Humble Poet - Things No One Else Can Teach Us

Enter

Summers seem shorter

Winters get longer

Friendships end with the seasons

And we won’t always welcome spring

Time stops standing still for us, and the happy-ever-afters never happen

It’s terrifying

Everyone I know and love will be dead

It’s comforting

Everyone I resent and hate will be dead

All ashes

How can we have something everlasting

In a world where nothing ever lasts

Everything comes to pass

Everything is temporary

Even us

How fortunate and unfortunate for us

Death is the only promise

It’s frustrating to know that the new outfit you just bought, the one that brings you so much excitement and confidence, is one day going to sit unloved at the back of your closet. When you get around to spring cleaning, you’ll look at it, embarrassed, and wonder, “Why did I buy that? What was I thinking?” Shit gets old very quickly; nothing stands the test of time anymore. Companies make stuff to break so we’ll buy the next generation of stuff, which will also break. This makes the world, and life, feel that much more temporary.

Mother Nature also created us with a form of built-in obsolescence: death. We have an expiration date, and that also makes the world, and life, feel that much more temporary. The longer we live, the more we experience death, in and around us. Many of my childhood heroes are dead, like my grandmother, Nani. I’ll never get to feel her leathery, wrinkly hands again. Growing up, absorbed in her cuddles, I thought she would be here forever. But she wasn’t, and as I stood in the hospital room staring at her lifeless body, I thought of my mother and father and how, if everything plays out as it should, I’ll be watching them pass away too one day.

Nothing lasts forever.

The fact that life is temporary—the happiness, the joy, the hope, the fear, the pain, the sorrow, the victories, the defeats—is the most comforting and terrifying fact of existence.

It always feels like the bad shit pauses at its worst moments, while all the good stuff crumbles into the everyday.

“Nothing lasts forever” sucks when we think of the good stuff, but it’s oddly comforting when we think of the bad. You’ve fought the urge to get up to pee during a movie, knowing the credits will eventually roll and you’ll be free to leave your seat without missing anything. You’ve sat through boring lectures, silly arguments, and never-ending weddings, knowing that these, too, will at some point wrap up. The temporary things in life have brought you peace before. Your heartbreaks have been temporary, your injuries have been temporary, your confusions, resentments, anger, and fears have all been temporary.

Still, realizing that nothing we know and cherish today will last forever can be difficult. We’re on borrowed time. My mother says our number of breaths has been predetermined. [1]Irrespective of the allegory, analogy, or belief, we’re not going to last. Not in the short term or the grand scheme.

That realization might make us want to hide in the nearest corner, assume the fetal position, and scream, “Why bother doing anything? What’s the point if it’s all going to end?”

So now that I’ve massaged your existential dread, I’m supposed to teach you to find beauty in this world of temporary, right? Wrong. You’ve had your near-death experiences and promised to live a new life, only to fall back into your whack habits a few days later. You’ve lost things that mattered to you, people who mattered to you, and you’re still here, knowing that one day you’ll also be lost; no one makes it out alive.

What I can do is help you see how recognizing that everything is temporary can take a lot of the pressure off and help you jump headfirst into life, finding more reasons to be grateful, to connect with others, and most important, to connect with yourself. In the past I’ve written about letting go to gain more. This time, let’s talk about how much we lose from holding on. Let’s talk about the gifts we receive when we lose, and how all of this can help us clean out our closets and keep only what’s most important. Let’s talk about how we should value something because it’s temporary, including our own lives.

Looking at life through the lens of time shows us how patience is a superpower. Loss feeds love and encourages us to look at the bigger picture.

Nothing lasts forever, and that’s both tragic and comic, depending on how we look at it—so how we look at it, our perspective, is the thing we can, and should, control. We can give ourselves a facepalm when we look at that old outfit, or we can try it on and dance around the room summoning up the spirits and smiles of yesterday—a beautiful reminder of how far we’ve come.

Shit had hit the fan. My rap career had launched, but not at the rate I’d expected. I had moved into a condo I couldn’t afford the prior year, planning to pay for it with future funds I assumed would come pouring in. Suddenly I realized I’d spent twelve months sitting in smoke-filled studios, making music whenever inspiration (or the weed) hit me, having no idea how to pay my mortgage. I was broke and uninspired.

Things needed to be different. Not only did I have to audit my bank account, but I had to audit the people I spent my time with. We all go through these times in life, when we have to slow things down, reevaluate, and do some spring cleaning. Yet for me, this spring cleaning was less about holistic renewal and more about clearing my professional path. I decided that if someone wasn’t helping me get to where I needed to be, then that person most likely was getting in my way. I didn’t make any proclamations or write anybody a Dear John letter, thus liberating myself from their harmful clutches. I didn’t say a thing to anybody; I just stopped engaging with people who I felt were standing in my way rather than helping me and I began to focus more on myself.

I started with the people in my life who were less than inspiring, even toxic. The ones making decisions that didn’t feel responsible or sustainable to me. You know the people I’m talking about: the ones who feel like more of a chore or an obligation than a friend.

Purging these kinds of people from my life had immediate benefits. It freed up my time and energy so I was able to spend time with people and things that actually excited me, rather than drained me. Slowly, I cleansed my personal life of all the whack people I was spending time with. It was instantly liberating for me, but shedding friends also became addictive.

I didn’t stop there.

After getting rid of all my bad friends, I started looking at my good friends. The ones who were pleasant sources of energy yet sought out comfort through conformity and avoiding risk at every turn. They were well meaning but expressed their worry whenever I shared my nontraditional thoughts and ideas about taking risks and coloring outside the lines. I was on an entrepreneurial journey, and as sweet as those people were, I realized that I no longer had things in common with many of them. I decided I needed to surround myself with people I wanted to be like: self-employed, empowered, risk-embracing. In other words, I wanted to be around people only if they could help and inspire me on my journey.