Uncertainty comes in many flavors. There’s the kind of uncertainty we choose, when we start a new business, relocate, decide to climb a mountain, or take on any other voluntary adventure. Then there’s the kind of uncertainty that comes with events that are involuntary, but not life-threatening: losing a job, getting divorced, or having your house burn down when you’re away, just to name a few. There’s the kind of uncertainty that is terrifying but short-lived, as when you’re caught in a flood, earthquake, face to face with armed criminals, or skidding off a highway on an icy night. Horrifying and life-threatening in the moment. But if you manage to live through it, life will most likely regain its normal level of stability and certainty again.
But then there’s the type of uncertainty that is visceral, cellular, life-threatening and chronic—the kind of uncertainty that hits when we’re told we have a life-threatening disease or condition that we may have to live with for the rest of our lives.
I spent a very rewarding hour today interviewing a woman who, just a year ago, at the age of 44, was told she had a rare form of multiple myeloma—a type of bone marrow cancer that usually develops in African American men over the age of 60. She underwent chemo, to get her marrow “clean,” and then doctors harvested enough of her “clean” marrow to give her a bone marrow transplant with her own bone marrow. The process is, to put it lightly, not fun. The advantage to that approach is that you don’t reject your own bone marrow. The disadvantage is, the marrow you receive is not 100% clean. There’s a trace of cancer protein still in the marrow. Which means you’re not cured. You live with the cancer, which hopefully stays present, but under control.
That’s not just living with the esoteric possibility of a recurrence. That’s living with cancer daily, and watching to see if or when it goes out of control again.
So, for starters, let me not complain about a single point of uncertainty in my blessed and healthy life.
But the woman was so upbeat, so matter-of-fact about her illness, that I began asking her how she lived with that level of uncertainty so apparently well. [click to continue…]
Ah, the new year. I realize we’re almost fully a month into it, but I try to make that attitude of renewal and optimism, introspection and reflection, dreaming and reality-checking, etc., last for as long as possible. I find it so inspiring and invigorating to check in and try to optimize for the future. What if we approached the beginning of every month with the same celebration and thoughtfulness that we reserve for January 1? Don’t you think we would all be happier, fitter, more productive?
What are your resolutions for the New Year? I’d love to hear how other No Mappers are approaching 2010. A close friend told me recently that I’m too abstract in the way I think about my own projects—that I need to be more concrete if I want to really accomplish what I set out to do.
So I made a resolution to be less abstract.
Then, in the spirit of that resolution, I struck it from the record and made some very concrete goals for myself. I am feeling brave in this moment, so I will share them. Hopefully that makes them more real, and makes me more likely to succeed in carrying them out. [click to continue…]
Sometimes, change is something we bring upon ourselves voluntarily. We make a leap from the old path to the new (see my last post for more on this). But sometimes, change happens to us, against our will. The good news in those circumstances is, we don’t have to agonize over whether to change or not. The bad news is, we find ourselves off a cliff, without warning, or even a good plan as to what to do next.
But the REALLY good news is, humans are amazingly adaptable creatures, when circumstance requires. Necessity is the mother of more than just invention. And for anyone who’s in the large crowd of people who’ve had their old careers yanked away from them in the current recession (and implosion of certain creative and publishing industries) … here’s a bright spot of encouragement.
A group of laid-off advertising people recently got together and used all that unemployed creative talent to produce a film called Lemonade. I haven’t seen the actual film, but I watched the trailer, and it seems like a worthwhile project. It tells the stories of people who lost their jobs … and found far more fulfilling life paths. Paths they might not have had the courage to pursue if they’d had to voluntarily give up good paychecks to do it. [click to continue…]
A recent New York Times article told the stories of four people who were starting the new year with big-leap changes in their lives. One was a woman whose leg had been mangled in a car accident two years ago. After two years bedridden and 16 unsuccessful surgeries, she finally decided in December to have the leg amputated so she could begin a new life that was at least moving forward—even if it wasn’t in the direction she’d initially hoped.
