Lifting Lenses

A letter about surprises (for all of us know-it-alls)

Dearest reader,

This week I find myself thinking about surprises.

My 40th birthday is just two weeks away, and it’s got me looking ahead to this next decade. My forties.

Though I’m not someone who wants a big, loud party or a flashy gift, I am someone who believes that birthdays are sacred, if you choose to mark them as such. 

In the weeks leading up to my 40th birthday, I’ve been thinking about getting older. And about how, for me, so much of that process has been about getting to know myself better; gaining understanding about what I like and what I want. 

As a goal-oriented person, I’ve always got some new target on the horizon. I choose my goals like most other people: Because I think that achieving them will bring me closer to happiness, and further away from suffering. 

At nearly 40 though, having achieved many goals already, I’ve begun to develop what I believe to be a healthy sense of skepticism about the whole thing. 

In my experience, very few achievements have brought me much joy at all. For the most part, I’d describe them as delivering mild amusement at best. Sometimes I’ve been downright miserable.

Conversely, some experiences that I predicted to be boring or mundane, or even that I feared or dreaded, turned out to bring me a great deal of unexpected peace.

It’s weird, right?

Growing up, I believed that aging looked something like this:

A linear upward trajectory, consistently resulting in greater levels of happiness and fulfillment as long as we keep achieving the next target in the distance.

So imagine my surprise to learn that aging, for me anyway, instead looks like this:

I inch closer, incrementally, to knowing who I am, through a series of trial and error experiences. 

Over the years, I’ve come to understand that, despite all my efforts to plan ahead, I’m actually really bad at predicting what will make me happy.

In poking around a bit, I’ve uncovered some evidence to suggest that you might be too.

Let’s take a look at why.

Affective Forecasting

With so much rhetoric around the importance of goals, planning, and achievement, you’d think our species would have gained some expertise in the matter during our millions of years of evolution. But oddly enough, the science suggests otherwise.

Multiple studies have shown that when given the chance to choose what we think will bring us joy, humans choose wrong again and again.

Take, for example, online dating. In one study, the dating profiles participants found the most interesting turned out to be the least likely to result in a positive match. 

Or, consider the studies indicating that maternal happiness steeply declines after welcoming a second child. 

Or, the 2010 study that concluded that income-related happiness peaks after reaching a $75k salary. (that one is still up for debate but worth mentioning.)

The process of predicting our future emotional state is called “affective forecasting”, and in the words of author Daniel Gilbert, 

“People dramatically and regularly mispredict the emotional consequences of future events, both large and small.” 

According to Gilbert, most of our errors in affective forecasting pertain to the fact that we “overestimate how good we’ll feel when things go right, and how bad we’ll feel when things go wrong”. 

Here’s what it really makes me wonder:

If so much of our lives are orchestrated to engineer an outcome (or avoid another), but we’re starting out with faulty information about how the destination will make us feel, 

Are we always orienting the map of our life to reach the wrong destinations?

Dupes

One of my favourite authors, Martha Beck, used to conduct an exercise with coaching clients in which she’d ask them to tell her about their dream day.

Again and again, every client would tell Martha the same thing. Some variation of,

“I wake up in a white room with a view of the ocean. A warm breeze is blowing through the window. I have time to drink my coffee before heading out on a walk along the beach...”

For a while, Martha was puzzled. Could it be that every single human wanted the same thing? And was it really as simple as a white room with a seaside view?

The more Martha got to know each client, however, she realized that the white room was not their true desire, but instead a culturally prescribed ideal that had infiltrated each individual’s perception of happiness.

We’ve watched so many rom coms and lottery commercials that we’ve unintentionally digested the idea that joy is a one-size-fits-all commodity. As a result, we spend our days striving for an empty dupe, never taking the time to figure out what the real thing is for us. 

For Martha’s clients, once the white room ideal was identified as a dupe, they could begin uncovering what their own, true, unique version of joy looked like for them.

In thinking about this, I’ve identified a list of some of the dupes I’ve traded for better fits lately. Allow me to explain.

Friends vs. Community

I’ve spoken a lot about the topic of friends here in this space. Following our move to an island in the Pacific Ocean, where I know no one, I was thinking pretty extensively about my approach to friendship up until this point. What I realized is this:

Whenever we move to a new place, my tendency is to seek new “friends”: Individual people with whom I can go for coffee and converse about life. Right now, however, my life is very busy. Forging a new friendship feels a bit like a chore; one more item on my to-do list. There’s the planning, the primping, the driving, the expense (both time and financial). It’s a lot. And when I take the time to really feel into it, I realize that friendship isn’t what I’m craving at all.

What I’m craving instead is community. 

