I am reading the book How to Live a Meaningful Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, a couple of professors at Stanford, as part of a virtual book club I belong to.
The group is comprised of middle-aged professionals, some with workaholic tendencies, who are trying to navigate the next stage of life and exploring if there's another iteration of their lives (professional, personal) that might accompany that stage.
I'm enjoying the group and the book. One of the exercises in the book is to write your life view, a brief summary statement that makes sense of where you are at this point in time. It's an interesting challenge: how to synthesize your take on what life is about without regurgitating platitudes or greeting card / fortunate cookie wisdom.
Here's my first stab at it:
I am here to explore and learn, to embrace new and sometimes difficult experiences, to follow my curiosity in channeling creative impulses and understanding complex systems, to connect with others and to build and sustain a community.
I want to be present for my family and friends in ways that are meaningful and important to them and to me.
I want to practice discipline and do hard things.
I want to care for my body and maintain it.
I want to fly kites and hike and bodyboard and birdwatch.
I want to become better at the practice of compassion.
I want to be less focused on stuff.
I want more space for art and music in how I live.
I want to accumulate people that matter in my life, who sometimes push the boundaries of my comfort.
I want to be a partner deserving of my wife, and a father deserving of my children.
I want to impart useful counsel when it matters that sets my children up for future success.
I want to learn to listen more and better and to speak less.
I want to rekindle childhood friendships and express gratitude to my teachers.
I want to continue conversations over years and to witness how lives proceed.
I want to use my natural naivete to see more threads that connect us than cleave us.
I want to be comfortable in my skin, authentic to my values and delight in my weird obsessions and pleasures out of proportion.
I want to knowingly take risks that further these pursuits.
I will continue to bear witness to suffering, cruelty and violence and I hope to respond to it with presence, caring and empathy.
I want to find my tribe among the groups I was born into and among those I identify as kindred spirits.
I want to understand money as a tool to own and allocate my time and open doors to experiences, with the goal that I eventually don’t spend time worrying about money.