One of the things that keeps me connected to life and always striving for purpose, meaning and achievement is the self reminder that I/we have a finite amount of time on the planet as flesh and blood, and that time, once lost, is irreplaceable.
That awareness, like a splash of crisp water, awakens me and challenges me to not waste life.
It challenges me to be a better husband, a better father, a more humble son and a truer friend.
It makes me want to realize and rise above my professional goals as an entrepreneur, an active investor and, hokey though it may sound, an artisan who is driven by ideals and optimism to build substantive businesses that matter.
On some level, I am also driven by fear. Of sustainable mediocrity. Of wasting days or weeks, or months, or ever finding myself on a path that is a dead end, or worse, no path at all.
As a student of buddhism and yoga, I am also cognizant of avoiding the traps of spiritual materialism, akin to the lead character in Philip K. Dick's, "The Man in The High Castle," for I have had friends that, while brilliant and enlightened, were basically glass vessels, nothing more than a brain in a jar, pontificating, understanding all, yet doing little to seize that moment that is NOW.
As someone said to me many years back and has proven prophetic and true: you can't know what you don't know, and there is no substitute for doing, so if you want to get into a space, starting doing "something" in it.
This is one of those statements that is "obvious" and easy to dismiss in a second of knee jerk, so I would encourage you to wear if for a day or two as an article of faith in an area of your life where you feel unrealized and uncertain how to cross the line from concept and thought to flesh and doing.
It is my own personal recipe for manifesting and becoming, and it has carried me through two discrete careers, seven different startups, compassion, humilty and I believe/hope, a balanced life.
