“There will always be a More and Better just beyond our reach, no matter how high we climb. We could always have a little more money and a few more choices. But as we see it, we don’t need to work harder to get more money to have more choices because we already made our choice. We chose our family and our friends and our place. Like any life ours comes with trade-offs, but on balance it’s a good life, we’ve already got it, and we’re damn well going to enjoy it.”
The Medium Chill
I liked this article. It put these thoughts in the right order… not too cute, not too brash.
It’s a struggle for me to walk this line between ambition — the call to a better me, a higher thing — and what we know is the stuff of happiness — being in the now, being grateful for what you have, focusing on relationships.
I struggle to not put “settling” in that last bit. It feels a bit like settling. “Settling” feels a bit like giving up.
So I like the way this guy makes The Medium Chill feel a little less like giving up.
A while ago I had an existential crisis. Like, literally in the park with my son on a shitty Portland day while I recorded an audio note about how nothing matters and I should just become a janitor and stop trying so hard.
I thought through the muck and landed on this as my new mandate: make some people’s lives better in small but meaningful ways.
That’s my medium chill mandate.
