The world is obsessed with “correction”. New models, fresh updates, breakthrough prescriptions, look younger, be healthier, better houses, faster cars. A rat race into oblivion. Drowning in cortisol over many problems that aren’t really problems at all.
What would happen if we all took a moment to collect ourselves, to stop, if only for a second, and ask, truly, deeply, “What is it that we are trying to fix?”.
Now I’m not saying nothing is worth fixing in practicality. Lives involve making decisions, and some things really do need to be mended: a broken relationship with a loved one, unnecessary bloodshed and famine, wealth inequality, and the broken healthcare system in America. As a human living in the modern world, these are things that really matter and decisions, actions, need to be taken, but by far and away, most people’s day-to-day “problems” aren’t problems at all. They are fabrications, creations, thoughts about a future that hasn’t happened or a past that never did pass. Contortions of the Present that isn’t presence at all.
In the winter of 2013, I took my first international trip abroad. I was 25. I flew from Arkansas, my home, to Tanzania to guide Kilimanjaro expeditions (about 8) for Alaska Mountain Guides. I lived there for a little over three months. It was the first time I saw poverty on that scale. I saw no post office, no electricity, no potable water, no shoes, no money. No social safety nets, and it’s not like Arkansas was a shining, progressively liberal area in the United States, but compared to Moshi and the surrounding rural villages, it was. I had never seen anything like that level of survival and poverty. Trash fires everywhere because there was nothing else to do with it. People in the streets begging me for money because I was white, and that made me rich and despite all of that, all the poverty and the struggle to meet their basic needs most of the Tanzanians I encountered were the kindest and happiest people I had ever met, have ever met to this day. For three months, I ran expedition after expedition, I saw all number of wild things and met all sorts of amazing individuals, despite what they had, what they didn’t. I came away from that experience with one simple thought, one simple idea: What is necessity?
For years that affected me, after my master’s degree and in pursuit of my mountain guiding dreams, I lived in a vehicle for almost a decade, insane to some, but for me it made sense, reducing my cost of living so I could follow my dreams. I had everything I needed: food, water, shelter, relationships, and meaning. You can strip away almost everything from a traditional American lifestyle without losing much at all.
For that era of my life, I think Biggie said it best, “Mo money, mo problems”. Or at least something like that.
As I aged, the fixation problem I saw around me morphed from material to spiritual. From the body to the mind, and since then, I have followed those same questions in both realms. “What is necessity?” and “What are we trying to fix?”. Two guides for me in living a better life, and themes I will continue to explore with this Substack and with everyone I meet. I don’t have the answers, and I won’t pretend to but I will continue to ask the hard questions and share them with you.
So I ask you again, dear reader, to look at your life, your day to day, your happiness or lack thereof, and ask yourself what it is that you’re trying to fix, or if it’s really worth trying to fix anything at all.
Maybe it is, or maybe it’s worth letting go.
Even for a second, a minute, an hour of your day.
Sit with your breath, and for this time there’s nothing to do, nothing to plan, nothing to fix. There’s no before and no after. There’s just this. This breath, right now. It’s coming and going, it’s rising and it’s falling.
Just this.
And another day begins.
