there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.”

–- Rumi

Can we shut the f*ck up for a minute?

I think the answer for most people is literally and figuratively NO.

I was sitting in the park last week with one of my good buddies.

The conversation took its usual structure: him talking, me listening.

I’ve always preferred it this way.

What he was talking about, only god knows. Girls. Sports. Work. Stocks. Music. More girls. I tried to follow along, but my mind had other plans. I realized that every time my friend finished a thought, he would immediately launch into something new.

So I started playing a game.

Every time he stopped talking, I’d count the number of seconds before he started talking again.

Talk. 1… 2… 3… Talk… 1… 2… Talk…

His record period of silence?

Four seconds.

FOUR.

SECONDS.

And no, he was not actively on drugs (I think).

You probably know this person.

We all do.

The one who always has something to say—or better put, never has nothing to say.

Some of you might be thinking, “oh sh*t… I think I am this person.”

There’s nothing wrong with this type of person. I love hanging out with people who give me a good excuse to listen rather than to speak.

But there was something about this interaction that felt off.

It wasn’t the what of the conversation—I couldn’t tell you a single thing he said. It was the how. He wasn’t really talking to me. He was talking to himself out loud while I happened to be nearby.

And honestly, I was equally to blame, sitting there silently, distracted, doing nothing.

Two people, same bench, completely separate worlds.

This conversation wouldn’t have hit me so hard if I hadn’t experienced the complete opposite feeling a few months earlier.

I was at a meditation retreat (cue: boringgggg), and they had us do this exercise where you walk around the room, partner up with a stranger, and then stare into each other’s eyes for two full minutes while imagining them as their little-kid selves.

The idea was: if you imagine someone as the little kid they used to be, a kid with pure intentions and a pure heart, you’ll be able to view them with more compassion and understanding.

At first, the silence felt like pressure. I nearly burst out laughing, it was so uncomfortable. But then something shifted. Without words, without speaking, something opened up between us. An energy field.

A presence.

I don’t quite know how to describe it. My heart cracked open a little.

I know, I know. “So thissss is what happens on meditation retreats.”

But stay with me for a few more minutes.

The exercise on its own is actually quite profound—look at someone in your life, especially someone difficult, and picture their inner child: a kid with scars, with trauma, trying their best with what they’ve got.

But what really broke my brain was the contrast. The fact that a random stranger and I had just shared something deeper than 99% of my regular conversations with family and friends, despite not saying a word to one another.

What the hell was happening here? And why did two minutes of silence make me feel something more profound than 15 minutes of talking listening to a friend? And what might we be missing by stuffing every empty space with chatter?”

It was time to get curious.

Stupidly curious.

I began my exploration where many stupid, curious wanderers begin these days: Claude.

I started with the simple question: “Why do we talk so much when we don’t need to?”, to which Claude spat out a wall of text that felt weirdly personal towards the end…

And after 20 minutes of talking back and forth with Claude (ironic, I know), I stumbled onto a framework that clicked.

So there’s this guy Iain McGilchrist.

British neuroscientist, psychiatrist, literary scholar. Studied the brain for a few decades.

Also looks like Ricky Gervais if he aged 15 years and got a PhD:

I liked him immediately for two reasons:

1. Glasses (see: scholarly aura).

2. Rocking the gray beard well into his 70s (see: even more aura)

Let’s call him Prof McG, like the scholarly philosopher version of Prof G.

So Prof McG studied the brain to see how it shapes the way we see the world around us.

And no, it’s not that Psych 101 oversimplification where left brain = logic, right brain = creativity. Prof McG hates that.

*Fair warning: his ideas are respected but controversial. Some neuroscientists think he overstates the case, while others think he’s onto something important. I’ll let you decide.*

Prof McG’s argument: the right and left brain hemispheres have fundamentally different ways of seeing reality.

Before the neuroscience nerds come for me: yes, both hemispheres are constantly working together. Is what I’m about to say perfect 1:1 mapping? Of course not.

Brains are messy. You’re never purely ‘in’ one or the other.

OK, now let’s get into it.

The left hemisphere operates like a narrow laser beam.

It asks: “What is this? What do I call it? How do I use it?” It zooms in on details, labels everything, and categorizes. It turns raw experience into words and concepts.

Let’s call this mode “The Grabber.”

The grabber looks something like this:

Look familiar?

