What Matters Most

I love doing things. Going to concerts, movies, museums, farmer’s markets, libraries, etc. I thrive when I’m taking it all in, racing around on my bicycle or hopping on public transit. I want to do as much as possible with every day. It’s addictive. The more I do, the more I want to do.

I think I’ve always been like this, I just had to work up to it. I want to spend my life doing things, meeting people, traveling, reading, writing, teaching. Being a part of the world, relishing public spaces and interactions. Seeing every day as an opportunity for play and discovery.

But somewhere along the way I lost my joy. I was spending too much time online, caring about what other people think about me and my work. I became self-conscious, unsure of myself and what makes me happy. I stayed home. I ruminated. My thought-processes, which had always kept me going, now seemed like my worst enemy. I couldn’t shut it off, couldn’t sleep, or eat. I felt stuck, unsure of what to do next, both happy and miserable, miserably happy.

And as my joy diminished, my ego grew. I cocooned myself, not realizing that what I thought was a nest was in fact an elaborate trap of my own making. I found increasingly luxurious ways to exempt myself from everyday life. I became a private, solitary person, not the engaged educator I’d always imagined myself to be.

And it hurt. I wasn’t doing well. I would check my comments until I found one that was sufficiently mean or hateful to make me feel something. No matter how much people affirmed me or my work, it didn’t mean anything to me. I was my own worst enemy.

But it wasn’t always like this.

Let me take you back

I left academia in 2020. I began teaching on the internet, for free, because I couldn’t bear being without a classroom. We began small, live-streaming in our car, hosting lectures that were hour-long free-wheeling philosophical dispositions. It was a way of keeping ourselves mentally alive during lockdown. It had a certain punk-rock quality to it, teaching my heart out with a small group of students. I hadn’t really thought about social media at all. It was just a convenient way to do what I loved with people who enjoyed it as well.

Or so I thought.

Because then social media become my ‘job’. A luxury, for sure, but also a burden, because you start becoming dependent on the metrics. And when the algorithm decides you’re ‘popular’ it’ll send out your content to all kinds of people, even those who hate what you do and stand for. And so to protect myself, and our community, I had to make the work more and more accessible, which meant that it became less critical. Of course some people can turn drama and polemics into entertainment, but I’m not cut out for that. I like to teach, and I like to share ideas and I’m a moralist at heart. I love to invoke our better natures, even if it feels doomed at times like this. Aphorisms provided a solution of sorts, a way of introducing ideas and thinkers in the most universal way.

I loved it when people said that my videos helped them, or provided a moment of calm, or that they were soothing. But I also stopped doing the things that were right for me. The things that kept me alive to the world. The project wasn’t working for me, I was working for it. I needed to push the stop button and take it all apart, do some much-needed soul-searching and think about whether I was still in it for the right reasons.

I still think that intelligent work can be affirming and caring, and that it doesn’t have to be edgy or obtuse. But it also shouldn’t be banal or too obvious. There has to be a middle way. And right now I’m thinking that the next step is to talk about the work itself: i.e. to talk about how reading/writing/thinking can help us live a more rich and purposeful existence. I want that to be my new theme. To help others finds this kind of life for themselves. We need to get back to what matters most: a simpler, gentler, more caring way of living with each other and ourselves.

That’s what I want to write about. And I want to find ways to engage with the existential and philosophical ideas that are about the question: How do you live?

For me it’s about feeling engaged and interested. I like to do things, and meet people, and be a part of life. My soul sings when I am surrounded by creative people, and I can’t get enough of the energy of being around others who care about the same things as I do. Books, movies, music, coffee, all the things that make life worth living.

I like reading randomly, or seeing a movie I’ve never heard of. I like to be surprised, and to surround myself with art and culture. These are the kinds of encounters that make me feel alive, and that create what I like to think of as ‘active’ thought. The kind of thinking that allows you to make new and counterintuitive connections. It’s something that only happens when you take it all in, creating organic and spontaneous linkages, that are both utterly contingent and yet somehow vital and necessary. We can’t let the machines do the thinking for us, we have to live, and think, and read, for ourselves.

Life is better when we simplify and get back to basics: when we remember how to be generous, patient, kind, and caring, both towards ourselves and each other. When we see our work as an act of service, not just a career. When we share in public spaces and don’t hide from each other.

There is a better way to live, we just have to remind ourselves what it looks like and what it feels like. It’s so simple, but we’ve made it so hard. It doesn’t have to be this way.

I have to believe that there is a better way for us to live, and that there are small ways in which we can remind ourselves about what really matters. I want that to be my theme. How to live the best kind of life, and to express my own vision for the kind of life that feels rich and fulfilling to me. It’s personal, of course, but I like to think that we have more in common than we realize. And what fills me with joy and comfort may also be the same for you.

We have to get back to the things that matter most.