I thought it would make me happy.
So, I studied hard. Nailed the grades & aced my college applications — 7 for 7. Even Harvard gave me the green light. I snagged a degree from Stanford, eked my way through Cornell Law School, bagged the fancy job, worked ridiculous hours in overpriced suits and rode the elevator all the way up the corporate ladder, hammering impressive paychecks along the way.
Prosperity? I guess. Security? Maybe. Personal satisfaction?
Not so much.
Don't get me wrong. The American Dream is a beautiful ideal. An egalitarian proposition I bought into wholesale, forging a life trajectory premised upon material well being. But the dream is not without it's fissures. Nowhere does it promise personal well being. Nowhere does it promise meaning. Nowhere does it promise happiness.
But this is on me. Because at no point did I take action on anything of personal importance. What do I want? Who do I want to be?
At 30, I lacked the maturity and self-awareness to honestly answer these questions. But let's face it — I didn't even ask.
At first, my dissatisfaction was barely noticeable. But as my disquieting malaise progressively escalated, I compensated with all manner of unhealthy habits. Blackout binges that landed me in jail. Horrendously noxious food that left me atrociously unhealthy. Spending sprees that escalated my debt to almost un-fixable levels.
Nothing worked. So I drank more, ate more, spent more, consumed more. Yet no matter how overindulgent my insalubrious habits, how desperate my accelerating efforts to medicate my discomforting dis-ease of self became, that hole in my spirit just grew. Deeper. Wider. Darker. Until it's sheer vastness swallowed me whole, leaving me lost, despondent and utterly alone.
Hoping to die and unable to live, all that remained was the realm of the hungry ghost.
I honestly don't know how or why I survived. But I do know my rebirth was not by my hand. My divine moment was just that – divine. A faint whisper from the dark recesses of my rootless, discomposed consciousness:
You don't have to live this way anymore.
This week's guest knows a thing or two about what I'm talking about. Because not that many years ago, Joshua Fields Milburn was blazing a similar trajectory. Mired in the corporate grind, he chased the American Dream banking six figures managing 150 telecom retail stores, expiating for the satisfaction his career failed to provide by doing what we do — accumulating. And when that didn't work, he accumulated more.
In fact — much like me — the more Joshua measured self-worth via the barometer of externalities like job titles, condos, and big screen tv's, the more his hole darkened, dilating in depth, width and scope.
Joshua's divine moment was delivered in the sudden passing of his mother, followed quickly by the dissolution of his marriage. A devastating succession of events that forced him to take a long look in the mirror. Despondent with the guy being reflected back to him, a whisper began to echo:
You don't have to live this way anymore.
Hence was born Joshua's search for a more fulfilling and personally satisfying way of living and being. A search that ultimately illuminated a beacon in the darkest of nights.
Minimalism.
It began with unshackling his relationship to material things. But it culminated in something far more profound: freedom.
In Joshua's words, freedom from fear. Freedom from worry. Freedom from overwhelm. Freedom from guilt. Freedom from depression. Freedom from the trappings of the consumer culture we’ve built our lives around. Real freedom.
Enjoy!
Rich