Another was a couple who’d decided to take the leap and live together. A third was a 19-year-old convicted of a minor robbery who was trying to turn his life around after getting parole—and learning that he was about to become a father. The fourth was a former Citigroup employee who took a buyout and was now training, at the age of 41, to become an emergency medical technician.
I can’t even imagine the mental and emotional process that leads to the conclusion that you want your leg amputated. But for me, the article underscored that despite the popularity of Rick Smith’s book The Leap, which offers the soothing notion that there’s really not so much risk or scariness in making “the leap” to a new life path or profession—the truth is that change often involves, at some point, making a dramatic departure from the past. [click to continue…]
Ah, how fast time flies when you’re busy. Or on deadline. But hard as it is for me to believe, today marks the first day of the second year of the No Map. No Guide. No Limits. web site. It’s a journey and a work in progress, like any other adventure, and I hope the coming year sees as many interesting and good changes and developments as the past one did!
Indeed, the opening of each New Year tends to turn our thoughts to change; from what has been to what might be in the as-yet-unwritten and uncertain year ahead. (Just a year ago, I wrote a post called The Positive Possibilities of the New Year, if you want more on that.) New Year’s resolutions, after all, are entirely about what we wish or hope to change in the months to come. The fact that so few resolutions ever last the year—or even the first quarter—is a testament to just how difficult change is. Or, at least, how difficult voluntary change is. Each year, life throws all kinds of involuntary change at us, with little or no notice.
The lives of most independently-employed people, in fact, is an ongoing exercise in uncertainty and change. Suppliers of paychecks change, what they have to do to keep those paychecks coming changes, financial status changes, work pace changes. The good news is, that can make voluntary change easier. The bad news, of course, is all that constant shifting and uncertainty can also be exhausting to live through in real time.
Over the New Year’s weekend, one of the cable channels reran the Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies, which was a perfect way to launch a New Year full of uncertainty, possibility, and unknown challenges and experiences to come. I’ve talked before, on this site, about Lord of the Rings as a classic example of a hero’s journey, with all the initiation testing, wizards and monsters and lessons learned. But watching the drama of each chapter unfold in real time again made me remember just how dark a lot of that journey was. [click to continue…]
In the last couple of posts, we’ve shared a variety of thoughts and research results on what makes a human being happy. And still, we’ve only scratched the surface of the subject. But if so many people have written books and articles and conducted research on the subject, it’s probably because “happiness” is something we all both crave and struggle to attain.
Why is happiness so elusive for so many? In part, I think it’s because it’s a feeling. And all feelings … happiness, sadness, anger, discouragement … are fluid states of being. “If we were happy all the time,” a friend once pointed out to me, “we wouldn’t call it ‘happy.’ We’d call it ‘normal.'”
And yet, some people manage to capture that feeling of lightness more often than others, regardless of the circumstances in which they find themselves. Why is that? As with uncertainty and adventure, I think part of the answer is a matter of perspective. To some people, uncertainty is scary and awful. Period, paragraph, end of discussion. To others in the very same situation, that uncertainty is challenging and uncomfortable, yes, but also an opportunity to explore and learn and experience something new. [click to continue…]
In the “Question of the Day” posted a few days ago, I left out one of the best sources I have come across on the subject. Ironic, because it ran in The Atlantic, where I contribute a twice-weekly online column. It’s also embarrassing, because I read the article this past summer with rapt attention. Not sure what that says, but I think it says something about too much information coming through the brain in this information age of ours.
But more than any other resource in that last post, I recommend this one, for anyone pondering the question about what makes us happy. It is, in fact, an article entitled “What Makes Us Happy?” —and it chronicles a 72-year longitudinal study on 268 men in the Harvard classes of 1942-1944. They were the best and the brightest; a group that, in theory, had the best chance of anyone of being happy.
