I have a close friend from high school who recently had his third kid. He is happily married and lives in a single-family home with his wife, kids, and even a few dogs. I have found myself reflecting on how different our lives are, despite how similar our upbringings were. He and I grew up in the same small town and attended the same public high school. We were both good students but attended different universities. This is where our paths initially diverged.

From there, countless decisions were made, resulting in the vastly different positions we are both in today. His priorities are providing for his family, showing up for his kids, and being a good husband. The decisions about how to spend his time and energy are already largely made for him. On occasion, I find I’m envious of his clear direction and sense of purpose. Similarly, I have heard him say the opposite about my situation, regarding the freedom that I have, both with time and finances.

Meanwhile, I am thirty-two and single with no children or dogs of my own. I have the freedom to book a flight to see a friend on a whim. I can go to nicer restaurants because it is just me and maybe a date. I can splurge on a first-class seat because there is only one ticket to buy. From the outside and from a certain perspective, my life looks pretty good to him, in the same mirrored kind of way that his life looks pretty good to me.

We are both climbing the same mountain, thinking the other is closer to the top than they really are. This tendency to view another’s situation with any semblance of desire often discounts what it took to get there and the responsibilities and daily costs of what it takes to have that opposite life. Both of our lives have their own trade-offs which are hard to see from where we stand. The grass on the other side is most often a different shade of green, complete with its own unique set of weeds.

I sometimes wish that I could buy a plot of land and build a swing set for the kids I am yet to have. As nice as this sounds, only God knows if there will be a kid for each swing. This is where the strange tension is present. Some things can be built before they are needed, but most things in life, whether physical or relational, should be assembled when the time is right. A house can be bought and a swing set built, but the family that plays on it cannot be assembled in a weekend. Until that season comes into my life, the best I can do is to build myself into the man I want to be to support that life.

For now, looking ahead to these times with inspiration, hope, and wonder is all that I can ask for. I am standing beside a busy street waiting patiently for the crosswalk to turn. I look down to appreciate the corner that I am standing on, while knowing well that, in time, I will be on the other side. I remind myself that every life contains something that another life is missing, and that we should each be grateful for what we have.

My grandmother, quite literally on her death bed, says to my mother before they both go to sleep, “If my eyes are still closed in the morning, don’t wake me up because I’m trying to die.” Knowing my grandmother, she said it gently and matter-of-fact. A small part of her knows that her speaking literally like this brings a certain levity to the moment. Considering her passing made me think that until the final moment she retained the dignity of being the same person she always was, literally and figuratively. I get the feeling that all of us may not have that same dignity.

I have been wrestling with how to comprehend death, especially watching her approach it so directly. In the new age we are entering, death feels further away each day as AI advances. After processing the acceptance that she showed that night, the solution to this wrestling became clear to me. Death knocked gently and this time she opened the door willingly, inviting him in. This acceptance echoes in my comprehension of what will one day be my own death.

The deliberation of how to define death in this new world has, until now, eluded me. I always find myself circling back to the Ship of Theseus. I have concluded that when the ship returns to shore after having replaced all of the planks, it is a different ship. If it is a different ship, then the original no longer exists.

If identity depends on continuity rather than components, then the gradual replacement of every part eventually breaks that continuity. This logic allows me to sleep soundly knowing that even if I do end up “living forever” in a sense that my mind is uploaded to the cloud, or if I get an entirely new and younger body to accompany my aging mind, I will still “meet death” one day.

If what continues resembles me, thinks like me, and believes it is me, but continuity is broken, then it is not me who is continuing but someone new entirely. This day will arrive gradually, once my body no longer resembles its original self and once enough of me has been replaced that continuity can no longer honestly be claimed. Until that day comes, I will continue to live each day to the fullest while accepting that I, too, will one day welcome death when he knocks.

It was a normal day after getting home from work. I’m sitting at the counter finishing my dinner when I reach for my phone. I pick it up only to forget why I picked it up in the first place. While my phone is in my hand, I instinctively pop open Insta, because why not?

Modern day social media has starved us of substance and coaxed us into becoming reliant on finely tuned dopamine cycles of ultra-short content. I am pretty sure the endless scroll started with Facebook, but before we knew it, Instagram arrived. Now, it’s almost impossible to find a content or social app that does not utilize the endless scroll. This endless scroll, when combined with algorithms, can be wildly addictive, and it is not natural because it does not have a set end-point. The “book” of social media is never finished.