The part of your brain that’s constantly meaning-making. Constantly labeling and turning life into a story about… life.

The right hemisphere is more like 0.5x zoom on your camera.

It asks: “What’s actually here? What’s the whole picture?” It takes in the full scene—context, relationships, the space between things. It doesn’t need to name something to know it. It’s intuitive.

Let’s call this mode “The Receiver.”

The receiver looks something like this:

No story about the art... just feeling it... just intuition... just vibes.

• Left hemisphere = where language lives. You represent reality through symbols and create models for the world.

• Right hemisphere = where knowing and experience live. It takes in the whole field and knows without needing to articulate in words.

If this is turning you on intellectually like it did for me, I highly recommend this 12-minute animation where Prof McG explains “The Divided Brain”:

So we have these two modes: the Grabber and the Receiver.

And both of these modes are essential, evolutionarily speaking.

Like, picture our hunter-gatherer ancestors foraging for berries. (Is this what hunter-gatherers did? No clue. Imagine it anyway.)

They needed a narrow focus to spot a blueberry and grab it—LEFT HEMISPHERE.

And they needed broad awareness to scan for predators—RIGHT HEMISPHERE.

Miss the berry, you go hungry. Miss the tiger, you’re lunch.

In 2026, most of us only forage blueberries in Trader Joe’s, but we still need both parts.

So why did I just bore you with a neuroscience lesson? And how does this relate to talking vs. silence?

OKAY OKAY…

Back to my friend, who, after this article gets published, may never speak to me again.

My four-second friend is not uniquely annoying or cheese-obsessed. Prof McG would just say that he’s stuck in Grabber mode.

To the grabber, silence feels like:

• Nothing happening

• Empty space

• Something to fix

So instead, the Grabber talks. It finds something to label and process. It finds something to make meaning out of, like bread-to-cheese ratios.

But here’s the thing: it’s not his fault that he always feels compelled to talk.

Not really.

Because history picked a side, according to Prof McG.

Turns out, The Grabber was really good at certain things for our ancestors.

Tools. Language. Planning. Building systems.

AKA getting sh*t done.

And those things won.

Civilizations that grabbed, labeled, and systematized outcompeted the ones that didn’t. The tribes that could name things, plan, and coordinate through language survived. The ones vibing in Receiver mode while a sabertooth approached?

Less so.

So The Grabber kept getting promoted.

Language got more complex. Then we invented writing—turning lived experience into symbols on a page. Then institutions, schools, and workplaces. All rewarding Grabber skills: articulate, analyze, systematize, produce.

It was self-reinforcing.

The Grabber got stuff done → we built a world that rewards grabbing → The Grabber got more dominant → we built more Grabber-friendly systems. Rinse, repeat for a few thousand years, and now here we are.

Now, is this provable in any rigorous scientific way?

Not really.

This is Prof McG’s interpretation of history through a neuroscience lens. It’s cultural criticism more than hard science.

But do me a favor and just look around.

We live in a world built by and for The Grabber, right?

The quiet kid gets a note sent home. ‘Sarah needs to contribute more in class discussions.’ Nobody writes, ‘Jake needs to shut the f*ck up and listen for once.’

We fill every pause with podcasts, music, scrolling—anything but silence. Even “meditation apps” won’t shut up.

Work promotes people who talk confidently in meetings. “Executive presence” basically means “sounds smart while saying nothing.”

The Grabber dominates. The Receiver has been sidelined.

So you might be thinking: The Grabber dominates.

Cool.

But is that actually... bad?

I mean, the Grabber built civilization. Language, science, medicine. The phone you’re reading this on. The very words I’m using to communicate this idea to you right now.

Maybe Grabber dominance is just... fine?

Ideal, even.

OK… let me clarify something real quick.

This isn’t a rant about talking or a manifesto for introverts. There’s absolutely nothing bad about talking confidently in meetings or telling great dinner party stories. I try to do both, with mixed results!

The problem isn’t that we talk. It’s that we’ve forgotten how to not talk. The muscle for being has disappeared.

And that’s an important distinction.

Imagine there’s a beautiful sunset in front of you. It’s orange, yellow, and pink colors melting into a lovely blob of sky.

The Grabber part of you sees the sunset, and then this happens:

You’re looking at the sunset but not experiencing it.

Now compare that to the Receiver:

It’s that feeling of presence, of being. When the narrator in your head goes quiet, and you’re just... here. Not thinking about the moment. Just in it.

