violinist Joshua Bell is not described as a child prodigy. In fact, he is considered rather unremarkable until his natural inclination towards music was cultivated by his parents and then his teachers when he was an older child. Nor was it the goal for him to become a prodigy of sorts, instead his parents simply wanted him to enjoy the instrument. He became what he is through dedicated practice and excellent coaching. Having access to world class teachers, he became a world class violinist thus shattering any notion that unless a person begins before the age of 5 one can never achieve the greatest heights.
Now, this doesn’t mean that one should expect that you will achieve the greatest heights in any given field or area. The higher one goes the less and less opportunities there are for advancement that is the way of things. Competition becomes more fierce as the field narrows. So focusing overly much on climbing a ladder of sorts is probably not the best use of your time and consideration. The aforementioned example was more to illustrate that one need not begin in early childhood to start cultivating a skill or talent and that you can, through hardwork and dedication, achieve a true talent. Remember the cultivation of the skill is part of the purposeful life not the end of itself.
Not every interest and skill needs to lead to the highest heights. Not every hobby must become a fortune 500 business, not every skill must yield profit. Cannot a thing be simply for yourself? It is nice when one’s talents and purposes yield income, but it is not necessary. There is something in us as humans that longs to simply be – a drive towards something. It may be the creation of art or music; it may be a connection to nature through hiking or fishing; it may be the thrill of pushing yourself physically through a sport. It needs no audience other than ourselves. In the words of Kurt Vonnegurt, “Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”
So how do we make room for our souls to grow? My general rule of thumb is 10-15 minutes a day. After all, finding an hour or even 30 minutes every day can be challenging. However, it’s almost impossible not to find a spare 10-15 minutes laying around. You certainly scroll on your phone for longer than that here and there in those awkward in between moments where you don’t quite have enough time for longer activities like when you’re waiting on water to boil or you’ve got a few minutes in the morning after you’re done getting ready. Besides, there’s almost certainly some sort of app that you can put on your phone which will allow you to focus on that interest. Perhaps, you can utilize your morning commute to listen to a podcast or audiobook about your given interest area. Maybe you can enroll in an online course, or read textbooks on your phone. Replace your phone habit with your interests and suddenly, you’ve started to develop a talent.
What’s interesting is that oftentimes, I may start a given activity under my “10-15 minute rule” and soon discover that I have spent 20 to 40 minutes on it. Sometimes it’s difficult to muster up the mental energy to do something for 60 minutes or even 30, but once you get going it’s easy to keep going. Just as objects that once in motion stay in motion, so too do we. However, given my busy schedule, there are just as many days where it’s all I can do to find the 10 minutes. Still, by keeping with the 10-15 minutes every day, I stay in the habit of making time to do the interests I actually want to develop. This way the habits don’t slip away among the busyness of life. Sometimes, you have a period of days where it’s all you can do to go to work, make dinner, clean up the house and take care of the basics. It can be so easy to let your good habits slip and let doom scrolling or other distractions take over if you’re trying for those longer stretches of time every day as opposed to those “stolen” in between moments.
Soon, those interests start to muscle in on the parts of your day that aren’t dedicated to other things. It becomes your way of relaxing and instead of reaching for the TV remote you find yourself locking yourself away to be with that thing. There are certainly days when I spend a considerable amount of time playing the violin and have even found myself getting irritated if I haven’t been able to play. It has become part of my self-care routine as important as any other form of relaxation. I cannot tell you the last time I binged watched a show. My time has been consumed by other interests that I am actively trying to develop. Scrolling on my phone has been replaced with learning languages, practicing calligraphy and reading. That isn’t to say I look down my nose at people who watch shows or scroll, I still do those things along with playing video games. It’s that those things are no longer my first “go-to” activities because I’m now focused on skills that I want to improve.
I’m not entirely sure what I am “becoming” just yet. However, I do know that by spending time each day on those things I feel more myself than I have before. What might your own interests yield if given the opportunity to grow?
With the age of the internet and cell-phones work has managed to invade almost every aspect of our lives. People have stopped talking about work-life balance and talk about things like blending work and life together. Which is really short hand to say, having no boundaries with work and work being able to take precedence in your everyday life. It has even begun to take over things like people’s vacations.
