This, Not This

“Well, what do you want to do?” my impish septuagenarian friend Florence asked, peering at me with a mixture of delight and pity. “Like, if you could do anything?”

I have spent my whole life making mincemeat out of people who don’t know what they want, and made it my mission to know and get what I wanted, attempting (by force of will) to achieve safety and security by checking all the boxes. Get the grades, the trophies, the acceptances. Get the job, the guy, and the house—and then fill it up with babies, furniture, skis, bikes, and boats.

Despite the fact that I’ve spent the last decade and a half diving deeply into the benefits of honing my attention, of being able to shrink blind spots and grow more attuned to what actually makes me feel happier instead of what gives me more status or stuff, I sputtered a bit when my friend asked me directly.

I’m entering a new phase of life: the kids are grown and mostly flown, and while my nest is not exactly empty (and from what I hear, may never be), I am looking at life through the lens of an independent person for the first time. I was the third of four stair-step siblings, then went on to college and a series of incredible roommates. I married in my twenties, bore my sons in my early thirties, and filled my time outside of family with interesting personal and professional relationships and productivity. I was busy. I was “successful” by most measures. I made stuff I felt mattered.

Ironically, when Florence asked me what I wanted, the voice in my head shouted immediately, “Less!” Equally swift was the next word: “More!”

I realized I wanted less of what I had actually been conditioned to want more of: stuff, status, business. And I wanted more of things that didn’t even occur to me a decade ago: time to reflect. Faith that being less productive won’t actually result in me falling off the planet right into outer space. More time for walking for pure enjoyment, outside, as opposed to my former ways of “killing two birds (or three) with one stone” while I got exercise and met a business colleague or friend to check more boxes. I also want more of those “birds” to stay alive, so this is another good moment of awareness. 

The thing is, our bodies are always listening, which is why it is impossible to outmaneuver what you really value, believe, or feel. You can try, as I have, but some numbers do not work in your favor. The human body sends 11 million bits of information per second to the brain for processing without you having to lift a finger. (Go ahead, lift your finger. That took a poetic and gob-smacking cascade of commands from the brain’s prefrontal cortex, to motor cortex, to spinal cord, to arm muscles, to fingers, millions of commands as stultifying to consider as the starling’s murmuration. And yet, there is your lifted finger.)  

The goal is not to be able to memorize and track the precise set of commands going on involuntarily, but to build and strengthen the number of things we can pull into our awareness and live lives that actually reflect what we want less and more of. It’s not lost on me that many of the reactive decisions we make can be really costly to our mental and physical health, because at some level, the body and brain invite us to wake up a bit, notice more about the experience we’re actually having, and make decisions from there. Reaching for the fridge door if the feeling is loneliness, not hunger, won’t help. But reaching out to a neighbor, or even noticing the other life around you in the sky, your yard, the water, will.

Given that May is Mental Health Awareness Month, it’s a good time to reflect on what my friend calls the “this, not this” list. 

When I was much younger, my list looked like a census worker’s demographic chart: college degree, great job, married, two kids, one dog, money or power to have control of my life. Then, I would have veered into status-y things: be the one to invent something or cure something or do something to invite fame or notoriety.

I got most of those things, and grew and learned and experienced so much along the way. The main thing, though, surprised me. The juice, the resilience, the joy was not sustained by the big award or the victory or the winning. It was simpler. 

The meaningful achievements were the experiences that, thankfully, are common as mud. I am famous only to friends and family who dive with me, deep beneath surface water. Time outside every day. A decent night’s sleep. Enough food and money, and it has always been less of each than I thought I wanted. Human work, which is to say performing things together with other humans, in conscious effort to make the hard and sharp edges of life less cutting, less painful. Time for reflection. Ability to articulate what freedom feels like.

Now, I say, “Not this!” to saying, “Yes” to too many things. To spending any time with people who are rude, calcified, or incurious. To any relationship that doesn’t leave me feeling satisfied or inspired. “Not this” to pleasing. Campaigning. Not getting enough rest or good food. Not having time enough for walks or dogs or new ideas. 

It’s an interesting time to get curious about living in a way that is more aligned with feeling content or inspired or even just rested, because so many of society’s messages are about getting more or having more. The funny thing is, we’re all the same in that we want to be secure and to belong, and it’s OK to be really different in our ideas of what belonging means.

My list, for one, helps me zero in on how I want to feel as I spend my time—and who I want to experience that feeling with—instead of what I want to be.