I Accidentally Took The Whole Summer Off
Inconsistency happens. One way to be more consistent: focus on quantity over quality.
Posted 09-30-24
Some Amish and Mennonite groups have a tradition called Rumspringa in which, after 16 or 17 years of being raised within an insular community, absorbing its doctrine, and living in strict accordance to its rules, adolescents are granted more freedom to explore the outside world and experience different ways of life. This may mean eschewing traditional garb for more modern apparel, drinking alcohol & partying, or even driving a vehicle for which the term ‘horsepower’ is merely metaphorical.
To us secular people, it can sound a bit bizarre, because we’ve always had the right to choose however we want to live. We don’t need some special tradition to expose us to other ways of living before we choose - we’ve been exposed to other ways of living our whole life, and we’ve chosen our way of life ourselves.
Think about it. From day one you saw, heard, smelled, experienced the traditions of your parents & family. Their ethics. Their values. Their beliefs, rules, and guidance about what’s wrong and right. It may not have been explicitly dictated to you, but you were born into a rigorous structure built over many years.
Then you went to school and absorbed a ‘new’ set of ethics, values, beliefs, etc. But for the most part, since your parents / guardians chose where you went to school - either explicitly via choosing a private school, or implicitly by choosing to live in a certain neighborhood with its own set of values - school was just an extension of your family’s ethos.
Then, some of you went to a college of your ‘choosing’ but - are you going to tell me with a straight face your parents didn’t have a significant influence over that? Again, whether overtly or covertly, they sure did. You may think it was your choice to take only pass/fail classes in the Sheep Fleecing major at Oberlin, but is it possible your choice may have been influenced by your parents who met at Woodstock and conceived you in a geodesic yurt?
You see where this is headed?
Have you had your rumspringa?
Have you ever really stepped outside the confines of the societal values you’ve been raised in, that have been drilled into your brain and heart and soul as ‘normal’ from literally Day One - if not before, via conversations and daily rhythms while you were in the womb?
Where does ‘your’ perception and expectation of the world begin and where do your parents / teachers / religious & community leaders’ end?
We live in a society - as I often like to remind people who ride their bike on the sidewalk - and there’s nothing wrong with being and behaving as part of a collective. If you feel good, you’re fulfilled, life is working out for you, then great.
But if you feel bad - if you feel unfulfilled in your work, in your life. If your job’s a joke, you’re broke, your love life’s DOA a dead-end that makes you miserable, then it may be worth considering: Are you living your life? Are you living a life aligned with your values, your ethos, your ideals? Are you living a life in service of what you want, or are you living a life in line with what you believe you should want?
In other words, could you be living a life in line with the values, ethos, ideals, beliefs that you absorbed from your earliest days, but your life doesn’t necessarily reflect how you actually feel and what you actually believe?
This is a thought experiment, not career or life advice (yet):
Imagine what would happen if you took a year off - from work, from your life obligations, from family, from friends, from where and how you live. Put yourself in that mental space. Don’t worry about ‘How?’ - let’s say, you won the lottery, but just enough to take a year off, and everyone you love is cryogenically frozen for one year so they won’t miss you and you won’t miss any key events in their life.
What would you do during that year? Would you keep doing exactly what you’ve been doing, or would you try something a little different - maybe even radically different? Would you stay where you are, or would you move halfway across the world? Would you go from an excel desk jockey job to being a mountain guide? Would you move from a McMansion to a downtown condo - or vice versa?
More importantly, who would you BE during that year? Remember, all your friends and family are literally on ice during this time. No one has any expectations of who you are, who you’re supposed to be, what you’re supposed to do for them when, how, or in what context. Do you keep the same hours, do you dress the same, do you adopt a different slang? Do you take a job making just enough money to survive? Do you go the other way and work 15 hour days so you can buy a yacht?
If you’d do - and be - exactly the same in our imagined scenario as you are doing right now - carry on!
But if you’d change some significant elements of how you live your life, it’s worth asking yourself a few more questions:
Whatever it is that you’d change in our one-year-lottery-cryogenically-frozen-family-and-friends scenario, why haven’t you already changed it, back here, in real life?
What - or who - is holding you back?
Are you bound by real obligations in the real world, or are you bound by values - of what is right and wrong, of what’s ‘done or not done’?
And if you’re being held back by values - well then, whose values are they?
Are they yours, truly yours, or did you inherit them?