A group, within which I can gain a sense of belonging. Unlike a 1:1 friendship, community exists without me having to make the plans or maintain the text chain. I can show up when it works for me. And when it doesn’t, my absence will be noticed but not judged.

Community is, after all, a fundamental need of human beings. We evolved to exist in groups. Organizations like churches were created to serve this need. Many European cities were built from the ground up to support community, with gatherings in the piazza or at streetside bars and cafes a ritual of daily life.

In North America, we’re sadly lacking; expected to live and work as entirely self-sustaining units. Some of us have large families that can help us bridge the gap, but for those of us with no family (by choice or by default), we’re often left feeling unmoored.

In school, growing up, so much emphasis is placed on how many friends we have. Later, we build lists of “followers” online.

It makes me wonder how much of our obsession with quantity of friends comes as a direct result of our species actually being starved for community.

I’m still working towards this pillar. But one action I took earlier this year was to join a women’s choir. We meet weekly, harmonizing both voices and energy. It’s been a really good thing.

Me and my choir community, in the snazzy performance outfits they make us wear.

Entrepreneurial Hustle vs. Corporate Chill 

During the last decade or so, the prevailing dogma insisted that anyone who works for someone else rather than running their own business is a de facto failure who is wasting their life making someone else rich.

And while I agree that capitalism is a fucked up system built to make the rich richer, I’m going to level with you: There’s something really nice about working just hard enough at a job you like enough and can put away at 5 pm and on the weekends.

I’ve been hustling to run my own business (at first as a freelance copywriter, then as a mindfulness instructor and coach) for about 10 years. Sure, it’s awesome to make your own hours, be your own boss, and steer your own ship.

But it’s also decidedly not awesome to always be chasing down new business, following up on invoices, and wondering when the next paycheque is going to come.

About a year ago, I took on a f/t salary job again and if I’m being honest: It’s WAY more chill than solely being an entrepreneur. 

Contrary to what every pushy coach in the world will tell you, there’s nothing wrong with taking a job to pay your bills. 

Your life purpose and the way you make money do not have to be the same thing in order for you to be a successful human.

Happiness vs. Peace

When I say the word “happiness”, what feeling does it stir in your body? For me it’s an excited, elated, energetic feeling. 

When I say the word “peace”, what feeling does it stir in your body? For me it’s kind of a low energy sensation. It’s quiet. Almost boring.

For this reason, I’ve spent most of my life seeking the high of “happiness”.

But lately I notice that the goals orchestrated to achieve “happiness” leave me feeling a bit… overstimulated. Like I’ve crossed the finish line and continued over too far, into the zone of “too much”.

The time I’ve spent on stage public speaking (anticipated to be an ultimate high point) has often left me feeling wired, admittedly even sometimes craving the solitude of the moments I spent writing the speech.

My speech at the “Find Your Voice” event in 2021 — the final night of the women’s speaking course I developed and led, by the same name.

By contrast, the time I’ve spent burrowing my feet into the sand and wading into the ocean has filled my heart with so much love that I felt my chest palpably expand to absorb it.

Maybe it’s because I’m so highly sensitive, but I’ve realized that the moments in which I’m cultivating peace result in a much more pleasant and sustainable energy boost than the hunt for happiness. 

More vs. Enough

I’ve grown up in a culture where “more” is always better. For this reason, I recognize that I have very little experience with “enough”. 

I struggle to know what is good enough, what is enough money, what is enough to expect from a partner.

I’ve overshot and undershot at both ends. I think the reason being that I’ve never taken the time to ask myself what is enough for me. 

In many ways, I feel like this is the task of the decade ahead.

In my forties, I want to discover what enough feels like. 

I want to build the self-confidence and self-trust that I need in order to stop striving when I reach those moments of quiet satisfaction, to exhale deeply and absorb the warmth of moments that are whole and complete, without wishing there was more to be had.

In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, I want more chances to sit back and say,

“If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

Lifting Lenses

My dad was an optometrist. Some of my earliest memories are of roaming around his office, trying on glasses, the faint smell of his cologne while he examined my eyes.

The old phoropter from my Dad’s optometry practice, now sitting on my office bookshelf. My thirties marked the first decade of my life ever to live without him in it. It’s hard not having my best friend around anymore.

When I think about my experience of aging, the closest comparison I can draw is that of sitting behind the phoropter.

You begin looking through a series of foggy lenses. None of them are quite your prescription.

The optometrist asks you to keep your gaze on a steady point as they shift from one lens to the next.

“Is this better, or worse?” my dad used to ask me, my tiny feet dangling off the chair. 

“What about now? Better, or worse?” the lenses shift.

“Is this better? Or worse?”

As I embark on a new decade, I suppose the most I can hope is that as the lenses lift, my view will become ever clearer.

Sending you so, so much love.

Kyra

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