Today I have a slew of comics and an illustrated essay.
Haiku Comics
Any other neurotic language nerds out there with strong opinions about commas?
Zip!
More adventures from our friend the interdimensional guinea pig.
You can find the earlier Zip! comics here.
Fragments
More fragments of stories from a different universe.
Previous Fragments comics can be found here.
Non-Fiction
Don’t Forget to Live
Humans ask questions. We are an irrepressibly curious species. Some of us are also neurotic and keep asking the same two questions over and over again. We want to know how to get more done in a day and how to be happier.
The truth is these are both the same question.
The reason you want to get more done in a day is that you believe it will lead you to a financial or emotional payoff. The emotional payoff is happiness, and the financial payoff is you can afford happiness.
All of the other typical self-help topics can also be reduced to a quest for happiness, sometimes by way of financial prosperity.
We want to be thinner and healthier because we think that will make us happier. We want to make friends and influence people because happy people have friends.
I’m a recovering self-help junkie.
Dad didn’t force me to read anything. He did encourage me—and given my desperate need for his attention and approval combined with my voracious desire to read everything I could get my hands on, I plunged into the world of self-help, ready to believe it all.
I didn’t understand until well into adulthood that my father was miserable and that he read these same books and never found the solutions to his problems. I think he hoped that I might somehow uncover what he missed.
I have no idea how many self-help books and articles I have read. After a few hundred, they all blend together—and I’ve read much more than a few hundred. No matter how successful or disciplined I became, it was never enough.
I felt like I was climbing peaks in some endless snowy wasteland. After each summit, I expected to find a reward only to find nothing but a challenge to climb another mountain that was a little bit taller.
My self-help habit got worse after my career and business imploded. If I had jumped into the self-help deep end at age eleven, I was now exploring the ocean floor. I tried everything from insane routines to metaphysical manifesting. Nothing brought me any closer to happiness.
The last self-help niche I explored before I came to my senses was the modern stoics. This niche is mostly filled with men obsessed with their own importance and wisdom. One point they all preach is the importance of facing death. There are a variety of memento mori you can buy from various stoic entrepreneurs. Memento mori is Latin for “remember death”. The ancient stoics often kept a grisly token in their possession to remind them that death was coming for them sooner or later. Modern stoics will sell you a deluxe memento mori from their websites.
It was the memento mori that provided me with the epiphany that changed my life.
The idea is that death should not be feared or ignored. Once you come to accept death as both natural and inevitable, you will live a better life.
It is true that in our society, we fear death too much. We are so reluctant to face the inevitability of death that we often don’t even grieve those that pass. We just move on because we have things to do. There are so many things that need doing that we have to keep lists and use apps, notes, and calendars to keep track of all the things.
We fear death because so few of us spend any time living.
But you don’t need a weird skull coin to remind you that you are going to die. We all know this. We all feel it, even if we work to repress it.
Instead of a memento mori to remind you of death, you need a memento vitae to remind you to live.
You and I are meant to have joy in this life. Children tend to naturally know how to laugh, have fun, and enjoy life. On our way to adulthood, we lose the ability to be happy. Instead, we start hunting for happiness.
This is where our trouble starts.
One of my favorite happiness quotes sums up our dilemma:
When we actively seek out happiness, we fail. Happiness doesn’t come from the pursuit of wealth, health, or influence. The only way to find joy is to stop focusing so much on ourselves and instead, live life.
Between the pressures of work and the constant social media doom scrolling, you don’t need to be reminded that you will die. You need to remember how to live.
What does it mean to live? To borrow a phrase from the insightful Marie Kondo, it means doing the things that spark joy. It also means learning to find joy in the things you have to do.
To paraphrase Marie Kondo, does money spark joy? The data shows that money only buys you happiness up to a point. This is the place many people get lost. We want to horde money because it is useful for buying things like food, shelter, and security. We need those things to be happy. But we are poor judges of when we have enough. Some part of our brains always wants more money, and then we start spending on status symbols.
How do we get more money? We trade little bits of our lives for it.
You work extra hours at the office, or you start another side hustle. You want a little bit more money. You know that if you could make six-figures, you would be happy.
But your time is limited. When you trade your time away to your boss or your business, you are shrinking the amount of life you have to enjoy.
Does your work spark joy? Does making more money make you happier than walking in the park with your family?
Self-help doesn’t work because it draws our attention inside of ourselves when the greatest sources of happiness are outside of ourselves.
The greatest sources of joy are creativity, friends, family, and community. Each of these things requires us to put our focus outside of ourselves. When you create something, whether it be music, art, crafts, food, or anything else, you tap into a powerful place that is otherwise inaccessible.
But the true magic happens when you share your creativity. When you use your skills and love to make someone else’s day a little brighter, you feel happier.
You also feel happy when you are with the people you love. Think about how you feel when you hug the people you love. Remember how happy you were the last time your child, partner, or parent received good news. The bonds that bind us also spark joy. There is no to-do list or side hustle that can generate the same positive vibes as playing in the yard with your children and a new puppy.
Joy can also be found beyond our inner circle of friends and family. Happiness comes from serving your community. When you give your time and resources to someone else, without the expectation of reward, you will find happiness waiting for you.
When it comes to service, the key is giving of your time. Cutting a check may be important, but tax-deductible charity will not provide you the same happiness return as spending time directly with people in your community.
This doesn’t mean that you should never look inside of yourself. Living a happy life is like driving a car. You need to glance inside at the dashboard from time-to-time. It’s helpful to monitor your speed, to see how much fuel you have left, and to watch for any warning lights. However, if you spend more time looking inside at the dashboard than you do looking out through your car’s windshield, you’re going to crash.
When you start each day by asking, “How can I live today?” you will begin to see everything shift in your life. That doesn’t mean it’s a magic incantation. You still have to make changes in the way you live. You have to decide to prioritize things that spark joy. There is nothing more frightening than standing at a decision point and choosing to do something that sparks joy instead of something more conventional that your people will understand.
After years of being a freelance writer, my people still shake their heads at my decision. They also acknowledge that I am happier and more pleasant to be around than I was before. I have also made a conscious decision not to maximize my income.
I forego a lot of money-making opportunities because I have enough. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to grow my business. I am not opposed to earning more money. But I have chosen to stop chasing it. I am chasing experiences that make me feel alive. If more money comes my way while I’m living life so much the better.
But, I’m also content with where I’m at.
Often, I still chase things that don’t matter. That’s when I turn to my memento vitae.
It’s a chestnut half that my daughter found on the ground while we walked down the hill from school five years ago. She was eight years old and having a hard time adjusting to a new school. She picked it up off the ground and gave it to me.
“Look!” she said. “It has a heart inside! It’s like a Valentine. I want you to keep it, Daddy.”
This chestnut half sits on my desk just below my monitor. When I look at it, I remember my daughter’s love and enthusiasm. I recognize the importance of looking around at my surroundings because you never know what treasures you may find. And, I remember that there is more to life than work, side hustles, and to-do lists.
The chestnut half with the heart in the middle reminds me to live life.
Living our lives and helping others is the only way to find the joy that eludes our most dogged pursuits.
The next time you feel like something is missing in your life, ask yourself, “How can I live today?”
Then go and do that thing.
Thanks for reading!
Be the weird you want to see in the world!
Cheers,
Jason
Catching up on some reading today! The non-fiction piece was bang-on, Jason. It's the journey, not the destination that matters. Design your journey so that you are living, not chasing. Oh, and I'm a huge proponent of the Oxford Comma!