Muses of Meaning I: Commitment
Commitment is, to me, what I’ll refer to as a muse of meaning. It is a core pillar of what I believe contributes to a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives. I hope to add a few other pillars to this Substack over time.
My friend Dave and I were chatting when he asked me:
"What are you excited about these days?”
I told him about the garden with peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes I planted this summer, the idea of woodworking and working with my hands at a makerspace downtown in my city, reading, writing, playing guitar, exercising, programming, and two or three other things.
“It’s impossible to do all of those things”, he said, “you have to pick one or two.”
Dave is right. You can’t do 10 different things. Even if you could, you couldn’t reasonably juggle them all. Your attention and focus would be too spread out and you’d never take any one activity to its depths. The fact is, I want to do so many things that I often become paralyzed and overwhelmed by all the options and potential, and do nothing instead. What I need to do is commit to something.
I’ve been struggling for years to find a hobby I love. In truth, it isn’t a hobby I’m after but a true passion. I want something that I can do for hours on end day after day, something that I always love and never grow tired of, and something I can become great at.
I’m interested in so many things. While this interest is sincere and of the wonderfully curious sort, it causes me to feel like I don’t have enough time to pour myself into the activities I want to do. This feeling causes me to lament my job (which I’m tremendously grateful for) or any job because I feel it’s stealing time from me by keeping me from all the things I want to do. My smörgåsbord of options is also causing me to regret the past because “If only I had done x, then I’d have more time or money to buy more time now!”
Regret comes in when you don't commit to something without expectation of results. You either didn’t take action when you knew you should (and now you face what-ifs on what you could’ve done instead), or you took too much action and in your wake you burned all the ships around you. Regret is also possible if you didn’t commit to the present moment and are stuck in decisions you could’ve made in the past or the future in decisions you’ve yet to make.
For me, the solution isn’t necessarily to quit my job and attempt to become a renaissance man by following all my curiosities with reckless abandon (although that does sound fun). I will still face this same question of commitment even if I have 100% control of my own time (adding more time normally means more potential options). You can’t pour yourself fully into multiple buckets and there is no such thing as unlimited time. I must reduce the number of activities I actually do to ensure that I can pour all of myself into them.
The reason I want to find a passion (other than that a passion is fun and fulfilling in its own right which is enough for me), is because I’ve also been trying to find more meaning and purpose in my life and work. I want to do what I love, what brings me alive each day, and inspire others to do the same.
But what if the solution to finding this mythical passion and sense of meaning in my life share a common thread?
Commitment is that thread. You can get more purpose and meaning by committing to something and taking it to its depths than if you stay surface level with many things. Otherwise, it's like a kid on Friday afternoon heading into the weekend with an twenty fun ideas, but not enough time to fulfill them.
Doing something 100 times and deliberately committing to that something is the solution for me. It’s also the only way to know if I’ll like something or not1. If you do 100 different things 1 time instead, you’ll be stretched too thin and stuck on the surface thinking too much about the potential of those 100 things.
But if you do one thing 100 times, you’ll know for sure if you like it or not, you gradually get better at it through volume (not by expectation), and slowly begin to find meaning in what you do. And if you don’t like that thing after doing it 100 times, scrap it and try something else 100 times.
Why do people with the most options seem to be the most miserable? As my friend and coach
has written: “Studies have shown that when faced with two options for college, versus an array of twenty, students with the simple either-or choice experience greater well-being. This is the paradox of choice: unlimited options fill up our mind, making us less happy. Infinite supermarket shelves fuel our need for Xanex—or something like that. Commitment takes away all of that. The vow has been made: no more paradox. Your fate has been bound to a ship of some choosing, and you can finally get on your way. Amor fati: it’s why tourists will often claim that impoverished locals seem happier than they are. Stuck in their fate, their lives become about relating to their fate. There is no chance to swap the fate out, as we tout on our side of the planet.”These days, we have unlimited choice of unlimited choices for entertainment, food, and romantic interests. To commit to something and stick with it seems counterculture to the ocean of opportunity at our fingertips. At times, committing to something even feels shameful because committing to one thing and sacrificing other opportunities can feel like you’re not taking full advantage of the opportunities you have at your disposal. After all, there are many people who’d kill to have as many options as so many of us share, right? I’m beginning to think that one of the solutions to our meaning crisis is to use our power of choice to choose commitment instead of more options.
By picking one thing, you take baby steps toward finding a passion, and unintentionally, you stumble up those steps into meaning and purpose too.
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100 is just a nice round number, pick a number that seems high enough for your liking.