These are the fundamental questions: Are you living for yourself? Are you living for your values? Are you working toward your goals?
If not: when will you start?
Some Amish and Mennonite groups have a tradition called Rumspringa in which, after 16 or 17 years of being raised within an insular community, absorbing its doctrine, and living in strict accordance to its rules, adolescents are granted more freedom to explore the outside world and experience different ways of life. This may mean eschewing traditional garb for more modern apparel, drinking alcohol & partying, or even driving a vehicle for which the term ‘horsepower’ is merely metaphorical.
To us secular people, it can sound a bit bizarre, because we’ve always had the right to choose however we want to live. We don’t need some special tradition to expose us to other ways of living before we choose - we’ve been exposed to other ways of living our whole life, and we’ve chosen our way of life ourselves.
Think about it. From day one you saw, heard, smelled, experienced the traditions of your parents & family. Their ethics. Their values. Their beliefs, rules, and guidance about what’s wrong and right. It may not have been explicitly dictated to you, but you were born into a rigorous structure built over many years.
Then you went to school and absorbed a ‘new’ set of ethics, values, beliefs, etc. But for the most part, since your parents / guardians chose where you went to school - either explicitly via choosing a private school, or implicitly by choosing to live in a certain neighborhood with its own set of values - school was just an extension of your family’s ethos.
Then, some of you went to a college of your ‘choosing’ but - are you going to tell me with a straight face your parents didn’t have a significant influence over that? Again, whether overtly or covertly, they sure did. You may think it was your choice to take only pass/fail classes in the Sheep Fleecing major at Oberlin, but is it possible your choice may have been influenced by your parents who met at Woodstock and conceived you in a geodesic yurt?
You see where this is headed?
Have you had your rumspringa?
Have you ever really stepped outside the confines of the societal values you’ve been raised in, that have been drilled into your brain and heart and soul as ‘normal’ from literally Day One - if not before, via conversations and daily rhythms while you were in the womb?
Where does ‘your’ perception and expectation of the world begin and where do your parents / teachers / religious & community leaders’ end?
We live in a society - as I often like to remind people who ride their bike on the sidewalk - and there’s nothing wrong with being and behaving as part of a collective. If you feel good, you’re fulfilled, life is working out for you, then great.
But if you feel bad - if you feel unfulfilled in your work, in your life. If your job’s a joke, you’re broke, your love life’s DOA a dead-end that makes you miserable, then it may be worth considering: Are you living your life? Are you living a life aligned with your values, your ethos, your ideals? Are you living a life in service of what you want, or are you living a life in line with what you believe you should want?
In other words, could you be living a life in line with the values, ethos, ideals, beliefs that you absorbed from your earliest days, but your life doesn’t necessarily reflect how you actually feel and what you actually believe?
This is a thought experiment, not career or life advice (yet):
Imagine what would happen if you took a year off - from work, from your life obligations, from family, from friends, from where and how you live. Put yourself in that mental space. Don’t worry about ‘How?’ - let’s say, you won the lottery, but just enough to take a year off, and everyone you love is cryogenically frozen for one year so they won’t miss you and you won’t miss any key events in their life.
What would you do during that year? Would you keep doing exactly what you’ve been doing, or would you try something a little different - maybe even radically different? Would you stay where you are, or would you move halfway across the world? Would you go from an excel desk jockey job to being a mountain guide? Would you move from a McMansion to a downtown condo - or vice versa?
More importantly, who would you BE during that year? Remember, all your friends and family are literally on ice during this time. No one has any expectations of who you are, who you’re supposed to be, what you’re supposed to do for them when, how, or in what context. Do you keep the same hours, do you dress the same, do you adopt a different slang? Do you take a job making just enough money to survive? Do you go the other way and work 15 hour days so you can buy a yacht?
If you’d do - and be - exactly the same in our imagined scenario as you are doing right now - carry on!
But if you’d change some significant elements of how you live your life, it’s worth asking yourself a few more questions:
Whatever it is that you’d change in our one-year-lottery-cryogenically-frozen-family-and-friends scenario, why haven’t you already changed it, back here, in real life?
What - or who - is holding you back?
Are you bound by real obligations in the real world, or are you bound by values - of what is right and wrong, of what’s ‘done or not done’?
And if you’re being held back by values - well then, whose values are they?
Are they yours, truly yours, or did you inherit them?
These are the fundamental questions: Are you living for yourself? Are you living for your values? Are you working toward your goals?
If not: when will you start?