What is "Making it?"

There is no finish line.

Throughout your life, time moves at varying speeds. When it’s hectic it all moves fast. Like life is piling on complexity and you’re buried. You remember that there is spaciousness somewhere out there but time is unrelenting in its march forward.

So if you don’t catch up you can’t catch your breath, and things just keep piling on.

But as I said, there are no finish lines. Except maybe Death. And that might not be one either...

Instead of finish lines, there are rhythms.

So you never really cross anything off, you don't arrive anywhere.

You get a book deal? Well, that’s just the beginning.

Launch a product? That's just the start?

Sell a company? What's next?

To believe in finish lines is to chase a ghost.

It’s a firefly that lights up but goes dark right when you catch it.

Rhythms, though, are ever-present.

Cycles are always occurring. And if you can pay attention to them you can see your life as a journey. You can look at yourself from afar, and recognize where you're at. Not to get to a resolution, but to get to the next leg of the journey.

So you’re not finishing and starting so much as you’re transitioning.

You're letting go, you're understanding, you're growing. Just like age, the fixed numbers are made up.

Then life moves slower, and that's a good thing. You let go, and change happens all at once. You get more of what you want with less effort. This is the irony of cycles.

Not only can change come out of nowhere, but things can happen all at once. Years of slow growth, and a week of everything all at once. Just as you think you’re totally stuck, a new step-change occurs.

But often that takes action...

There is no such thing as time.

Think back, and remember something, maybe a day or a moment from high school.

Now, remember something that happened yesterday.

To your mind, and in that recall, is there any difference? Both appear in your mind equally fast, whether it’s 18 years ago or 8 days. So everything in the past is equidistant.

And the future, that’s the same.

Time is a process.

And, if we're lucky it's a process towards well-being.

What does it take to "Make It?"

As long as you're growing towards well-being, you're "Making it."

As Marcus Aurelius says,

“Well-Being is luck.”

Consider yourself lucky.

xx David