If you’re curious, like I was, the average length of a scroll in Ancient Rome was around 11 or 12 feet. Let’s convert this to an Instagram equivalent and call it 3–4 per foot, so roughly 50 total. This would take the average Instagram user around five minutes to consume (10 posts at about 6 seconds per post). The math is hardly necessary to see my point. While I won’t go as far as to say that physical page-turning is the only suitable option, I am saying that endless scrolling is working against us.

From those 50 posts, you’re almost certainly not going to be able to recall their content the next day, let alone five minutes later. I’m trying to recall what I saw earlier today, and nothing specific comes to mind, other than knowing that many of them were about cars. You might recall one or two that made you laugh or smile for a couple of seconds, before scrolling to the next post to see if you were again so lucky. Conversely, watch a five-minute talk or podcast on YouTube and you’re very likely going to remember it the next day. Read a book for 20 minutes and you will surely remember its content.

It is both the quantity of content and the rate of consumption that are the culprits in stealing our attention. Books, movies, and a lot of YouTube (but not all of YouTube) require an order-of-magnitude more focus than zooming through Instagram Reels or TikTok’s. This spending of attention ultimately leads to recall after processing.

If you cannot remember what you consumed five minutes ago, it might as well not have been consumed at all. The goal is to leave something behind in your mind, not just pass time.

They say that if time travel ever exists, we will only be able to travel forwards in time, not backwards. I do not know enough about physics to argue with that. I do know enough about myself to find it worthy of consideration. I am sitting here, single, wondering whether or not I would press a golden button that could fast forward me to kissing my wife on the altar of our wedding day. If I could, would I skip right to that moment?

I do think about that day, sometimes more than others. More often than not, I wouldn’t think about pressing the button. On some days though, it would be harder than others. A wedding invitation with a plus one, I think to myself, “wouldn’t it be nice?” Among other days, thinking of traveling, someone to share something new with would be nice. Alas, I like to think that I would never press such a button even if it did exist.

To press the button would be to sacrifice all of the time in-between. God only knows what will happen between now and then. Will it be a year, or a handful of years? Whatever amount of time it may be, I will have countless opportunities to learn more about myself and others in the meantime. I am growing emotionally, spiritually, and physically each day. In every interaction where I choose how to present myself and my values, I am shaping my future self. Every relationship that doesn’t work out, I am better for it. In the most trying of times, we grow the most. The trough of this journey is not to be skipped. This is what makes the rest of it worthwhile.

Learning to embrace the path is easier said than done. Even if I could press the button and arrive at the altar, I would be the wrong man standing there. I would be the man I am today, not the man shaped by whatever is to come. The version of me that belongs at that altar has not been built yet. This button would deliver an unfinished version of me to a moment meant for my future self.

The final piece to this puzzle is that whoever my future wife is, wherever she is, she would not want me to press the button either. The version of me that she falls in love with has endured whatever was necessary to reach that moment. She needs me to go through all of it. She is out there, in her own in-between, being shaped by her own trials. I would not want her to skip hers either.

So the glass remains intact and the golden button stays unpressed. The time spent in-between is where we become who we are supposed to be, for whoever we are supposed to be, and for whenever that may be.

It was a calm Saturday evening, and I was having an early dinner with my friend’s family when something very particular caught my attention. The first time I heard the melody from the live acoustic guitar of the musician in the dining room, I didn’t believe it was true. I thought for sure it was a different song that sounded similar, but after hearing the melody for the second time, I knew that it was none other than the theme song of The Legend of Zelda.

I must have heard this theme song a few hundred times throughout much of my adolescence, and even into the past few years. It helps that I know how to play this song on the piano, but it is simply unforgettable. The two beginning notes before the march up to the high notes hit the most nostalgic of nerves. Hearing these notes, I was instantly transported to my childhood living room, sitting there with my Dad and brother as I watched Link riding his horse Epona, fighting off the villains of Hyrule.

Before the guitarist had played this song, I hardly noticed that he was playing at all. In the middle of a conversation, these notes pierced through my subconscious and brought me back to so many different times and places. The theme song, present in most if not all of the many games in the series, has surfaced across many of the games that I’ve played, and I can vividly recall when they were and where I was. They are, importantly, all very fond memories of exploration, overcoming challenges, and relaxing with family.

These notes were a set of keys that I didn’t know existed. Maybe it was the live guitar and the simplicity of the notes being played without anything else that made the feeling that much more nostalgic. Whatever it was, it was thirty seconds that felt like an hour of me jumping through the times and places where I have heard that song throughout my life.

I’m sitting here wondering how many more times I will hear these notes played together over the rest of my life. Will sequels be made that will echo this theme song? Undoubtedly, I will continue to play it on the piano until I can’t anymore. I sincerely hope that, well into my old age, hearing this peaceful song brings even more fond memories to mind, transporting me to places that I have yet to even experience.

