How is it possible that after all this time we are still so clueless? So much has happened and we still are apparently regressing to one misconception that life is a singular experience.
We’ve been through evolution, religion, war, peace, theories about almost everything and technological innovation. We have been living, reproducing, and dying and then doing it all over again for centuries.
Except we are still confused. We still want to know how to really be happy, but not so happy as to become indulgent and obnoxious. We want to be knowledgeable, enough to make great decisions, speak wisely but not so wisely as to appear like we know it all. We still want to imitate and do as the successful are doing, because maybe just maybe one day that would be us. Just roll back to the cascades of articles that all sound the same like: 5 things every successful person does before eating lunch, 7 things your idol said before they received the outstanding human reward, and so on..) We are clueless, we are hungry and we are eating those words up.
I have a habit of reading almost anything and everything that I can see. I read the words and the sentences, I see the lines and pick at what’s between them. I read into something and write out of it. My brain is a fanatic tool of analysis, and yet, YET I still sprint to the answers, or anybody who seemingly has them in hopes of uncovering a truth, uncovering the pill that will not only save me from my own inherited ignorance after centuries of human sanity and insanity, but also help me save you.
What is in that grind for success? What is it about personal growth that tickles our senses?
Everything that grows almost always grows to a certain point, and that is it. Growth stops, and it is surely and most importantly and vividly stopped by death, a rather scary notion to most, one that blankly tells us that we will not live forever. But its OK, really.
So i dwell in this circle for a while, and think about what really drives our growth as individuals, as partners, as communities, societies and a species. It seems to me that although I see the finish line and I try to remind myself of its existence frequently, running is not a singular effort after all.
My value added is not simply by my mere existence, not simply by own thoughts that exist within my mind, and end at the tip of my tongue usually. My value added is mirrored and brought to force by my action, and my ability to influence not the world, but just one person.
Surely we don’t know what we are doing, but we are on to one thing, and I am so happy that I am living in this generation, being one of the many voices saying this again:
“Living is not a singular experience, although your own life line attempts to trick you into believing that it is. Sometimes your own society wants to include or exclude you all depending on where you were born and when. Living is not a race to a finish line that you have to do all by yourself. Think of it like a relay race, we are all running but the significance is not in making the finish line because we all will, your value added is in how well you grab onto the baton once you have your hands on it, how quickly, consistently, willfully.. (choose your own adverb) you run, and how gracefully you hand over your baton to the next runner.”
You get to choose your team if you are lucky, you get to choose your baton as well. All I really want to get to finally, is that although we are a species highly susceptible to distraction, make your part count, give it everything you’ve got because you just might be the runner who changes it all.
Originally published at medium.com