Introduction

I’m writing a multi-part series about finding happiness, in work and in life, and how that shapes the way I think about architecture and the built world.

Find the rest of the series here.

Where we left off:

“Yet as I sit in transit at the airport in San Salvador, waiting for a new flight to Panama since my original one was canceled, my thoughts are held captive by fear.  What if it isn’t all that I imagine it to be?  What if I don’t like it? What if I still don’t feel fulfilled? What if I discover that I have nothing to offer?  Not to mention the lack of job security or paycheck…was accounting really so bad? Crap, I don’t even have a car anymore, or a bed to sleep in! What was I thinking, selling everything I own, and leaving everything I know, to plunge into the unknown, thinking it would be an ‘adventure’?  I find it ironic how in the face of the unknown, familiar misery can sound so appealing.  But as my sweaty fingertips click against these keys, I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes about fear from R.R. Martin’s a Game of Thrones, where a son asks his father, “Can a man be brave if he is afraid?”, and his father responds, “Son, that is the only time a man can be brave.”  And afraid I am.  But I am also feeling a little brave.”

Part Seven

Crescendo of Meaning

When I went off to Africa for two years, I imagined every day would feel like Indiana Jones.  One giant treasure-hunting, cowboy-gallivanting, boy-meets-girl, hero-versus-foe, do-good cacophony of adventure.  With a dazzling taste of Maasai warriors and lions, of course.  A tale for the ages!

Most days I took a cold shower, ate my requisite meals, and taught about the most dangerous animal on earth:

The mosquito.   

How…heroic.  

To be fair, there were elements of all the above. It was absolutely an adventure. I met my wife there, after all. 

But life unfolded slowly, and there was never the all-consuming crescendo of meaning and purpose I had longed for.  No riding off into the sunset. Even on the most epic of days, I’d go to sleep, and wake up to…the ordinary.  

Adventure, it seemed, was more like Pulp Fiction – mundane moments occasionally interrupted by action.  And once again, I was left feeling disappointed by life.  

No Happily Ever After

One of the hardest lessons from my time in the Peace Corps was beginning to internalize, albeit begrudgingly, that there is no such thing as happily ever after.  No single act that could redeem the rest of my life and make it meaningful forever.

Backpacking through Spain had shown me that freedom from responsibility was not the path to endless bliss, that fun and exhilarating experiences did not equate to a whole life.  The Peace Corps was showing me that even a courageous decision to pursue meaning was no cure-all.  No single act or experience or cause could magically “fix” me. 

I was beginning to see that meaning and wholeness weren’t a destination, but a direction. 

And to pile it on, at 23 to 25 years old, just stepping into adulthood, I was coming to grips with the fact that life is simply hard. Suffering, not happiness, seemed to be the fundamental reality of consciousness, baked into the experience of being alive. I hadn’t fully accepted it yet, but I was beginning to see it for the first time. And man, it scared the hell out of me.

That’s not what I’d grown up believing. Whether it was a byproduct of American culture or just my youthful naivety, I thought life was supposed to be fun, that happiness was the default. I thought it was my right.  If I wasn’t happy, something was wrong. I thought happiness should come easily. It was the story, and suffering the commercial break. 

“I just want to be happy” seemed like a reasonable request.

Rethinking the Pursuit of Happiness

This brings me back to my first post in this series, The Founding Fathers Were Wrong. I opened it up by saying:

“At 35, I’m now wondering whether they made a serious mistake in the Declaration to include ‘the pursuit of happiness’ into our vision statement as a country.”

But what if I’ve misunderstood that line all along? They said the pursuit of happiness. What if they knew it was an infinite pursuit? A direction, and not a destination? And what if I’ve been mistaking what happiness is to begin with? What if it isn’t comfort, or fun, or bliss, or even freedom from pain, but something far, far deeper, like meaning, purpose, peace, and wholeness?

I hadn’t fully grasped these ideas when I wrote the following blog post a little over a decade ago, four months into my time in Uganda.  At that point, I wasn’t sure what life was – but I was starting to understand what it wasn’t. Reality was hitting me for the first time in my young life – and my words here are probably a bit more hopeful than I felt at the time: 

August 18, 2013 “The Climb”

Adventures.  They are here one moment and gone the next.   The anticipation and excitement leading up to them can last for months or even years.  Perhaps it is a marriage, a party, a vacation or a new job.  The time arrives and the adventure happens—and then it is over.  The excitement can linger afterwards, perhaps for a few days, or weeks, or even months.  Maybe even a year from now the memories will elicit some laughs and back-slapping over a few beers.  But it only lasts a few minutes.  The adventure itself is gone, like a ship disappearing over the horizon.  We can thrash and fight and grasp after it, but we will never experience the rapture of that adventure ever again—the ship is gone.   