I was on a short twenty-minute walk on the beach when I had just turned around to head home. Not long into my route back, as I was leisurely placing one foot in front of the other, I realize I’ve just stepped on something seriously sharp. At first, I thought it surely was a small piece of glass. I almost fall over after lifting my foot up to keep it from pushing this sharp object in further. Upon looking down, I find that it was a bee’s stinger that I promptly pulled out. For some reason, I thought that walking into the salty water of the Gulf would ease the pain. To no one’s surprise, it did not, and the sharp pain continued for the next ten minutes.

The following fifty steps or so, I limped while I was assessing the pain and evaluating the distance back to my spot up the beach. Towards the end of those steps, I thought to myself, to hell with my bee-stung foot, let me just walk normally and enjoy the rest of what was otherwise, and will continue to be, a very pleasant walk on the beach.

I decided that instead of stressing to examine all of the brown-ish colored shells in front of me for their similarities to a bee, I would look up at the waves crashing, the sun in the sky, and the scenery along the shore. I very well could have continued to, mostly unnecessarily, limp up the beach while keeping my head down in search of beached bees, but I did not. I decided to focus on what was in front of me and the simultaneously relaxing and energetic nature of my surroundings.

I quickly considered how slim the chances were of stepping on a bee stinger while walking the beach and determined they were remarkably low. Even though I noticed more bees in my path than expected, the risk still felt small. With my head down searching for bees, I completely lost touch with how far I was from home.

Very often, we find that a small incident or issue can distort our view of everything around it. To me, that was the small unpleasant incident of stepping on a bee stinger while on a beach walk in consideration of the otherwise entirely pleasant time. The sharp pain from that one step was definitely felt, though I did not allow that to weigh down the rest of my steps.

Think of the last thing that you purchased. Do you know with certainty why you bought it? To what extent was your purchase influenced by the purpose it serves, how long it will last, or what it signals to others? What compels us to buy a nice watch or a fancy car? Is it fascination with horology, watchmaking, and the technical skill required to assemble such a device, or what it tells others about our level of disposable income? We make excuses for buying these things by telling ourselves it will appreciate over time, it diversifies a portfolio, or that it is built to last forever. Those explanations are often incomplete, and a facade for what lies beneath.

When we first get an itch of an urge that we want something, we should evaluate where that desire came from. Which of our friends, family members, or colleagues also want this? Do others that we regard highly and those who we share values with also want the same thing? In “Wanting,” Luke Burgis writes, “Each one of us has a responsibility to shape the desires of others, just as they shape ours. Each encounter we have with another person enables them, and us, to want more, to want less, or to want differently.”

Part of what we buy and own contributes to our persona and shapes how others see us. Even if we do not want to be defined by what we own, we cannot fully escape the tendency of others to judge us by it. Clothing is often the first example, since it is usually the first thing others see. Next may come accessories, whether temporary, like jewelry, or permanent, like tattoos. What we own and wear becomes part of us.

What we buy often carries meaning beyond its practical use, or what it tells others. A Casio, a Camry, and a cotton tee are all uniquely practical. A Rolex, a Lamborghini, and a Loro Piana sweater serve the same purposes as the former, yet they communicate something entirely different. Economists call some of these status purchases Veblen goods. These are things that ironically become more desirable partly because they are so expensive. Their impracticality and strength of their ability to signal becomes part of their appeal.

A powerful question to ask yourself when considering buying something is if you would still want it even if no one else knew you owned it. That question and your response will bring you closer to the truth of understanding what you desire more fully. Some purchases reflect real admiration for craft, beauty, or durability. Others are driven more by borrowed desire, status, and imitation. Most are probably some mixture of both. The point is not to remove all symbolism from what we own, but rather to understand ourselves well enough to know what we are really buying.

My car drives itself. I’m starting to wonder how long it will take until I am verifiably a worse driver because of that. Since the last update in my car, it has been in self-driving mode for 79% of the time. The other 21%, a statistically inferior human driver was operating it. Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) mode is something like 5-7 times safer than human driving. What if, over the course of many years, I become only half as safe of a driver I was before using FSD? Statistically, using FSD 79% of the time would still be 42-47% safer than driving entirely by myself.

Thinking of a small part of my life being automated makes me consider how much of our time and energy we will be afforded to reallocate. The mental drain of a commute can be transferred to having more energy to spend with your family when you arrive home. That is what fascinates me about convenience more broadly. As life gradually becomes more frictionless, it gives us back time, energy, and patience. The real question is what we do with it.

