On the Life We Want to Live

A couple of weeks ago, I was flying home from a conference in Pennsylvania. I was supposed to travel through Chicago and back to Winnipeg, but a storm rolled through and my flight was cancelled. Instead of getting home that night, I ended up flying out the next day.

On that flight, I sat beside a young man who worked as a software engineer for a medical company. We chatted a little about work and where we were headed, but a few minutes into our conversation, I noticed the book he was reading: The Creative Act by Rick Rubin.

So, naturally, I asked him about it.

That changed the conversation.

We started talking about creativity and the strange pull some of us feel toward making things. Eventually, he told me that he makes music. Then he told me about some other ideas he was working on, things he wanted to create using different skills and interests he had.

Suddenly, the person sitting beside me wasn't simply a software engineer working for a medical company. There was this whole other world inside of him. Dreams, ideas, interests, things he wanted to make and put into the world. It ended up being one of the most interesting and inspiring conversations I've had in a long time.

And I've thought about it a lot since.

I think one of the greatest challenges we face in this life is remarkably simple: to honour what is within us despite everything happening outside of us.

What that means will be different for each of us. It might be a dream you've carried for years, something you want to create, a way you want to live, a belief you refuse to let go of, or simply a sense that there is somewhere you're supposed to be heading. You might not even have words for it yet. You just know there's something inside of you pulling you in a particular direction.

I think we all have that inner story. And then we have the stories the world tells us.

The world tells us what is practical. What is worthwhile. What success looks like. What deserves our time. What we're capable of. What we're too old to begin or too inexperienced to attempt. Sometimes those stories come from other people. Sometimes they come from the circumstances we've been given. And sometimes we've heard them for so long that we begin telling them to ourselves.

Perhaps one of the greatest challenges—and purposes—of our lives is deciding which story we're going to believe.

I've been thinking of us as little rowboats in the middle of a very big storm. The wind blows. The waves come. We get pushed in directions we never intended to go. Sometimes we're so busy keeping the boat afloat that we don't have much choice about where we're headed. And sometimes we finally look up and realize we've been travelling in a direction we never actually chose.

That's life. There are responsibilities and expectations. There are disappointments, failures and rejections. There are bills to pay and people who need us. There are things that don't work out the way we hoped they would. There are a million perfectly reasonable reasons to put aside that quiet thing within us and deal with everything happening around us instead.

The world is loud. What is within us can be remarkably quiet.

Maybe that's why a life worth living requires us, again and again, to listen for it. To trust that there are things within us worth honouring, even when we can't prove where they're going to lead. To keep rowing in their direction even when the world seems determined to push us somewhere else.

We will get swamped. We will get blown off course. Some of us may realize we've been off course for a very long time.

But here's the wonderful thing: wherever you are right now, you can choose again.

You can pick up the oars. You can listen for that quiet thing inside of you. You can take one small stroke in its direction.

Maybe that's all any of us can really do.

And maybe that's how we build a life worth living.

Wishing you and your stories all the best,

Trevor

P.S. Next week, I want to continue this thought by talking specifically about writing. Because I think writing is one of the most profound ways we can honour what is within us—and I think that's also part of the reason we experience so much resistance when we try to do it.

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