Life is too short for mediocrity
“And then there is the most dangerous risk of all — the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.” -Randy Komisar
I happened to live in Sydney, Australia when the pandemic hit. I had moved there six months prior with high expectations and curiosity, eager to learn about the culture in this far-flung country down under. Those 18 months I stayed there became the most difficult time of my life. The experience was life changing and came to define who I am and what matters to me in life. When my friends ask me “How was it”? “Did you love Sydney?” My answer is a short and blunt “No”. And then, if they let me, I dive into the “Why”.
The external events and their toll are easy to understand: Historic bushfires in 2019 just weeks after we arrived. When the flames were finally extinguished, the world was caught in a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. Everything stopped, and for a while I didn’t see myself as the only unhappy person on earth, as a matter of fact I felt lucky. Australia, being an island, had an easy job in closing its borders. As the US and Europe plunged into chaos, Australians seemed to continue their daily lives pretty much as usual. The only caveat was, you couldn’t leave the country. No man is an island…
Then the flood gates opened. 2020–21 was the worst summer in decades: wet, humid and cold. Along with the torrential rain disappeared my last threads of hope that I could someday make amends with this strange world down under, a place that seemed to have zero regard for anyone’s need for normalcy and contentment. Mother nature rules the world down there and you’re no more than an unessential piece of a big puzzle.
Find your herd
The internal struggle I was going through was harder to explain. I never felt like I belonged in Sydney, and could never seem to find a place of happiness and inner peace. I was not the crack-of-dawn -riser who didn’t mind riding her bike among drivers who seemed to genuinely hate all bicyclists with a vengeance. I also felt the eternal party pooper as I challenged the neighbors’ need to throw a backyard party well into the night on most weekends.
But what completely deflated me was the realization that I wasn’t inspired by the community around me. It felt like everyone was happy just going through life without too much of an effort, without a need to challenge themselves to find their passion or test their limits. I couldn’t shake the feeling that my life was slowly strolling by without me being able to make anything meaningful out of it. I didn’t have a sense of purpose and it scared the shit out of me.
It dawned on me that to be happy, I need to be inspired and challenged on a regular basis. I need to live in a place where “good enough” isn’t nearly enough. Where people are driven, ambitious and ready to take risks to achieve their dreams, even if those dreams occasionally seem preposterous. I became convinced that life isn’t supposed to just happen to you while you’re going through your daily routine of sleep-eat-work, rinse and repeat, all done in a semi-conscious state of vapidness. I knew I needed to go back home to California, to my herd.
What is your life purpose?
I read a quote a while back that said “California is an easy place to love but a tough place to live”. San Francisco Bay Area underscores this contrast to the extreme. It boasts one of the most expensive real estate in the country but in turn you receive nearly ideal weather all year round, beautiful nature, vibrant arts and entertainment scene including competitive national sports teams, and a multinational culinary culture. If you’re highly educated and motivated, your work opportunities are almost unparalleled to anywhere else in the world. Many of the things we use these days in our work and daily lives have originated from the Bay Area. It’s a place for innovation, high ambition and shoot-for-the-stars -idealism.
But Silicon Valley is also known for its brutal work-life balance. You can easily get sucked into the vortex of high demands rat race that will spit you out by the side of the road at the end of the cycle. Even if you end up with a ton of money at the end of your run, it could leave a void in your soul if your heart’s not in it.
If there’s anything positive about the pandemic, it is that many people had their Damascus moment while they were locked inside their homes. They realized that the life they’ve lived up until then wasn’t really what they wanted out of it, or at worst, they were serving at the altar of someone else’s purpose which had left them unfulfilled, if not bitter. Many people finally grasped that the sailboat they’d worked so hard to get was still standing on their driveway.
Life’s purpose is to find your passion and be the best at it that you can. You need to find your Everest, whatever it is, and go climb it so at the end of the day you can say you’re proud of what you stand for, and at the end of your life you have no regrets. You owe it to yourself to have enough intellectual and emotional curiosity to not fall for mediocrity.