Food arrives instantly. Cars drive themselves. Entertainment, and dopamine, are infinite. Google Maps removes the need to remember locations. Search engines remove the need to remember facts. More and more of the small bumps in life are being flattened, which sounds great in theory, but I can’t help but wonder what all of this convenience is really doing for us. If technology removes more friction and inconvenience, where does that saved energy go? Into family, presence, creative work, and peace? Or into more scrolling and passive consumption?

For much of my life, I considered any small increase in efficiency a positive at almost any cost. In many ways, I still do, but lately I have questioned to what end. Once we are used to these newfound comforts, inconvenience will feel stranger. Waiting for anything will feel unreasonable. Getting lost, something of the past. Silence will be foreign. When your electric car jolts you awake to take the wheel, the resulting stress may be even more than your former commute “by-hand.”

I keep circling back to one thing. Something is always given up to attain comfort, whether that is something tangible, like money or battery life, or something more abstract, like attention, patience, or optionality. How much convenience is too much? Some friction is indeed pointless and should be removed. Some of it may still serve a purpose.

A commute that asks nothing of you may leave you feeling more grateful. A life, however, that asks nothing of you may leave you feeling different, too. My car drives itself. That may be a gift, but at the same time it feels like a preview of a bigger question. What are we doing with the time and energy that modern life keeps giving back to us?

Almost without fail, each time I open social media, I come across a video of Olympic gold medalist Alysa Liu. Usually it is her celebratory performance, playful and elegant. Other times it is a short interview, where the same ease somehow remains. When asked if she was nervous to perform at the Olympics, she said no. She was at peace because she had already achieved her goal of making it to the Olympics. Even if she finished last, it would still be a success. I admire that kind of optimism, and more than that, her refusal to move the goalpost after already arriving somewhere she once dreamed of reaching.

So much of our anxiety comes from arriving somewhere meaningful, then refusing to call it arrival. We reach what once felt distant and meaningful, then immediately reset our sights on the next label, the next rung, the next milestone. You start dating someone and try to be patient while waiting for the boyfriend or girlfriend label. Then you want engagement, then marriage. Work follows the same pattern: you want the promotion, then the next one, then the one after that, while the satisfaction from the last step fades even faster than it arrived.

I like to think of each stage in life as coming with its own pair of glasses. Those glasses represent the goals and lines in the sand you held at that stage. At each new milestone, dig through your old shoe boxes and pull out the glasses you wore when you got home from your first date, or when you stepped into your office for the first time. The butterflies have left your stomach and your laptop battery is drained, yet your sense that you are in the right place, with the right people, doing the right things, has never felt more true. You may fantasize about standing on the altar or being named in the latest partner class, but in that moment you are thoroughly enjoying the journey.

Then days, weeks, and months pass, and more of your mental energy gets spent living in the future. You daydream about where you will go as a married couple or what life will feel like once you finally make partner. Then you get there and realize “there” has already been replaced. Once you make partner, you realize there are tiers, and you are back at the bottom of yet another ladder.

Putting on your old pair of glasses can reframe your current goals. It can remind you that you are already standing in places your former self once strained to reach. The tragedy is that we forget how badly we once wanted to stand where we stand now.

I’ve thought a great deal about suffering lately, especially in relation to my writings. Having written a substantial amount in the last two years, I got to thinking of how proud I am of putting my thoughts into words such that they can lead others to smile, laugh, and think. I’ve thought that if even a single other person expands their thoughts on a subject, or has a new perspective on something after reflecting on an essay, or interprets some of my self-proclaimed “advice” or “wisdom” in a way that alleviates their life of some suffering, that it would make my writing worthwhile. This is a very linear way of thinking, and unjustly undermines the good that can come from suffering and “living and learning” from your own mistakes rather than living your life through a lens of which advice you’ve received from whom.

After 95 essays, over 40,000 words, and almost two years of writing weekly, I view this analyses of life as certainly beneficial to my younger self and perhaps many others searching for thoughtful ways to interpret and understand the world. I’ve only very recently started to think through, if confronted with my younger self, if I would actually give myself these essays. Looking down at myself in the various personal ruts and pits of life that I have been in, as have we all, would I throw myself the rope needed to make the pain disappear with the snap of my fingers? At the times when I struggled to tread water, would I throw my past self the life ring? These are remarkably difficult questions to answer. Some days, especially in the aftermath of a difficult experience, it’s easy to say you would do anything to erase the pain. As time passes and you distance yourself from these lower moments, you will begin to see how much better you are for having experienced these lows. I am exponentially more emotionally formidable and self aware because of the challenges and suffering that I have experienced.

