Do you want a spectacular life or a full life?

One of the dilemmas that comes up often in my line of work (coaching) and indeed, for myself personally, has been the question: Do I want to do great things, be famous, win prizes, be publicly recognised, or just be ordinary? The options seemed very binary. It was either this or that. Not fun, right?

Growing up, my icons were Madonna, Prince, and Michael Jackson. Like all adoring fans of the 1980s, I wanted to know everything about my idols—their lives, their loves, their successes. But I hadn’t realised that they also led lives of sorrow, pain, and loss.

Remember, this was before social media, where cameras were everywhere, and Instagram was fuelled by the stars themselves, giving us sneak peeks of every aspect of their physical, emotional, and everyday lives. And so, it seemed like a fantastic quest – what else could life be worth living for other than to “make a mark“, be adored, or be recognised.

With time, understanding, and greater access, all the dark sides came tumbling out. Here are some thoughts:  

1. time and energy are finite. If we choose to put a significant amount of our time into the pursuit of a skill, we will get better at it. But we will very likely have to forgo many other aspects of our lives, such as our physical, emotional, social, or intellectual well-being.

2. being highly skilled, pursuing perfection, and obsessing over something could result in outcomes, or they could not. We now know that fame, riches, and recognition have a significant element of chance within them, being at the right place at the right time, knowing the right people, and just a bit of luck for it all to come together.

3. and that’s just the best-case scenario. Often, these extract even greater tolls: us having to compromise on our values, having to take risks for which the price may be very high, having to hurt loved ones, play dirty, only to realise that many of the awards we hanker after are a system within themselves that need to be ‘gamed’ or navigated, or even more anticlimactically, are paid or manipulated awards.

4. furthermore, we also understand that pursuing an outcome or money has no intrinsic joy. So often, for some, the process can be a grind if the hyper-focus is on either. But we soldier on because there is the pot of gold at the end of the rain, which, if you dig a little deeper, is often a stand-in for happiness, being seen, or the end of a quest or journey. Anyone who has touched that gold pot will know there is never an end. There is just the next tier, the next journey to embark on, and sometimes, we never make it to the end of the journey. Circumstances can rob us of this quest, the pot gets moved, or life is cut short.

5. there are some people for whom minds can only encompass a few realms or ideas, who, due to divergence, obsession, and trauma, cannot help themselves but pursue this quest even when they know that there is a price to pay - they may be okay to pay it, may disregard the consequences before they come, and take them on the chin when they do.

We love shiny biographies of famous and successful people. We should perhaps be looking at the ends of the lives of so many others after the peak—and, of course, of the multitudes who never touch that peak—but then their stories are never worth telling.

Align these with our values, but also see how these fit into some aspects of our life that we know are important – finances, relationships, other “lesser” interests, and find a way to allocate time and energy to all of these. We might not find balance, and some of these heads might get less attention than others, but even the tiniest bit of nourishing can keep that side of us alive and growing and prevent the soil from hardening so much that the seed cannot germinate ever.

If we keep at this quest, evaluating as we go along and changing where energy and time need to go with the changing circumstances of our life, we might build a life that steadily moves forward like a wave, long and robust. If we get some lucky wins or a shore that is just right for us, our wave can be quite spectacular. But we cannot force these happenings. But what we can ensure is that we ride these waves, so we have the lightness, we have the moments of the highs and the lows, but a big strong wave is not easy to break, and once our time is done, we retreat to the mighty ocean, that we were always a part of. Immense, deep, and so very rich.

That, my friends, is a life well lived. What do you think?