The results are fascinating. [click to continue…]
We’ve gotten a few comments and emails from readers asking about this subject. One reader specifically suggested a Question of the Day about whether it was better to be happy, or good. Another reader left a really interesting comment about the conflicting desires for fulfillment and security, and the challenge of finding the right mix.
So, as the holidays approach—a time of year generally known for being a happiness minefield, I thought I’d take an initial crack at the subject. I say “initial” because it’s a pretty huge topic, far beyond what a single post can even scratch at. Many long books have been written on the subject, in fact, including one by the Dali Lama.
Doing a Google search for “happiness” is also a kind of scary exercise, unleashing a tidal wave of self-help guru advice and prescriptives so relentless that my first reaction was the old Monty Python adage, “Run away! Run away!” But dedicated editor that I am, I persevered to find some worthwhile links and sources on the subject.
So. If you have some time over the holidays and want to delve into why humans seem to have so much trouble figuring out what will make us happy, you could start with Happiness: A History, by Darrin McMahon. Seems the ancients had a very different view of happiness (although the Romans with their love of the phallus started to change things). But it apparently wasn’t until the Enlightenment that we started to view happiness as something we were entitled to (see: Jefferson and Declaration of Independence) or something we should pursue, as an end in and of itself, here on earth. I came across a really interesting review of the book, with comments from McMahon, and a nice Google Books preview.
But what is it that makes us happy? Hedonistic satisfaction? Love? Purpose? Ah, if it were only that simple. Certainly Victor Frank’s Man’s Search for Meaning and Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life (two very different approaches to similar subject matter) argue that we need something besides pleasure in order to be happy. But it’s more complex than just that. [click to continue…]
News flash: I have a new book out! It’s called Unforgettable, and it chronicles 10 of my most memorable flying adventures.
Adventure, as I’m fond of saying, is rarely comfortable. But it is usually educational and memorable. Not that I really want to be navigating a closing line of thunderstorms in Northern Florida, bailing out of a blimp caught in a dust devil, or taking on a hostage rescue in Southern Sudan again. But even those challenging experiences had their moments. What moments? Ah. You have to read the book to find out.
The thing about adventure, you see, is that you’re never really sure how it’s going to turn out, even if you do your best to plan it ahead of time. Sometimes, that means you get in over your head and you find yourself having to sleep in a whorehouse or caught in a foreign country with someone in camo fatigues pointing a gun at you. But sometimes it means finding yourself stumbling on beauty so profound that it stops all other thought, sensation or words in suspended, breathless wonder. And at other times, it means finding that same miraculous wonder in the midst of smaller, everyday moments and adventures. [click to continue…]
Anyone who’s ever found themselves in the middle of a true-life personal, physical or professional adventure, where the outcome is uncertain and the edge of the cliff is disconcertingly close at hand, might wonder how anyone would envy their tenuous position. Most of the people who say they envy adventurers haven’t spent too much time seriously doubting how they’ll pay the rent or how they’ll get through a bad weather situation in the wild. It’s not really as much fun as the movies make it sound. Envy the reward, sure. But the uncertainty at the cliff’s edge? You’ve gotta be kidding.
And yet, without the cliff’s edge, the rewards of challenge and learning and in-the-moment vitality fade, as well. I remember a conversation I had once with a highly successful entrepreneur who told me he envied my adventurous life somewhat. He’d taken daring risks at times in his career, so he knew what being on the edge felt like. But it had been a long time since he’d been there. Success had softened what he was putting at risk. He now had financial security and an entire firm to back his investments and calculated risk-taking. “I change clothes and roles often now,” he said. “But I’m not ever really naked anymore.”
If memory serves, I told him that nakedness was highly overrated. But even though I’d still desperately like to have a few more pieces of clothing at my disposal, I understood his point. I’ve never had the luxury of being in his particular position, of course, but even without the financial margin, I’ve learned that too much comfort takes the edge off of life. Not to mention the amount of growth you experience.
And while I haven’t actually talked to her about it, I think Oprah Winfrey would agree. [click to continue…]
