#42: Even Then You Still Belong

#EmbraceMeaninglessness #QuitStrategically #BelongWithoutProof #OddsOfBeingAlive

Oct 27, 2023

👋 Welcome to this week's Pursuit. My name is Amir, and each week I go over 10 hours of content in pursuit of living a meaningful, fulfilling and balanced life. I'm grateful to share my findings with you and hope I can have a tiny impact on your life. Subscribe now if you haven't already!

This week’s discovery:

🎲 Embracing Life's Meaninglessness
✂️ Quitting and Setting Kill Criteria
🏕️ Even Then You Still Belong
💰 The Odds of You Being Alive
🗒️ A Quote I'm Pondering On
🎵 Music I'm Listening To

🎲 Embracing Life's Meaninglessness

I find immense joy in the contradiction within myself, when I embrace my beliefs with a gentle grasp. The passage below raises a profound question about the purpose of this newsletter: the pursuit of helping individuals discover meaning in their lives. What if there is no inherent meaning... and how liberating would that be for our existence?

In the world we live in, we're often pressured to constantly achieve and progress, even in our leisure time. But what if we allowed ourselves to play without expectation or purpose? In embracing life's lack of ultimate meaning, we can find true happiness and guilt-free enjoyment of the present moment. John Gray reminds us that we are just animals in a vast, uncontrollable universe. By accepting this fact, we can see life for what it truly is and let go of the need to constantly control our surroundings. So go ahead and do things that have no point, because in doing so, you're embracing the beauty of life's meaninglessness. Other animals don't need a purpose in life, but we humans have convinced ourselves otherwise. Let's unburden ourselves and aim to simply see and experience the wonder of our world.

🎧 2-min

✂️ Quitting and Setting Kill Criteria

When it comes to quitting, we often think that it's a sign of weakness or failure. Quitting can actually get you to your long-term goals faster if you quit on time. The problem is that we usually get to the decision to quit too late, and the uncertainty of the decision keeps us from taking advantage of it. Instead, we should decide in advance when to quit and establish kill criteria. This will increase the chances of cutting losses when persisting is no longer in our best interest. Remember, the present is always in advance of something, so don't wait until it's too late to walk away.

🎧 6-min

🏕️ Even Then You Still Belong

I’ve been actively practicing worry-catching: catching my worries when they arise and asking, “what else could happen? How else could it go? What else could be possible?” I’ve been practicing untethering from worry as a lifestyle, as a thing “I just do”, as part of my identity, and seeing if I can remember other ways of orienting toward trying, toward taking risks, toward doing new things. The annoying/relieving thing is that it works; the practice of catching these worries before they spin into beliefs, of noticing when my body is getting tangled with fears and actively untangling, of choosing to orient toward possibility instead, actually makes a large difference in how I feel.
For a long time, I felt like I needed to go All In somewhere so I could belong there, but when I remember our belonging is inherent and not something we need to prove or earn, I soften into floating along many different roles and identities during this season of life. I share this to remind myself, and perhaps you, that it’s okay to not be able to totally submerge all the time, to not always have the capacity or space to fully dive into something the way you might want to… and even then, you still belong.

📖 5-min

💰 The Odds of You Being Alive

Did you know that the odds of YOU being alive now is 1 in 10^2,685,000? Yet, we often take life for granted, treating it as a routine rather than the miracle it truly is. The magic of existence, the fact that we are sentient beings in a vast universe, often slips from our consciousness, replaced with trivial concerns and preoccupations. The probability of our existence, from the birth of the universe to our individual conception and birth, is simply mind-blowing. It doesn't make sense, but yet here we are, basking in the sheen of this extraordinary reality.

📺 This 10-minute YouTube video explains the calculation of the odds mentioned above about your existence.

🗒️ A Quote I'm Pondering On

Confrontation doesn’t equal conflict. It’s how you go about it.

🎵 Music Tracks I'm Listening To

🎧 You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:

As my Aloe Vera plant withered and shed its leaves, I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed by my perceived failure to nurture such a resilient being. However, upon returning from vacation and watering it, I was astonished to see new leaves sprouting from its decaying core. May the resilience of nature inspire your own.