During a recent guided meditation session (I use Sam Harris’ Waking Up), I was instructed to bring my attention to the attitude I was approaching the practice with. Was I waiting for something pleasant? Or was the present already good enough?

The timeliness of the question startled me. I’ve been grappling with this very question as it applies to my life as a whole. Through meditation, we practice living entirely in the present. The promise is that by doing so, you will realize that the present moment is all there is, and all that is needed. Well, I’m not there yet. I’m lucky to get a few moments during my daily 10-20 minute meditation sessions when I experience this full immersion in the present. Outside of my practice, the experience of being fully present is even more rare. Like pretty much everyone, I spend most of my conscious life thinking about the past or planning for the future. Sure, I continue to strive to add more present awareness to my life but I doubt I’ll ever get all the way there. I doubt anyone does. It’s in all these other moments that “the question” comes to the forefront. It comes up when I think about things I’ve done and the things I still want to do. Is this good enough?

The first time I ever considered this question was when I was a senior in high school. I remember the night vividly. It was my 18th birthday. I tend to balk at arbitrary milestones like becoming a “legal adult” but that night, the significance of the date set my mind racing. I was an adult. What did I want out of life?

As I lay staring up at my bedroom ceiling, I felt the tension between two competing halves of my being. On one side I had ambition — a desire for more. On the other side, I wanted to live a simple life, content with what I have. I couldn’t reconcile the two. It wasn’t just that the two halves seemed mutually exclusive, it was that in my mind each side was the complete antithesis of the other. I hardly slept that night, and I’m not embarrassed to say that I did a fair bit of crying as well. 18 years old and I had finally had an identity crisis. I didn’t resolve the cognitive dissonance either — that would have been way too hard. Instead, I took the easy way out. I talked myself out of believing it existed in the first place.

Over the next few years, this familiar conundrum came up again and again, and each time I would either talk myself out of believing it existed, or I would ignore it altogether. It was much easier to choose to lose myself in life’s busyness.

Looking back at this from a few years hence, I realize that instead of the tension being characterized as a battle between my ambition and my contentedness, a more accurate assessment would be as a struggle between my ambition, and my desire to be OK with contentedness. At a philosophical level, I want to be content living a simple life, but at an emotional level I yearn for “greatness”. It’s interesting to consider where both of these started.

As for my ambition, it came from my father. The earliest lesson I ever internalized was my father’s teaching that I could do anything I set my mind to. I came to believe this so fully and so literally that after watching Goku turn Super Saiyan on TV, I spent the next few days flexing my muscles and screaming at the top of my lungs trying to go Super Saiyan too. When I failed, I blamed it on me not trying hard enough. This fanatic belief in what my own hard work could accomplish really crystallized when I turned eleven years old. Eleven years old is when we transitioned from playing 7v7 soccer to 11v11 — when soccer became real. It was at that point that I decided I was going to be a professional soccer player when I grew up. I didn’t decide that I wanted to be a pro, I decided that I would be a pro.

When I told my dad about this, he pushed me even further. Why settle for just being a professional? I should become the best professional in the world. But, he warned, in order to achieve something as grand as my dream, I needed to believe in my success 110%. I could not waiver. I would have to dedicate my life to the pursuit. He encouraged me to write down a statement of “definite purpose” — a statement about what my goal was, when I was going to achieve it, and what I would do in order to make it a reality. This was goal setting at a level more intense than what most adults engage in. I followed my dad’s advice and wrote my statement of definite purpose. I hung it up on my bedroom door and read it aloud when I woke up in the morning and before I went to sleep at night. I modified the details over time, but the essence of that statement stayed the same as I read it morning and night for the next seven years.

I will become the best soccer player in the world by March 2, 2018.

As you might have guessed, I didn’t end up accomplishing that lofty goal. Nor did I even come close — but that’s a story for another time. The point is that I went through my entire childhood wanting to be the best at everything and truly believing that I could do it if I worked hard enough at it. As I grew older, some cracks began to form in this foundation. No matter how hard I worked and how much I achieved, I was never satisfied. I always wanted more. I began to wonder whether there would ever be a time when I would be content with what I had achieved. A time when I could enjoy the fruits of my labor. Would I be able to relax after winning the Ballon d’Or? Is that what it would take? Towards the end of high school, the glory of this endless pursuit was beginning to lose some of its allure. I was beginning to realize that there was more to life than what my singular focus all of those years had permitted me to explore.