Today, as harsh as it may sound, I will stand above the pit and on the shore and withhold the rope and life ring. I take a deep breath when saying that, because it is far from an easy decision. In a conversation with my younger self, younger me would ask, “why?” and would beg for the life ring. Current me, with a solemn face, would say, “In time, you will understand.”

Sometimes you pay to eliminate or reduce FOMO. Sometimes you’re paying to free your mind from the burdens that come from not having something. The thing you buy is almost secondary to the peace-of-mind you’re really buying.

I own about a good amount of IBIT (the bitcoin holding company ETF). I own this bitcoin partly as a hedge against the dollar depreciating. A second, yet equally worthy reason is to significantly reduce the fear-of-missing-out (“FOMO”) that I felt when I didn’t own it. When I owned very little, I felt a bit of FOMO every time bitcoin was up 10% or 20%, sometimes in a single day. Now, I can completely ignore bitcoin in the news and all of the crypto market, simply because I have exposure. I have essentially “paid” to eliminate FOMO. By the time I retire, bitcoin will either be $1 million or $0, and it will not make a difference to my life or lifestyle either way. This is not a case to buy bitcoin, but a very clear example of how I paid to rid myself of a feeling.

A different example is when I bought a new (to me) car. For the past year, I’ve spent 20 to 30 minutes a day casually browsing Bring a Trailer, AutoTempest, and a few other sites, looking at all types of cars. I’m realizing, only after buying my new car, that I no longer have to spend that time. While I wasn’t always seriously looking during those times, a small part of me was always looking. Now, the act of looking at cars will be purely for enjoyment, as opposed to 90% for entertainment and 10% for practicality.

Lastly, any type of insurance is essentially paying to reduce the mental worry of something bad happening. Whether car insurance, life insurance, flood insurance, or any other type, you are paying to free your mind from the burdens that come from not having insurance. The decision to purchase insurance is heavily influenced by you not having to run the catastrophe scenarios in your head every time you leave the house.

In each case, the money spent is buying relief and the ability to stop thinking about what’s the worst thing that could happen. It is incredibly freeing to reclaim that mental capacity after thinking about something so often that it becomes second-nature. Of course, it is a balance of determining what is truly worthy of taking up your mental capacity along with removing the things worth removing, even if that means spending money to do so.

I think probably too much about the implications of running outside versus running on the treadmill at the gym. The gym in my building is pristine, like an Equinox, and it is very predictable. I’m very likely to run into friendly neighbors and my workout can be timed down to the minute. There are no surprises, and often that’s exactly what I need. On the other hand, it sometimes feels like a hamster wheel workout. The workouts can tend to blend together, especially when I use the same treadmill I normally use.

Running, walking, or working out outside is different. You’re 100x more likely to exchange a smile with a passing stranger. You’re more likely to see and hear interactions that broaden your perspective. You notice nature and the weather. The sharp breeze off the bay. Even if you take the exact same route, it never really repeats. I have lately found myself craving the mental stimulation that these outdoor workouts offer.

Running or walking outside, especially in a dense city, has its risks. It’s not just the scenery or the breeze that I enjoy. I actually embrace the friction that comes with it: waiting at a crosswalk you thought you could make; having to nearly stop because someone with headphones and a 10-foot retractable dog leash is taking up the entire sidewalk; stubbing your toe on uneven pavement. All of these moments are tests of patience, and they force you to pay attention.

You might make 100 small decisions on an outdoor run. On a treadmill, you’ll likely make two: how fast you choose to go, and how long you will run. There are also the bigger risks: the greater-than-zero likelihood of being hit by a car crossing the street, and a 10x higher likelihood of rolling your ankle on uneven pavement compared to a treadmill. The odds aren’t zero, which is why they’re worth mentioning, especially compared to the actual zero likelihood of being hit by a car taking the elevator to my gym.

On the flip side, I would argue there is some risk to perpetually choosing the safe, controlled, hamster wheel workout. The gym and treadmill definitely still check the box, and sometimes they are necessary. Lately I’ve been prioritizing outdoor runs and evening walks because I am enjoying the variety that it brings to my days. The mental benefit slightly outweighs the risks, at least for now.

For now, I’m choosing outside more often than not. Not because it’s objectively better, but because it changes my day. I still use the treadmill when I need control, time, or consistency. When I feel the monotony of the hamster wheel workout coming on, I know I have to step outside, hear the city, and feel the air.

