I frequently have this feeling, probably you too: When I look to people around, sometimes I question where do I stand? I don’t even know if this feeling is okay. Sometimes I feel I deserve way better, other times I feel I don't deserve anything – most times I can't really decide. I can’t decide if I’m way better or way worse.
I know, different experiences result in different perspectives. But I’ve been stuck in the big picture for so long, some call it the fun room. A cursed side effect of the big picture is that I now see no point in most jobs. I learned that work is a very important component of fulfillment and it’s worth trying to find work you love. So for years I became so firm in thinking no one should ever derive meaning from a temporary job, until they’ve found their “life’s work”. Your job is not a reflection of anything until your job becomes your life’s work. And generally speaking this proves to be a very privileged position.
The term “Life’s Work” is shockingly massively underrated. From afar it might seem like a cool concept but it could be much more than that, it could in fact be the answer to everything. To live a life with work deeply woven in its fabric could seem like the wealthiest thing anyone could have in modern times, and still lots of people would rather discuss concepts like “Work-life balance” than discuss what would it take to drop thinking about this balance in the first place, and design a life in which work already feels like play to the point that a separator wouldn’t mean anything.
You might call me crazy but the world is filled with so much resources & action that the only barrier between finding what feels like play to you and hard work to others is just your own efforts. So many ideas, it’s ridiculous there isn’t a combination of thought & action that would transform your life – I mean I could live off this simple fact for every day till the rest of my life even if I haven’t yet struck gold, than refuse to believe it and move on.
What we call our world, what we live through, is just things built by other people. Other people that are no smarter than you & me. So one of the biggest shifts in anyone’s life is when they realize they too could make things that influence this world that other people are also part of. Normally it isn’t until mid-twenties that most people do realize that that’s even possible, that the influence of their creation was probably very underestimated for so long. Imagining that this influence could poke reality is literally life-changing. Just the thought of it. If we’re living everyday through creations that are produced off the minds of other people, then it is very possible that at some point other people could live through our very own creation. And that, exactly, is what we mean by Life’s Work.
That could be the most important thing, in all of life. Because the minute you put something in the world and see it in action, you can shape it, you can mold it, you can make it better. You can influence better. Then at some point, if it isn’t for this, you wouldn’t see any point of doing anything else, because the progress of a simple thought to physicality is not only addictive but impossible to live without once you’ve adopted it, and that’s why it’s a privileged position.
How many people do you meet in your life that can at some point say this:
“I’m glad I created something from scratch that had good influence on some others”
Very few.
This is not easy to do because it really is the stuff of dreams. If you ask some of your close friends what do they dream of doing, most answers would -or at least should- include good impact on other people. Now wrapping that into something that you could at some point call your “Life’s Work” is the key to pretty much all of life’s biggest challenges. In Japan they call it Ikigai, in other cultures they call it other things, the underlying concept is still the same. And that is to spend most of life doing something that you’re proud of, has good impact, and enables good living. We can argue what good living means. For some it could mean living off private yachts, for others it could mean spending good time with friends or family, what you choose to do with the outcome doesn’t change the prerequisite, and that is to look for what you’d rather spend the next few decades on.
“You have to create an entire world that people can step into, familiarize themselves with, and spend time getting to know.”
A good question then is: “To what extent is someone’s ability to distort reality, that is to say, change or add or impact even a small subset of what we call our world?”
Reality distortion is a real thing, but the trickiest thing about it is to believe it in the first place. It means that when you put something out, when you poke the world, it responds on the other side. Either positively or negatively, but it does, it has to. And this creates a Reality Distortion Field around people who do the act. They bend things in their orbits, and it extends to anyone in close proximity to them. It’s not an abstract concept, it’s a tangible force. It pushes the boundaries of what’s possible for a few more days, months, sometimes ages. Ideas often lead to more ideas, and actions lead to more actions, so pushing the boundaries isn’t as small as it sounds, because it probably means a few hundred more possible things to do than what you had to start with. Isn’t this magical?