In the first semester of my freshman year I took a seminar course called The Examined Life which was all about how ancient philosophers engaged with concepts like ethics, virtue, and reason with the goal of understanding what makes a good life. As an aside, I’m still not sure whether I find it distressing or reassuring that after thousands of years humankind still contemplate the same questions of existence. Anyhow, it was in this class that I was first introduced to Stoic philosophy. Stoic philosophy emphasizes a few cardinal virtues but I was most intrigued by its emphasis on finding satisfaction in the present. A famous quotation from Seneca, one of Stoicism’s most famous thinkers, explains the concept well.

“True happiness is to enjoy the present without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied, for he that is wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”

This idea exposed an intellectual blind spot of mine — I had always thought that the way to become happy was to attain my desires but I’d never considered that another option was to cease desiring! This “revolutionary” idea strongly appealed to my rational self. If I never desired more than what I had, then I would always have enough, and I would be happy all the time. A few years later this insight was further cemented through my exploration of Buddhist philosophy and its tenet of non-attachment.

My rational self agrees with the idea that the path to happiness is through the limitation of desire but my emotional self struggles to accept this. Sometimes I can be totally content with what is, and at other times I yearn for what could be. This inconsistency bothers me, but perhaps I’m being too harsh on myself. Does anyone live according to their ideals all the time? Anyhow, this is getting way too abstract, so let’s come back to the present moment and think through some concrete examples. Over the past months the two topics for which I’ve been exploring are “fortune” and “fame”.

I remember trembling with nerves when I was asked for my expected compensation during my first ever job offer negotiation. I had done my research and knew that in the Bay Area, starting salaries north of 100k were supposedly common for new grads but my mind couldn’t wrap itself around what that kind of money would mean. I was in a full-body sweat when I stuttered out 105k. I nearly dropped the phone when the recruiter, without skipping a beat, replied, “Oh, no problem!”. I was bummed that my negotiation skills sucked and that I certainly left money on the table, but in the end I didn’t really care. I was going to be making more money in my first job out of school that I could imagine what to do with! Now, a few years later, I make significantly more than I did then, spend less, and yet I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how I can continue to earn more.

More money. I know the source of this desire, and I don’t like it. It is the result of me lopsidedly comparing myself to people that have more. It’s my competitive tendency coming to the forefront. As soon as I know so and so, is making more money than me, my instinct is to want to compete. The crazy part is that I don’t even want to do anything with the money. If I got it, I would just put it to my retirement and not see it for another 40 years. I know that comparing yourself to others is a recipe for discontent and I’m happy that I’m at least conscious of my tendency to do so in this area, but it still amazes me how difficult it is to reconcile the rational admission that I don’t need anything more with the competitive envy that I feel.

More than the “fortune” it is the desire for “fame” that I’ve struggled with as of late. Fame isn’t exactly the right word. It sounds too “Hollywood” and that’s not what I’m after. It’s more a desire for renown in my chosen field. I think I understand where this desire comes from; its source is almost certainly those childhood years where I balked at being anything short of the best. What I don’t understand is where this need for public recognition of my accomplishments comes from. Looking inwards, I realize its not attention that I seek, but rather validation that I’ve done “good”. Ideally this validation could entirely from within. To some degree it does — I definitely take pride in doing exceptional work. However, I still crave those moments of external validation (promotions, raises, grants of responsibility). They supply my why for work and I worry that they’re too unstable a foundation for something so important. A few months ago I tried to reformulate my “why” as a quest for continuous learning, and while I was diligent about approaching each work day with that as the explicit goal, I felt a renewed vigor. However, I didn’t guard it strongly enough and as of late, I’ve let the desire for advancement reclaim its spot as my primary motivator.

So, is this enough? I aspire to be able to answer that question with “yes”. I can’t honestly do so at the moment, but with continued introspection, a reframing of my motivations, and more meditation practice I think I can get there. I’m a work in progress.

P.S. I think this blog post was the first time I realized the cathartic and clarifying powers of writing. When I started this blog a few days ago, I was confused and a little on edge. Now, I can see my emotions more clearly, and as a result have been able to experience more tranquility. Not bad!