On a recent trip to visit my 95-year-old grandmother, she said some things that made me laugh and think. My Mom, my aunt and I are sitting with her in her room and she asks what time it is, to which my aunt responds, “it’s three o’clock.” Grandma looks confused and says “...in the morning?” Of course, we kindly let her know it was, in fact, the afternoon. She was not trying to be funny, but it certainly was.

The other particularly memorable comment came at the end of my visit. She is sitting confidently in her wheelchair as I lean in to say goodbye. As we hug, she looks at me, smiles, and says as genuinely and kindly as possible, “Have a wonderful life.” I didn’t quite know how to respond, so I said, “You too, grandma.” She starts laughing and says, “Well, mine is almost over.” Truly not having words this time, we both laughed.

I will forever remember both of those moments for their profoundness and humor. Humor seems to serve different purposes at different points in life. Early on, it often serves as a shield, deflecting discomfort. Towards the end, it lightens intense moments, relaxing tensions. The lightness of the three-o’clock-in-the-morning zinger and the heavy weight of “mine’s almost over.” The former, because her sense of time in the short term is untethered. The latter, because her sense of her age has never been more deeply felt.

Being told to have a wonderful life by someone who knows theirs is almost over makes the phrase take on new meaning. The phrase is more often said in passing, sometimes accompanied by a sarcastic eye-roll. It was a sort of pass-the-baton moment, as if she wanted me to finish the race she’s running. Like, “I had a great life, now you go live yours.” She has conceded to time and is not fighting. She is at peace with how she spent her time and has instructed me to live a wonderful rest of my life.

A friend I hadn’t seen in a year reached out last weekend while going through a particularly difficult time. He came to me to talk through his situation and I caught myself saying things that I wish I had told myself years ago. Control the things you can control. Don’t allow yourself to fatigue in fear of what is to come. When you catch yourself focusing too much on the past or the future, go for a walk. Every time I go for a walk, I come back with a clearer head. Nature has a sort of gravitational pull that quiets noise and pulls attention back into the present.

We have to remember to keep our agency in trying times by choosing deliberate actions we can take today, even when everything else feels uncertain. We cannot allow regret of past actions or anxiety towards future unknowns to weigh us down in the current moment. Regret and anxiety can be debilitating. We have all experienced these intense emotions. It is how we react to them that determines how prepared we are for what is to come.

Focus your energy on inputs like what choices you make today, what effort you give, and what routines you commit to. These are the few levers you actually have access to, regardless of circumstance. When attention drifts toward outcomes, it leads to mentally walking in circles, sideways, or backwards. When attention stays on inputs, it concentrates and steadies you. It turns presence into mental fortitude, leaving you better prepared for the range of outcomes ahead.

Your future self will thank you for doing everything you can to be the best version of yourself today. Your past self has done what it was meant to do, and wants you to focus on being the best version of yourself that you can be. Your present self, reading this today, has so much potential. You have the potential to impress your future self, and make all of your past selves shed tears of pride from being a part of your journey. All of this starts by preparing yourself through the decisions you make today.

I was sitting in the sauna, catching up with a friend I’d met recently. As he stood up to leave and reached for the door, he paused and said, “Every time I see you, man, you have a smile on your face.” It was framed simply as an observation, and almost a question to himself. I’ve seen him only 10-15 times, but apparently most or all of those I’ve worn a smile. My first instinct upon hearing this was to be surprised. I’m not going around intentionally trying to look happy. I take it as me genuinely being happy. I can’t see myself being anything else.

Upon reflecting on this, I appreciate his honesty and the fact that he chose to say it to me. So often, we notice something about another person and keep it to ourselves, assuming it goes without saying, when in reality, it often doesn’t. A brief comment, offered without an agenda, can have a significant impact on the other person.

Elon Musk recently said in an interview that it is better to be an optimist and wrong than a pessimist and right. The statement is easy to dismiss as motivational shorthand, but it is a remarkably powerful way to live your life. Truly living optimistically means being able to continuously bet on yourself, whether or not the odds are in your favor.

An invaluable side effect of being an optimist and wrong is failure and what failing can teach you. Being a correct pessimist does not result in the same failings, and thus you are not educated to the same extent as you are when you are an incorrect optimist. Pessimism imposes a cognitive tax before effort even begins, draining attention through preemptive doubt. Optimism, by contrast, allocates energy toward execution rather than rehearsal of failure.

Optimism, as underscored by my friend’s comment, acts as a powerful social gravity. People instinctively orient themselves toward those who wholeheartedly believe in positive outcomes. Optimism attracts momentum because it invites conversation, collaboration, and shared effort. People are more willing to engage, contribute, and take risks alongside someone who signals that forward motion is still worthwhile.