In countries like France, they’ve adopted the right to disconnect meaning your work may not send you emails after work hours. Some companies have a system in place where if you’re on PTO any email is automatically responded to with “this person is on vacation and your email has been deleted, please reach out to this other team member”. I LOVE these. We should work to live, not live to work. Setting appropriate boundaries with work and holding to them is both difficult and extremely rewarding.
No wonder we dream of packing up and leaving our homes. Our homes are no longer sanctuaries from work. Instead it follows us to the door, hounding us with phone calls and emails. Sometimes seemingly frantic demands during your off hours. I’m going to hazard a guess that you dear reader are not in the medical profession and therefore are not tasked with the life and death of others. This means that since no one is going to die if you don’t answer that email at 9 pm, maybe it can wait until 8 am. What objectively are you going to accomplish at 9 pm that cannot be done at 8 am? It will probably take you twice as long to accomplish it late at night than in the morning, when you’re awake and refreshed, especially when adding in the inevitable and natural human response of grumbling to yourself and emotionally having to process this unwanted demand on your private time.
Rest is important to our functioning, our physical health, our mental well-being, our emotional wellness and spiritual wellness. Paradoxically, when we’re allowed to rest our work performance and output increases rather than decreases. Unfortunately, companies fail to understand that thinking they can just continue to push us to get more results.When we keep work at work and home at home, it allows us to thrive in both places. Once we start blending the two, it can be hard to perform well at either. You find yourself torn in two trying to constantly please two masters. You allow work to encroach on your life so you don’t meet the obligations of the home so then home may start to encroach on your work. It feeds anxieties, worries and distractions. You start to need more and more time to talk out your emotions and process which only robs you of more precious moments and gets you further behind. Just writing this makes me want to scream in frustration. How is anyone supposed to thrive let alone survive in such conditions?
If you are hourly, you’re probably not tracking this time and ensuring you’re getting reimbursed. If you are, you’re likely getting push back for it. If you’re salaried you have to consider that every hour you work extra is time you aren’t getting back and you aren’t getting paid for, thus lowering your hourly salary. Consider working for 50,000 a year. At 40 hours a week that’s about $24 an hour. If you consistently work closer to 50, you’re now lowering your rate to $19. Would you really do all that you’re doing for $19 an hour? Because you are. By working so many extra hours, your company is essentially robbing you. Even just 1 hour each evening still adds up to 5 extra hours a week or $21 an hour. You’re allowing them to undervalue you and it also means they will continue to not hire the help they clearly need by you enabling this behavior. If protecting your rest time isn’t motivating enough to start setting some boundaries, this monetary incentive should be.
So what does setting boundaries look like? Well first, what is a boundary?The American Psychological Association defines boundaries as the psychological demarcations that protect the integrity of an individual or group, or that help someone or a group set realistic limits on participation in a relationship or activity. In the most basic terms, it’s about what’s okay and what’s not okay. A boundary isn’t about controlling the other person, that’s impossible. It’s about when person x does y, what will you do?
Your boss or work colleague will continue to email you even if you request he or she stop. It can be as simple as refusing to answer until the next business day. It could be setting your phone to “do not disturb” and communicating to your boss that after work, your phone goes to “do not disturb”. Some phones let you select which apps and phone numbers to block when which can be really helpful. It could be having a frank conversation about your contracted hours and how often you’re going over them. Letting your boss know that you’re no longer willing to go over your hours without additional compensation because you’re not contracted to (if you have a contract of course). It may be asking your boss to then prioritize the duties and re-allocate them to other team members if you do not have enough time in your day to complete everything they are demanding of you. Some bosses don’t even realize how much they’re asking you to do until you show them. They may even have tricks or strategies to help you structure your day better. Not every boss who has you working overtime is nefarious, sometimes they just don’t know how much you’re doing or how you’re struggling. Use your voice and speak up.
It is important to remember that someone else’s poor boundaries does not give them the right to violate yours. It can be very tempting to give in when other people around you consistently allow their boundaries to be violated. You may fear not looking like a team player or missing out on a promotion. The thing is, in most companies, you are no longer rewarded for going above and beyond. It’s often easier to get a promotion or pay raise going to another company than sticking with your current job. That’s why quiet quitting or “acting your wage” was trending as a movement. The reality wasn’t that people were quitting working, rather they were setting healthy boundaries with their company and refusing to be taken unfairly advantage of.