The same thing happens with people. So often in conversation are we just mentally composing a response and thinking about ourselves instead of listening to someone else.

Remember that meditation retreat? The one where I stared into a stranger’s eyes for two minutes and felt like I was in some sort of energy field?

In that moment, there was no labeling. No “what does this mean?” No narration. No planning what to say next.

That energy field I felt is not just spiritual woo-woo or some made-up feeling.

It’s actually something scientists have measured.

So there was this other Princeton neuroscientist named Uri Hasson. Also a genius. Also wore glasses. Coincidence? I think not.

Hasson and his team hooked people up to fMRI scanners to observe their brain activity during real-world interactions. And what they found was that when two people are genuinely present together, their brain activity syncs up.

I don’t just mean “vibes”, but actual brain activity: same patterns, same rhythms, same wavelength.

They called it “neural synchrony”.

And the more neurally sync (neural synchronously?) two people are, the more they understand and connect. But here’s the key point: it wasn’t just good verbal communication that made people “sync” up. That’s obvious.

It was also shared eye contact, physical presence, and even paying attention to the same things, like a movie or story (read more).

So the common thread isn’t words vs. no words.

It’s attention.

Presence.

Whether you’re fully with the other person or somewhere else in your head.

So that “energy field” I felt at the retreat while staring into the eyes of a stranger who could’ve been my grandpa was probably just our brains finding the same frequency.

As for what kills neural synchrony?

• Planning your response while they’re talking

• Being in your head instead of with them

• Compulsive chatter

• Filling space with noise

Remind you of something?

OK, so let me zoom out for a second.

Because this isn’t just about one meditation retreat or one chatty friend. It’s that we’ve lost our ability to just... be. To be in the presence of others without filling every gap.

Think about it.

When’s the last time you sat with someone—a friend, a partner, a family member—in complete silence? Not awkward or post-argument silence.

Just... being together.

For most people, that probably sounds unbearable. Or weird. Or both.

But it’s just our social conditioning that makes us think silence is the enemy. And we can break free from that conditioning if we really want to.

Meditation can help.

Cause meditation is not just about stress management. It can train the Receiver to balance out the Grabber.

1. You sit.

2. Thoughts arise.

3. The Grabber wants to chase them—label them, analyze them, turn them into a story.

4. You notice this.

5. You let go.

6. You return to just sitting.

7. Over and over.

8. Thousands of times until you can sit still and tap into presence, until you tap into The Receiver.

What you’re training is the capacity to not narrate. To let experience be, without compressing it into words.

And when you can do that alone, you can do it with another person. That’s when the sync happens.

Okay, enough preaching meditation!

So what do we do with all this? What’s the conclusion, 4,000 words later?

I’m not saying “stop talking.” That would be insane. And hypocritical—I literally just wrote 4,000 words about this! The irony is not lost on me.

Sometimes, the right words at the right moment create more connection than silence ever could. Communication is essential, and we should all strive to improve at it.

Here’s the actual thesis: the problem isn’t language itself—it’s compulsive language. Language as filler, as something that replaces presence instead of emerging from it.

Someone call up the philosophy department… I want an interview!

So maybe a few suggestions for me and everyone else:

1. Notice when you’re filling space vs. actually communicating. There’s a difference between speaking because you have something to say and speaking cause silence is uncomfortable.

2. Let pauses breathe. Next time there’s a gap in conversation, resist the urge to fill it. Sometimes the most interesting things emerge from silence.

3. Try the eye contact thing. I know it sounds weird. But find someone you trust and just look at each other’s eyes for a minute or two. See what happens. (Maybe don’t lead with “I read this article about neural synchrony, and I want to try something...”)

4. When someone else is talking, actually listen. Not ‘quiet your mouth while your brain prepares a response’ listening. Actually receive what they’re saying.

Look, I don’t have this figured out. That’s already obvious to you?

F*ck.

I still talk too much. I still fill silences. I still catch myself narrating moments instead of living them. My mind sometimes feels like an old warehouse radio station someone forgot to turn off.

But I know there’s another way.

I’ve felt this territory too much to forget it exists.

And sometimes—in a pause, in a glance, in a silence that neither person fills—I find myself back there for a second. Two brains, same frequency.

Maybe that’s enough. Maybe the practice is just noticing, catching yourself, and returning. The Grabber will always be there. It’s useful, and we need it. But The Receiver is there too, waiting for us to tap into it.