I think back to my friend’s comment and now consider it a signal, or a reminder to keep wearing the same smile with pride. Optimism matters because it enables us to take risks that we otherwise wouldn’t. Progress is most often derived through those optimistic enough to take action, even at the risk of being wrong.

I was at my parents’ house for Christmas, standing in the shower, when I reach for the bar of soap and noticed a small rectangular patch that was a different color. Then I realized it was a tiny sliver of the former bar of soap fused to one side of the new one. I started laughing and couldn’t help but smile. I stood there for a minute, holding the bar, noticing how deliberately the two piecess had been pressed together. My parents could afford to live well into their hundreds financially, yet they won’t throw out a bar of soap when it’s only a millimeter thick. Instead, they’ll press the last sliver into the next bar and keep going.

This same pattern shows up elsewhere, too. My mom drinks boxed red wine. She says it’s because that’s what she drank before her and my dad were married. Financially, they could open a new bottle of Caymus every night without thinking twice. Yet, the box remains on top of the fridge.

The saying is old habits die hard, but it’s more than that in this case. It’s the hard-wiring muscle memory that leads to preserving every last drop of something, or the micro dose of nostalgia every time my Mom pours a glass. Their circumstances have changed but their instincts have not. These habits, and probably countless others, came about during formative years when nothing was wasted and when excess was few and far between.

Abundance arrived slowly and did not knock at the door to greet them. This gradual onset of financial security meant that their operating systems had yet to update. I don’t see these habits as flaws, but rather as small remnants of what shaped them. In some ways, it’s the instinct of frugality and preservation that put them in the position they are in today.

Lasting habits take a significant amount of time to solidify and just as slowly as they arrived, they are sometimes so ingrained in who we are that they may never leave us. Habits occasionally need tended to, as we continuously evaluate whether they continue to serve us and our goals. If my parents end up reading this essay, I hope they know that I genuinely look fondly on the fused soap and the boxed wine, as they inspire humility and gratitude. Changing those habits now would feel like erasing part of who they are. Watching them has simply made me wonder what habits I should preserve as carefully as they have, and which ones deserve a thoughtful update.

Often, I would get home from work feeling spent and decide that instead of working out immediately, I would wake up early the next morning and do it then. In those moments, I was genuinely optimistic and confident that the morning workout would happen. That optimism made it easy to justify skipping the workout that evening. I would even go as far as to set out my workout clothes and shoes. The morning would arrive and many times the workout wouldn’t happen. My optimism had simply gotten the better of me.

Until the past year, I changed my mindset. Now, the opposite happens. I get home from work and without thinking I get my workout in. I’ve realized how relieved and good I feel after working out, even after work, that it is 9 out of 10 times best to take action when the decision is upon you, rather than to give optimism for the future more credit than it deserves. The action occurs, and then I can move on with my life, not having to think twice about going in the morning.

Optimism, in this scenario, functions less as hope and more as avoidance. I was so hopeful that my future self will always make the correct decision that I was willing to entirely defer this decision to tomorrow. The future self is conveniently insulated from the fatigue of the present and has not yet depleted any willpower. I discount that this future self has his own constraints, his own tendencies, and excuses. Postponing an action that never arrives degrades our trust in ourselves. We can change this by taking action as soon as the decision is upon us.

The virtuous cycle that I like to imagine involves early morning workouts leading to earlier bedtimes and lower resting heart rates, which then make it easier to wake up early the next day and repeat the cycle. These virtuous cycles do not start on their own. They are very deliberately planned, yet the friction of kick-starting the wheel is challenging. This difficulty is equally felt later in the day, when deciding to workout or not. Taking action while tired reinforces your commitment to yourself. It teaches us that the action is not contingent upon having a perfect night’s rest or optimal energy.

This reveals that decision making and discipline are probabilistic. My evening self seems to overestimate my future self’s likelihood of making the same decision. Choosing the option that is most likely to be completed in the present moment fosters integrity. Evening workouts tend to prevail simply because that is when they are most likely to happen. They occur the same day and hour, without having a reset in between. Over time, choosing action over optimism builds trust in our own decisions.

Has anyone you only see every few months asked you if you’re still doing that thing? It happens often. You might be at a party, or at a friend’s house, and someone asks, “Are you still playing the piano?” I actually still play a few times a week, casually. However, just as often, the question lands on something that no longer exists, or exists but is less pronounced than it once was. Take, for instance, my art and sculptures. They are still a part of me, but some of their creative space and energy has been taken up by my writings.