It will probably look different depending on your company’s culture and your boss. It’s easy for me to say “turn your phone to “do not disturb”, refuse to answer work emails until the next day”, but if your boss berates you if you don’t respond immediately or continues to send escalating emails that will make it more difficult. Especially if you feel you need this job and it’s currently difficult to simply go get another one. So it may be responding with “I saw your email boss and I put your request on my calendar to get done first thing in the morning.” rather than simply ignoring it. You still responded, but you didn’t immediately get it completed on your off hours. It’s a small but important step. Once they start accepting that initial boundary, you may find it easier to follow up with “Hey I’m not going to keep sending you a response that I saw your email, just trust that I will see it and get it done like I’ve been doing”. It may be having a conversation with your boss letting them know that you want to be a team player, and you’d like to know which requests are expected to be answered right away and which requests can wait until the next day. Maybe your boss doesn’t even realize that you don’t know you can wait until the next day to respond. Only you know your boss and your company’s culture to know what approach is right for you. It may also involve going to therapy to get coaching on how to set boundaries if you’re someone who struggles with pleasing people or assertiveness.
We want to live rich and meaningful lives, but how can we if our jobs are always lurking around every corner of our lives, demanding our time, energy and sacrifice while giving us so little in return? It’s time to return to work being at work and home being at home, keeping those spheres separated to allow us to thrive in both. I always do my best work when I hold to strong boundaries and I think that my performance allows me to back up that claim when I’ve had to speak with my supervisor or colleagues about my boundaries. I do let them know I’m available for emergencies and I define what emergencies look like and what they aren’t.
Am I perfect with this? No, but I always found that the more I’ve held to my boundaries the better work I do at work and the less burned out I feel because I am able to get the necessary break every day not just when I escape to another state or country. The reality it this, soon you will be dead and then all the emails, powerpoints, deadlines and team meetings will be meaningless. No one gets to the end of their life and wishes they had spent more time at work. They wish they had spent more time with their children or their pets. They wish they had prioritized their personal relationships more than their work colleagues. They wish they had taken the time to learn a language, play and instrument or pursue their hobbies. Life is too short to work all the time, work to live, don’t live to work.
I’ve written before that we often have to pick and choose our battles when it comes to living out our values as almost nothing we can do in this modern world exempts us from harming others, short of going completely off grid and homesteading out in the middle of the wilderness surviving on nothing but what you create yourself. However, even those intrepid homesteaders buy some of their things at least to get started, so they still participate even if they say otherwise because without a village full of specialized craftsmen how could they not? Even the fact that they can live peacefully on their land free from marauding warbands is because they are surrounded by a modern society with an active army and local law enforcement agencies.Plus the tax man always comes in one form or another and if they’re youtubing their experience guess what they’re participating in?
The truth is we have to accept that we cannot make perfectly ethical choices that always align with our values. We have to pick and choose our battles and make compromises. I value the environment, but I have gone on cruises with my mother. Which is arguably one of the worst choices when it comes to environmentalism. Unfortunately, I’ve found that cruising is one of the friendliest travel options for someone with chronic health conditions if you want to see multiple countries and a bit more of the world. She worked very hard as my mom and practically killed herself to provide for me a modicum of middle class lifestyle growing up and to support me as best she could through college, a job that while it required a college degree paid me less than 20,000 a year, and grad school. She gave up her dreams of travel to give me a good life, so I help make her bucket list happen. The best way to do that has been cruising once every three to four years.
The two values that conflict are the environment and family. In general, my family lives in a very environmentally friendly way. We reduce our energy consumption as much as possible, avoid purchasing new items preferring thrift shops, ebay and Facebook marketplace. We buy “ugly” produce and check the quick sale items to reduce food waste. As one can see in the rest of this blog, in general we avoid travel to far flung places. I try to garden with native plants or at least plants that are non-invasive and friendly to my local area. I’ve planted a number of trees which all contribute to the environment. Even our toilet paper and tissues are made from bamboo to try and reduce the waste. However, every three to four years we do go on a trip that is truthfully bad for the environment. Is it better than the person who takes a week trip to various foreign countries around the world once a year? It’s probably on par to be honest.
