being, becoming, belonging

In June, I posted the following question on social media:

Do you think you should be doing something more important or meaningful or just BIGGER with your life?

One hundred and sixty-two people took a moment to answer it.

1. Often enough proved the number one response, with twenty-seven percent. Practically every day came second, with twenty-three percent. So, half who replied mull over this question a lot.
2. The Sometimes and Rarely were evenly split, twenty-two percent each, forty-four altogether.
3. The Nevers were rarest – with eleven replies, only six percent

Eighty-one people, exactly half of everyone who responded, spent another few minutes explaining their answers. Many mentioned their age and how it affects their preoccupation with pursuing a more consequential existence. In some cases, the wondering was louder when they were younger. In others, it has descended later in life.

As for me, I go through phases. Mostly I would be a Sometimes, but, at times I can slide to Practically every day which is typically a soggy, demoralized place where my day job has crumbled into tasks that deplete me.

I have more to say about this survey. And if you do, your comments, as always, are hugely welcome.

For now, one observation:

What if these results say less about variations in individual fulfillment and more about the health of our society?

Over the summer, I picked up a thin book by one of my favourite authors, the journalist, Sebastian Junger. The book was Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging.

The book grew from an article he wrote for Vanity Fair titled “How PTSD Became a Problem Far Beyond the Battlefield.” It takes us through the experiences of returning soldiers and survivors of natural (and unnatural) disasters. It also revisits the period in American history when European settlers arrived. He writes of the surprising number who ended up joining Native American tribes (some, having been captured, then ransomed, were no longer able to tolerate white society and frequently ran back to their captors).

The opposite hardly ever occurred. The indigenous rarely left their own people.

Today, the few remaining pre-industrial communities comprise members far happier (and mentally well) than the rest of us. Junger’s book offers a broad gallery of human experiences in which we have succeeded or failed to make each other feel as if we belong to one another. As if what we do for the group matters. He concludes, “Humans don’t mind hardship; in fact, they thrive on it. What they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary.”

These lines reminded me of a different book I read a few years ago,
Brad Stulberg’s The Practice of Groundedness where he discusses the type of “success that feeds – not crushes – your soul.” Stulberg notices that the executives he coaches seem to forever chase achieving the next thing … as if to outrun a looming sense of emptiness. He frames the challenge as one of “heroic individualism,” which is “perpetuated by a modern culture that relentlessly says you need to be better, feel better, think more positively, have more, and ‘optimize’ your life.”

I wasn’t thinking about modern culture when I posed my question at the start of the summer.

I was thinking, instead, about Alastair Campbell who I had just heard on the radio talking to Kirsty Young. He sounded sad when he said he wished he could have made a bigger difference somehow. In politics – he meant, since that’s where his passion and talent had taken him. He said something along the lines of, instead I am meant to feel like I have accomplished something just because I have a podcast with a lot of followers.

I thought about that. Would I feel successful if I had a big fat podcast? And then I got to thinking about who doesn’t feel like they should do or be more? I imagine Putin and Trump may be safe from that – for all the wrong reasons.

And now, I think something different. Now I wonder if the nagging sense that you should be doing something better, more consequential with your life, reveals the water you swim in, not the sort of fish that you are.

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Note about today’s title: the idea that everyone needs to Be, Become and Belong comes from the teachings of Thomas Hübl.

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