The first instinct is to be embarrassed. To say that an interest has ended risks being taken less seriously. We worry that admitting change will read as inconsistency, as if seriousness requires a single unbroken line rather than a sequence of deliberate turns. There is an urge to defend continuity and to avoid admitting that a former passion was only fleeting. The honest answer is sometimes simpler. I stopped doing that because I found something else that is more fulfilling.

This doesn’t mean the previous pursuit was wasted, nor does it mean it was abandoned because it slowly faded rather than being decidedly stopped. It may have been necessary. Some interests function more as scaffolding than destinations, helping you discover what deserves deeper commitment. As you progress through these various interests, you will recognize a difference in depth. These new pursuits require less active energy to sustain and are more likely to endure.

The start of a new month or turn of a new year makes this easier to see. It creates a natural pause. It is an opportunity to choose one pursuit and take it seriously as a lesson of commitment. The more care and discipline you show to your pursuit of improvement, the more wholly you will consider it a part of you. The next time someone asks what you’re doing outside of work, there is no need to reconcile any past response. Your answer will reflect what replaced what you outgrew and what proved worth keeping.

I have been going to the track once a month to run timed sprints, usually a 100 meter or a mile. Over the past month, my mile time improved from 6:37 to 6:17. Even though I felt close to throwing up after the latest personal record, the result had the opposite effect. It made me want to work harder. Whether a sub-six-minute mile is in my cards or not, the pursuit alone has already justified the means.

My Brooks track shoes may have accounted for a few seconds. The rest came from everything in between: the long runs, the interval training, and accumulation of effort that no single attempt could explain. On my next attempt, I would accept a single-second improvement to 6:16. This would be more than enough to justify the sweat in my eyes during the HIIT sprints and the doldrums of the prolonged 10-mile days. They will have translated into something tangible.

Competition is the undercurrent behind my motivation and self improvement is the wind in my sails. Quantification sharpens this impulse. The 100-meter dash is addictive because it allows multiple attempts in a single session. The mile is a different animal, one that demands restraint. You rarely get more than one truly honest try. Beating my friend’s six-minute time would be satisfying, but consistently improving my own time is a challenge worthy enough of any other.

At sixty, I will still be comparing mile times with that same friend. Who can break ten minutes? Twenty? We will surely be slower by then but just as grateful. Either way, the imagined contest will persist. In the same vein, I vividly picture myself cheering on my wife as she runs her fourth marathon, still invested in effort and improvement as opposed to outcome.

Quantification drives improvement because it clarifies what is within reach, compared to what has already been achieved. Notes played cleanly, routes ran precisely, shots taken on target, questions answered correctly, seconds shaved from a mile, or milliseconds from a 100 meter. Measurement converts effort into feedback. Outcomes fluctuate, but inputs remain constantly available to us: sleep, preparation, stress, habits, diligence, and follow-through. We can never fully account for our competitors’ variables, but we can track our own. That is why effort never feels wasted.

You’re sitting there in the waiting room wearing a suit, with a few copies of your resume and a forced, anxious smile on your face. You are well past the point of preparation. You’re about to walk into your interview to be questioned by someone who you might end up working with for the next decade, or someone who you may never see again in your life. You have the career-equivalent of butterflies in your stomach; a pong ball bouncing from fear on one side to excitement on the other. Fear because of why they might not choose you, and excitement for what good could come from your imagined future career.

Many times fear and excitement can be indistinguishable from one another. Other times they are oil and water, distinctly separate. Whether a job interview, a first date, or your wedding day, they are always both present. Neither can be entirely silenced, only tamed. In the waiting room before your interview, excitement is quietly observing while fear bounces off the walls. On your first date, fear and excitement lock arms and dance gracefully together. On your wedding day, fear is sitting contently in the back, while excitement takes the stage.

Fear and excitement arrive when life asks something of you. They are signals whether you see them and give them the attention they respectively deserve or not. They come about when an outcome matters enough to demand your attention. They appear when the cost of inaction has risen and when standing by is no longer an option. I have to imagine a decision point of yours comes to mind. Should you call their name in consideration of their presence, one or both will answer. The one who doesn’t answer is not absent, but chose to stay silent.

To embrace one without acknowledging the other is to fail to understand what is being asked of you. When fear overwhelms you, it is worth asking what growth might live on the other side of it. When excitement is all that you see, it is worth searching for the fear quietly hiding behind it. Together, they point toward the same truth, that something meaningful is being offered, and you are being asked whether to step forward or remain where you are. To arm wrestle with fear with the confidence that you will win, or to solemnly shake hands with excitement knowing nothing will change.