We just have to shut up long enough to notice.

*Thank you for reading! I hope you learned something, or at least smirked once or twice. If you laughed at least once or liked the cartoons, please subscribe.

I’d love to hear your feedback. No… your criticism. (Actually). This is what helps me become a better writer. Feel free to email me at noahdovedelman@gmail.com with your thoughts! Okay byeeeee.*

Well, it was technically the first chance I would ever have, too. Four years of college had gone by, and I’d never been able to summon the courage to see if I had what it took to join the greats.

I’m talking about Northwestern A Cappella, of course.

Where teams have their own Wikipedia pages and formed the basis for the Pitch Perfect movies (yes, really). This is not a casual hobby… it’s a religion with harmonies.

So, thinking I had a chance to make a team with zero singing experience (sans my Bar Mitzvah + shower time), zero voice lessons, and zero “ins” could hardly be described as anything less than delusional. And yet, some combination of lifelong Jewish motherly praise for my voice and a refusal to graduate with regrets willed me to the audition on a rainy Evanston afternoon.

I’ll spare you (& myself) the details of what went down in that audition room. If you want my audition recording, please email my assistant. (I do not have an assistant.)

To sum it up, I learned what a vocal range test was on the spot, and my voice cracked twice during my all-too-brief rendition of “Too Sweet” by Hozier.

I didn’t make the team.

Of course, I didn’t expect to, and so I felt totally satisfied by putting myself out there in a wildly uncomfortable way. This was part of an emerging ethos: a try-everything, always-say-yes mentality formed from listening to too many podcasts. It was also driven by a real regret as I finished college: that I hadn’t tried enough things. That I didn’t try more performing arts, more IM sports, more quirky clubs, more everything.

My excuse is probably a valid one: I spent the better part of my college years building a company called The Neuron, a media startup in the AI space. It was exhilarating, rewarding, and utterly exhausting. Not due to the actual hours worked, but because I was thinking about The Neuron all day long (& in my dreams, too). Obsessing over small details, brainstorming growth outlets, and quietly praying the ground wouldn’t collapse underneath us.

Through a combination of luck, grit, and timing, we became a real player: 500,000+ daily readers, a top podcast, and 7-figures in revenue by year two.

Then I sold it.

When we got acquired, the biggest emotion I felt was not happiness, pride, or exhilaration (those were all there), but relief. Not a bad relief—the kind where you go zip-lining and make it to the other side. A “holy shit, we actually did it, and now it’s over” kind of relief.

So I found myself in the strange and fortunate position of graduating from college and not needing to scramble for a job. The slate was wiped clean, and the world was my oyster (apologies to my kosher ancestors).

The question I started getting, quite literally days after the sale, was, “So, what’s next?” My first answer—sleep, read, enjoy life—was clearly a cop-out. I had no fcking idea what I wanted to do, and no fcking idea how I was going to figure it out.

I’d spent two and a half years doing one thing obsessively, and somewhere in all of that, I’d completely lost track of what I actually liked outside of it. What energized me. What I’d do on a random Tuesday if nobody was watching and nothing was at stake.

Because I tend to be impulsive, I was not going to jump into something new immediately. Instead, as I did with a cappella, I started trying things to see what I wanted life to look like.

A quick note before I continue: what I’m about to describe—a year of trying things with no real pressure to take a job or make money—is a pretty unusual and fortunate situation. I’m aware of that. I also worked hard to get here: writing a daily newsletter that took 3-4 hours each evening, on top of helping run the company and juggling a full course load. It was a trade, and I want to be honest about both sides, because everything that follows only makes sense with that context.

First side quest: Asia.

Asia was two trips disguised as one.

The first half was exactly what it sounds like: backpacking around Southeast Asia with four friends, eating everything, sleeping nowhere good, doing absolutely nothing of consequence. The kind of trip where the biggest decision you make is whether to get pad thai or fried rice.

(Both. Always both.)

It was incredibly fun, and it was the first time in probably four years that I really let myself decompress. No commitments, no timelines, no schedules. Just a full surrender to however things unfolded.

Which sounds nice, and it was. But it was also weirdly hard at times. When you’ve spent two and a half years with your brain locked onto one thing, “just relax” doesn’t come naturally. There’s this low hum in the background: shouldn’t I be doing something? Shouldn’t I be working toward something? What am I going back to? Learning to let it hum without acting on it was its own kind of challenge.

