Identity and the role it plays in happiness.
To know that you know nothing is the path to knowledge. To know the person you are today must be improved tomorrow is the path to humbleness. To accept these facts is the path to growth. To rejoice in these facts is the path to happiness.
There is beauty in the unknown but a great fight must be won to see it. This fight revolves around who you think you are. Your identity. “No man walks into the same river twice for its not the same river and he is not the same man”. -Heraclitus
This slow, gradual growth or evolution is present in all of us and we all have a different relationship with it. Some of us are in a healthy relationship, others are in an abusive one, yet others are barley aware of its existence. One of the key tenants of happiness, or misery, lays in your relationship with this evolution. The key to having a healthy relationship lays in what you prioritize in yourself. An attachment to external factors like job title, cash flow, or popularity status in general lead us to an unhealthy relationship with this evolution. Conversely, an attachment to internal factors like, character, honesty, humility, and passion tend to lead us to a healthy relationship. The healthier the relationship the happier the individual.
People who prioritize external factors tend to fight the inevitable growth happening beneath the surface. They are focused on the river under their feet and are not able, or do not want, to zoom out and see that the river they stepped in is already far down stream. I have a good job, or I want a good job and my life will be complete once I get it or is complete because I have it is the attitude of staring at ones feet in the river blind to the flowing current. Life will pass you by if you stare like this and happiness will be a white whale you hunt but never kill.
People who prioritize internal factors tend to be at peace with the inevitable growth happening beneath the surface. They zoom out and see the river as the beautiful, ever changing canvas that it is. They don’t focus on their feet, they look up and down stream equally. I’m a good person, I work hard, am a passionate friend, I accept where I am and see where I want to go is the attitude of these people. Life rarely sneaks up on them, they are able to roll with the punches, and live a fulfilled life. They are happy to be on the ocean whale watching not whale hunting. The hunter is only satisfied with a kill and only until the next hunt. Busy staring at his feet.
Internal focus means not defining your identity by external factors. It’s not what you are but who you are that matters. This is true when people look at you and when you look at yourself. Nobody really cares that you’re a successful banker they care that you are a kind person. Do you care more about other peoples external or internal identities? Most likely you care about who they are on the inside and not what they are on the outside. Why would you treat yourself any different?
Don’t fall in love with who you are today because that person may very well hold you back tomorrow. The best value you could but on your external self is zero. Let that hold no weight in your life. Do this and the burdens you carry so heavily on your shoulders will lift away and you’ll be able to stop staring at your feet and start looking at the beauty of the river.
Want a new idea? Read an old book. This internal focus to find happiness is nothing new but I feel it has been lost on the last few generations. Ancient people like Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and many others wrote many times on this topic. Read old books like Meditations (Marcus Aurelius), or Discourses (Epicetus), or new ones like Ego is the Enemy (Ryan Holliday) and you will see this theme over and over again.
It can be a constant battle to force yourself to look inward and like most things it will be harder for some people than others. But it’s a battle you must fight and a battle that gets easier to win the more you fight it. We only get so many trips around the sun I’d hate for you to never know the joy of whale watching.