It could be easy to start trying to calculate carbon “credits” to “off-set” the indulgence, which isn’t really the point of our daily lifestyle choices. If you indulge occasionally in fast fashion you may try to justify it with all the second hand purchases you’ve made. It may be a logical fallacy to say “well I can be ‘bad’ in this one instance because I’m so good all the other times.” We see this when people decide to go off their diets, or buy something from a place they know has a terrible reputation for how they treat their employees. It can be easy to judge people (or ourselves) who do make these compromises negatively. However, we all do it and we all make judgments about what compromises we’re willing to make when our values conflict or our budgets come up against certain realities of life.
It may not even be about having different values but how we rank our values in a given situation. Would I much rather purchase all my clothing from etsy shops supporting American small businesses? Absolutely. Do I have the money to do so? Absolutely not. Clothing is expensive to make at $15 to $20 an hour for a living wage. It’s even more expensive if you want them to use material that is also American made; perhaps you want it to be of all natural fibers and dyes from an organic cotton farm here on US soil using only the best sustainable, environmentally friendly practices.
I’m someone blogging about living her best life on a salary that is less than the median income. I don’t have that sort of cash, despite my greatest wishes otherwise. Almost none of us do and sometimes despite your best efforts you can’t find what you need at the thrift store given that it’s based on donations. I’m lucky in that I wear pretty common sizes but even then I can’t always find what I need and I’m forced to go to a regular store to purchase something new and not sustainably made, free from exploitative labor practices.
The overarching value is reduction of waste, but it sometimes conflicts with what I may feel I need. Like when I needed to go to the gala as part of a fundraising event as part of my job and I didn’t have a dress for the occasion. I wasn’t spending over $100 on a dress for my non-profit job. I also wasn’t buying a used prom dress from my local thrift shop to do it because I don’t want to look like I’m 15 instead of over 30. I placed the value of helping raise money for a good cause over my usual value of reducing consumption of goods.
The point of this post is to simply have you begin to reflect on how you personally navigate your values and to recognize that sometimes it’s not about being a hypocrite but rather having two conflicting values where you make a decision about which one to value more given your own limited resources whether that be time, money or energy. It’s not about telling you what to do but to get you to pause and reflect on how you may be navigating these conflicts without putting much thought into it leading to negative judgements of yourself and perhaps even others. This is a time to practice some self-compassion as well as compassion for the choices that others are making. It’s easy to throw stones in glass houses, but one really shouldn’t. It’s a kinder gentler approach to living out values
You can be more mindful about the decisions you are making to more align your actions with the things you actually care about. This allows us to create more meaningful and impactful lives that bring us joy. This also causes reflection about what we might be doing that doesn’t align and to ask, is there a different way to achieve the same ends without as extreme of a compromise? I like quality clothing that will last years not months, so I may go to ebay and try to find used designer clothing for a steal. Goodbye fast fashion, hello sustainability that isn’t breaking the bank. If I decide to go on a cruise because I want to be able to travel places with my mother and help her obtain her dreams, is there a line that is a little better for the environment than the rest? Is there one that also treats their staff well? What about the excursions it offers? Even something as simple as purchasing biodegradable paper plates if I decide I want to have a picnic with my sister in the park.
I’m always asking, is there a way I can do this better to fit my values? I am also willing to revisit previous decisions. I may say that upon further reflection that it was a compromise I shouldn’t have made. I can’t change the past, but I can move forward with making a different decision moving forward. Perhaps, I am at a different place where I have more freedom to choose. When I was purchasing my car there wasn’t really a hybrid with four wheel drive in my price range. I had to determine which was more important to me: the safety of having four wheel drive in a job that required me to drive in bad weather or a hybrid that was better for the environment considering the amount of driving I was doing. At the time, I chose safety, because I like living and couldn’t afford to become disabled from a catastrophic accident. As I begin to consider purchasing another car, my driving needs have changed so I will more likely choose a hybrid. Additionally, there are now more options which combine hybrid technology with all wheel drive.
We won’t always be able to live out our lives in perfect harmony with our values. We will have to pick and choose. We should be asking ourselves which values are in competition with one another and weigh the impact of those choices against the conflicting values. Sometimes one value will win out over another value. The ranking can vary from decision to decision. We should be willing to recognize when there is conflict to allow for self-reflection and arrive at the best decision for ourselves while owning that we are making a choice that conflicts with the values we have.
