A Letter from Chris Suarez
THE SECRET IN-BETWEEN THE PAST AND THE FUTURE
I wanted to share a recent definition of Happiness that I came across while reading some thoughts of Naval Ravikant. He wrote: “Happiness is the state when nothing is missing. When nothing is missing, our mind shuts down and stops running into the past or future to regret something or to plan something."
Our minds wander to the past for regret.
Our minds wander to the future to plan.
We have a society and a culture that if we are not careful is taking our happiness away. Let me explain.
One of the things I have missed most during this interesting school year is going to pick up my daughters from school. And it wasn’t just because I got to see them and immediately hear about their day - the story Lanna wrote that day, the game that Lilly created at the playground, the research project Lanna had started, or the classroom guinea pig that Lilly took care of that morning. What made picking up my girls so enjoyable was to walk into the building and see so many kids, so many humans, running around and smiling, and laughing, and being happy. It was impossible for their happiness not to rub off. Where else could you go in the middle of the day to see so many smiles? They attended a Montessori school, so the children ranged in age from 5 years old to 12 years old.
These children didn't find themselves thinking about the past with feelings of regret, and they weren’t thinking about how to make their futures “better”. They were in the moment. They were present. They were enjoying the current game, their current friendships, even their current assignments and classroom jobs. Something difficult had happened that morning? They had already moved on and forgotten. They had something exciting to do that afternoon? It will come soon enough.
Their happiness was strongly rooted in their focus on the present - what they were doing right then with whom they were doing it.
Fast forward just a couple of years and our children are bombarded with pressure. They judge themselves for what they don’t yet have, question themselves for what they could have done differently, and pressure themselves to look and be different in the future. They are taken out of the present and feel pushed into the past and future. Walk through a middle school or high school and suddenly we’ve lost that happy innocence. The pressure of tomorrow’s test, making the team, yesterday’s bad grade, and college essays can steal those smiles. I get it, we need to grow up. But we need to stay present while we do.
Depression rates have increased the most over the past two decades in the age group of 16-19 years old, with a surge of kids getting treated for depression beginning at age 12. Why?
Our children are being influenced by YouTube videos, and podcasts, and movies, and social media, convincing them it’s fun and easy to live lavish lifestyles, have millions of friends, create overnight wealth, look perfect, all while building long lists of wants and desires. We’ve literally seen an entire industry spring up called “Influencers”, and well they are doing their job. They are influencing children to regret their past and build desires for their future. They are not being grounded in their present.
They are not influencing them to be present and happy. Remember:
“Happiness is the state when nothing is missing. When nothing is missing, our mind shuts down and stops running into the past or future to regret something or to plan something."
We can take a lesson from those school aged children.
The fourth quarter of every year can be the biggest pit of unhappiness if we are not careful. It’s like graduating to middle school or high school.
We begin to go into the past and regret all of the things that we didn’t do or haven’t done in order to hit our goals. The gap between where we are and where we thought we’d be shows up as unreachable. Perhaps it's clear you can’t make up that gap, and so as we look at the past, regret sinks in. Many of us are actually ahead of our goals this year. And yet we are seemingly programmed to go into the past and find the mistakes anyway. The purpose of looking to the past is only to bring lessons into the present. If there is no lesson there for us, just let it go.
We begin to look into the future as well to set new goals to hit, more impressive results to achieve, and higher rankings to climb. If we really love what we do, would we need to boldly proclaim what we are going to do next? Interestingly, I believe much of the proverbial fourth quarter slowdown in business is not seasonality, but rather the business owner stepping out their being present in the second and third quarter, and focusing on the future in the fourth quarter, losing their focus on the present.
We can find ourselves squarely in the past, or squarely in the future, when our happiness is found in our current circle.
I do love learning from the past, and I do love setting goals for the future. Right alongside that, let’s focus on our commitment to the present, which is the foundation of living experientially.
Do you want to feel regret? Build desire? Or experience happiness?
Then stay present. Be where you, doing what you are doing, with whom you are doing it, today.
Chris