Some people think that they can make a deal with life, that they can exchange the ordinary for the extraordinary in a single, glorious moment of courage and determination.  Perhaps they quit their soul-crushing job and go to Africa with the Peace Corps.  It is inspirational; it is courageous; it is adventurous.  The first few months provide effortless adventure because it is new and, well, because it is Africa.  So they continue to let themselves be deceived into thinking that they can get away with it—that they deserve it, that adventure owes them because they once obliged it.  Not to belittle such a decision, for those decisions really do take courage, but the inescapable truth is that life always turns into just that— life.  Eventually, our proverbial friend Ordinary catches up and snatches the adventure, the meaning, right out from under us.  And before we know it, it seems like we have always lived in Africa— we don’t even think about it; life in Africa just becomes so…ordinary. 

I tend to argue with life at the injustice of it all.  I shake my fists in indignation because I once made a decision to go on an adventure.  I should be able to, in a momentous occasion of ambition and inspiration, throw off the shackles of the ordinary and surrender myself into the arms of adventure and meaning—arms that will respect my singular effort, embrace me and carry me into infinity.  I should be able, in a single moment, to create for myself a new reality, a new life, an adventure that I will never return from.  In one moment I should be able to define my entire existence; I should be able to make a down payment on redemption, receive the reward in advance and never have to make another payment.  Unfortunately, it isn’t much of a fight. The ghost of life always wins.    

How I sometimes envy Sydney Carton [a character from A Tale of Two Cities who redeemed himself by offering his life as a sacrifice for someone he loved].  He died a hero.  He died with purpose and at peace.  In one moment he redeemed his entire life and infused it with significance.  How much easier it would be to just die, I sometimes wonder?  He never had to struggle again with getting out of bed, going to work or saying no to another drink or cigarette.  All he had to do was die.  The struggle was over.  How glorious. 

But I can’t help but think about how I have my whole life ahead of me, and though I do not know how long it may be, how much better would it be to live a life that gave my death meaning, than to have a death that gave my life meaning?   No, I cannot find redemption in death—I must find it in life.  The struggle must continue.  On good days this excites me; on bad ones I wish the world had ended in 2012. 

This is admittedly all a bit melodramatic, but I am not writing from a place of despair, but from the perspective of a little kid who made up his bed one morning and thinks it has earned him the inalienable right to as much candy as he wants—forever.  And when mom says no, he stomps his feet and throws a tantrum at the unfairness of the world.     

Seriously though, why does life have to be so damn ordinary?  No matter how hard I try I can’t escape it.  Yeah, I have made some brave decisions that have defined me, changed me and set me on a new course.  But I am never free after those decisions.  The annoying truth is that I can’t be carried on an infinite adventure as recompense for a choice I once made.  I can’t be given a life filled with meaning because it is the struggle that makes it meaningful.  The value is not, to my umbrage, in the reprieve from ordinary life, the escape from the mundane; rather, the value is in the struggle.  Adventures and meaning are not fabricated in single moments, but in every moment; they are something we must choose every day if we want them to be made manifest.  They are simply by-products of a life well-lived in the ordinary.  As Ernest Hemingway famously said, “It is good to have an end to journey towards, but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”

The illusion I wish so badly to be true simply exposes the fact that I am not a true adventurer.  Not yet at least.  Would a hiker want to be carried to the top of Mount Everest?  Would a marathon runner want to be carried across the finish line?  No, they want to make the treacherous climb, to run the grueling 26 miles.  Why?  Because they want the finish to mean something.      

Coming to Africa was my mountain.  The year-and-a-half-long climb back home in Houston was arduous and long.  It felt so liberating, almost existential, to get on that plane and fly away towards my new life.  It was my glorious summit at sunrise.  I have enjoyed the spoils of my labor for a few months, but now my eyes have adjusted, and in the distance I see another peak.  It is terrifying. Exciting.  Daunting. Hopeful.  It is not that anything is wrong or that I made a bad decision or am unhappy—it is just that this is my new reality.  I am not looking backwards, but forwards; climbing this peak was necessary to see the next.  And so it is: The journey never ends.  The struggle, never ends.  The question now is, over my next two years in Uganda, what will I do to climb, to fight through the ordinary, to learn, explore and grow—and to where will it lead?

To be continued…

Conclusion

Thanks for following along! This journey has laid the foundation for Building Culture—what we stand for, how we think, and the goals we pursue. I look forward to sharing more with you. If you have any thoughts or comments, I’d love to hear from you. Just hit 'reply' in your email, and your message will land right in my inbox.

Austin