In an earlier post, I wrote about letting go of the wall while ice skating. The wall was a place of safety, it kept me from falling and allowed me to build up the skills that I needed in order to traverse the ice. After all, it is by definition a rather hard surface and falling on it of course causes pain and potential injury. Yet, the wall is very limiting. One can only go as far out as one’s arms reach. If there are many people clinging to the wall, then one cannot go faster than the slowest person. One does not know the joy of freedom even though freedom brings risk (as it always does).
If skaters only ever clung to walls we certainly wouldn’t get the phenomenal performances by the top figure skaters, we wouldn’t have hockey or speed skating. In order to be able to reach great heights one must be willing to take those risks. What we often don’t see if the number of times these top performing athletes have fallen. Those who stand on the precipice have a path paved in failure.
In order to truly live authentic, extraordinary lives, we have to be willing to forgo some safety and take risks. If you want to pursue a certain career most of us would have to take on a least some risk of taking on student loans and going to school. Even a technical school usually requires a modest sum of money which many of us don’t have ready access to. Even if you do have that money, you’re still risking having spent a good chunk of change in hopes that it will pay off. In order to find love and get married, you have to risk heartache and loss. If you do manage to find love and get married, you risk losing that love through death or abandonment. If you go on an amazing once in a lifetime vacation, you still have to travel which carries a risk. If you want genuine friendships, then you have to risk rejection. You may lose your current relationships in your pursuit to be more authentically yourself. The pay off to these things is worth the risk because otherwise you risk living a small, unfulfilled, lonely life.
Isn’t that what so many great stories are about? The person who risked it all and became famous? The person who made the big discovery or invented the next big technology. The person who became the hero. All of these stories require great risk and often personal sacrifice. Over and over again, the stories we tell require the protagonist to step outside of their comfort zone. It is the only way for them to grow and change enough to overcome the obstacles to their goals.
It’s actually the only way for us to grow and change as well. Without letting go and challenging ourselves how will we gain new skills to overcome life’s obstacles? Can we really risk not taking the risks? After all, if we haven’t pushed ourselves to go further then we may find that we aren’t able to keep up with the ever changing world.
We are taking a risk either way, but one way gives us an illusion of safety. We stay in the same dead-end job because it seems safer than looking for a new one or starting our own business. That is until the economy tanks and you lose that once seemingly secure job or your salary is no longer enough to keep up with inflation. The safety we had becomes our downfall because we aren’t in a position to pivot.
The truth is when we cling to the safety nets in fear of something bad happening to us we are choosing to let something bad happen to us anyways. I don’t condemn people who choose the wall and choose the safety net. After all, I’m a bit of a risk averse person myself. I have a lot of responsibilities and someone who is dependent on me. You, dear reader, may have children or other dependents. It is very difficult to choose the uncertainty that comes with risk. Research has demonstrated that people would rather choose the unpleasant reality that they know then experience the anxiety that uncertainty brings, even if that uncertainty would most likely lead to a better outcome. It is very difficult to fight that and we can come up with all sorts of reasons as to why we shouldn’t let go.
I don’t wish to lie to myself or to you. When we choose not to take the risk, we are choosing the certainty of a life that is smaller than what could have been. However for all my risk aversion, I, for one, do not want to choose a small life, so it’s time to let go.
In May 2023, the U.S. The Surgeon General announced that we were experiencing a loneliness epidemic and that it was killing us. Many experts linked loneliness to adverse health effects similar to those of smoking and obesity. It is associated with increased risk for heart disease, stroke, diabetes, dementia, depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicidality. It’s not just in the United States, the World Health Organization recognized this as a global issue and in the fall of 2023 launched an international commission to study the problem.
There are many ideas as to why we’ve increasingly become isolated even though we’re more connected than ever. As we’ve increased our digital presence, we’ve decreased our physical one replacing deeper connections with superficial online ones. That isn’t to say you cannot have a deep connection with someone you met online, people have done it. I’ve done it – but it is rare. There is only one deep online relationship that I’ve had that has lasted more than a year or two, but there’s many more people in my life outside my immediate family whom I’ve had a deep and lasting relationship with for over 20 years.
