Don't Be Better

"Life is only downhill from here."

The client said to me. He is in his early 40s, just like myself.

When at near half point of life, your body starts to send you all kinds of signals telling you to go gentle on yourself. When your career seems to go pretty OK but you can't see too much room upside. When you start to lose people in your world, whether to their other priorities or to death. When everything you built up in the first half of life, is now starting to slowly get dismantled. When you begin to pray more for safety, and start to lose appetite for risks. When you know inevitably it will all be gone, as you eventually leave this world behind.

Only downhill. It does feel like so.

Life is not a climb

We want to create value, make an impact. We want to be useful. We want to be seen by our world.

So we work our way up. Improvement, growth, development. Be better. Better skills, better mindset, better person. No way you can be a worse person than yesterday, so the only way is up.

But when you become better today, what does it make the you from yesterday? Someone less good? Someone harder to love?

But what if life is not a climb? What if there is no top or bottom?

What if life is a maze? What if there are brighter corners and darker ones? What if every step you take isn't about being better but about being exploring a path? What if it's a maze without entrance or exit, you didn't choose to enter, and you're not stressed about getting out?

When life is not a climb, you don't become better.

"I don't want to be better."

It feels like a crime to say it, "I don't want to be better".

It feels terrible. You feel guilty for even just thinking about not having the desire to improve.

Your parents, you kids, your partner. Your friends, your teachers, your managers. How would they take it?

Sorry, you're not good enough to qualify for an opt-out, they want you to be better.

Good or bad. Who calls it?

I look at my dog and wonder: would he wants to be better?

He knows what he likes, and he would do what it takes to get them. He knows what he doesn't like, and he would run away when those show up.

But I can't imagine him saying "I need to be a better dog", to get more loved by me, or more treats. I hope he doesn't.

Even if he does, how would he know that he gets better? "Good boy!" like I said to him all the time?

Is human the only species that judges? That knows "good or bad"? That asserts "right or wrong"?

We change the world

We humans think we can change things. We change what we don't like, for what we like.

We invented a bunch of stuffs and "made the world a better place".

We even think we can change people.

We educate other humans about what is a good and what is bad.

We teach them that there's something called "better", and it's what we humans are here to do to this world.

Make it better.

To make the world better, you first make yourself better.

Don't be better.

We were given this life, and it's hard to find out what to do about it.

The bless is that we are highly intelligent, we can learn. That also is the curse.

We learn about the system and what it needs. Before we can learn to build our functions to meet those needs.

We learn to be a machine, or a part in a machine. Because that gives us a purpose.

"I'm useful here!"

But we are human. We were not made to be useful.

We are made to be loved.

Never be better. You are enough.