As a culture we are isolated, in our homes, scrolling on our phones not really knowing each other more than superficially. We present the curated version of ourselves to the outside world, never sharing our struggles or vulnerabilities. We don’t share real authentic conversations and disagreements usually end in blocking and a refusal to work things out. We’ve lost our ability to civilly coexist with differing opinions and perspectives which only leads to more isolation because no one is going to agree with you 100% of the time on every issue. Or we don’t share our whole views and ideas because we don’t want to begin an argument that will lose us yet another friend, leaving us with shallow relationships. We are afraid to be open and vulnerable, to make a mistake or work through discomfort to arrive at a place of mutual understanding and respect.
We fill our spare time up with meaningless and empty consumption of media, to numb the pain of being isolated. With our own family members we sit next to each other in our own worlds on our phones and not with each other. In 2006, I read a book called Bowling Alone which discussed our already declining social capital. Membership in community organizations such as churches, sports leagues, and volunteerism was on the decline then and continues to be now. So this isn’t really a new issue, since at the time of the book’s publication social media and smartphones hadn’t really taken off. Unfortunately, rather than helping the problem, it exasperated the issue of social capital.
One reason for this, is that we’ve lost third spaces, or places where people can gather for a relatively low cost. Even without the loss of parks, with more extreme weather, we’re losing the ability to access them. No one wants to sit together for hours at a park when it’s 100 degrees and a pool membership is expensive. Malls have closed. Libraries are under funded. Even activities that used to be relatively cheap are no longer accessible. Going to the bowling alley used to be a cheap family activity, but no longer. Many formerly free events open to the public have become ticketed experiences. This means our relationships have suffered from lack of consistent contact and engagement.
So what are we to do, dear reader? Well there are some recommendations which are more policy level, which while we can influence a little bit. Although, it is difficult for the average voter to leverage much in the way of power to force change. However, we can cultivate a culture of connection. How might you ask? Why by inviting your friends and families along to your bucket list adventures, which when kept closer to home are more accessible for everyone.
We all know that shared experiences strengthen relationships. These moments become more than just peaks for you, they become peaks for them as well. They become part of the trove of memories that you can reminisce about and form a special shared history. By joining in the ups and downs with one another we foster empathy, support and understanding. Sometimes these moments can create opportunities to be vulnerable with one another. In getting away from the busyness of everyday life and into a relaxing quiet setting, you find yourself opening up and sharing parts of yourself that you wouldn’t necessarily post on your social media pages. There’s room for the nuance of discussion.
We also know that spending time together is part of the way we express love and caring for one another. Having to navigate experiences helps to foster trust between you and demonstrates reliability. There have been many times when my sister and I have had to come to an agreement about where to go, how to get there or make decisions on the best approach. Luckily, years of sharing a room together had already taught us how to negotiate with one another, but it reinforces the relationship. I’ve often been surprised by how little time other people spend with their siblings who live relatively close by, but consistently going on dates together keeps our bond strong.
You will almost never read a post about an activity undertaken alone, because part of any bucket list moment is sharing it with people I care about. It’s not about doing alone, it’s about using these as times to connect, to build bridges and create strong relationships. What has been inspiring to me is that by going out and experiencing more of the world, friends have reached out to me with cool ideas knowing that I am someone who will take them up on their offer. There have been times when I’ve come along for the ride for someone else’s bucket list activity. I was delighted to help make their dreams come true.
I’ve also inspired them to enjoy more of what our local area has to offer. They’ve taken their boyfriends places or invited their family to join them for adventures. We’re fostering a culture of connection among each other and it’s spreading to other groups. It’s my ardent hope that this blog inspires you, dear reader, to go out with your loved ones on your adventures big and small. I hope that it helps you build connections with people and strengthens your bonds to combat loneliness, anxiety and depression. I hope that these adventures help foster confidence and self-assurance. I hope that this does not stop with myself or your, dear reader, but rather it spreads to other groups so that we’re all a little less lonely and feel like we belong to our communities. I can’t do much to change the world, but I can be the change I want to see in the world. One thing I hope to do is help build stronger connections and help others feel a little less alone.
Budget Bliss: Bucket List 