Still incredibly fun though, that’s for sure.

The second half was different.

After a week and a half in Japan with a different friend, I spent two weeks in Nepal at a Buddhist monastery in Kathmandu. Now, this wasn’t some eat-pray-love revelation or a tech-bro-discovers-meditation cliché.

I’d sat in monasteries before and was coming in with close to ten years of a near-daily meditation practice across both Tibetan and more secular practices. But this was the first time I’d fully committed to something like this. Two weeks, mostly silence, completely offline.

The day before the retreat started, they ran us through the rules. No substances. No sex. No being loud. Should be easy, I thought… they just described the first eighteen years of my life!

I’ll save the actual content of the retreat for another time, but the experience was revealing in ways I didn’t expect. There were things I loved. I felt a genuine spiritual connection. The small group discussions where we’d dig into Buddhism, philosophy, and meditation practice lit me up. I felt more energized in those conversations than I had in months.

But I also noticed what didn’t fit.

The strict formality of everything. The rigidity of the tradition. The fact that I lost about seven pounds in two weeks because there was essentially no protein in the all-vegetarian food. I never imagined the sight of tofu in a kitchen would make me so happy.

It was a weird mix of feeling deeply nourished in one way and slowly deteriorating in another.

Part of me had also gone in with a quiet hope that maybe this would give me answers. Two weeks of near-silence and deep meditation. Surely something would click, right? Some clear vision of what to do next?

Spoiler alert: it didn’t.

But something subtler happened. My meditation practice had already been doing this in the year before the retreat, but the extended silence accelerated it. I started seeing through some of my own conditioning. When I’d sit with the question “what do I want to do next?”, the answers that came up first were always the conventional ones:

Start another media company. Join a VC fund in AI. Go to graduate school to study psych.

Not that any of those are wrong, necessarily, but I started noticing that most of them weren’t really mine.

They were rooted in what other people might expect from me, what looked impressive, what made for a clean narrative, what a 23-year-old who just sold a startup is “supposed” to do next. None of them were coming from some natural, internal pull.

They were echoes of conditioning dressed up as ambition.

And so, neither the backpacking nor the monastery gave me an answer. But they gave me something more useful: space to question. Enough quiet to start hearing which thoughts were mine and which ones I’d inherited.

Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”

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I returned to the US with 0/2 of the pairs of shoes I had left with, a buzz cut (sorry Mom), and still absolutely no fcking idea what I wanted to do next.

When people asked me “what’s next?”, my answer mostly became “IDK” to move the conversation along.

I wasn’t as clueless as I was letting on, though. With an imminent move to Chicago, my plan was to actually go find the things that lit me up. All the things I didn’t have the time or energy to try in college. Not some intellectual exercise about what I “thought” I should do, or what others expected of me, but the stuff I’d do for free, for fun, and forever.

This wasn’t the first time I’d done something like this, either. Before college, I took a gap year. Left my environment, my friend group, everything familiar. It was one of the most formative experiences of my life. Something about being pulled out of your normal context forces you to figure out who you actually are, or who you actually are not.

So I had evidence that wiping the slate clean works. It worked at 18. I was betting it would work at 23.

I landed in Chicago in September and looked at my calendar. Completely empty, save for a visit to the Chicago DMV to get a new ID (don’t recommend).

Some people in my life have told me a totally open schedule would stress them out. No structure, no obligations, no idea what you’re doing from the moment you wake up. But for me, at least in the beginning, it felt like a blank canvas.

The plan, if you could call it one, was simple: try a lot of things. Pay attention to how they make me feel. And resist the urge to think my way to an answer when I could just go do things and see what happened.

So I did.

Over the next six months I tried stand-up comedy, taught meditation, started a men’s group, took salsa and line dancing classes, traveled to Panama, Argentina, and around the U.S., went on meditation and breathwork retreats, did a few mini consulting projects, made some angel investments, taught a pickleball series, attempted to vibe code, spent entire days just reading, tried waking up at the crack of dawn and also staying out until 3 AM, jumped in Lake Michigan for no reason, co-worked downtown, and visited more coffee shops than any human reasonably should.

Some of it was great. Some of it was terrible. Almost all of it taught me something.

One of my first weeks in the city, I noticed I lived right next to Second City and saw an ad: “DO IT FOR THE BIT. TAKE A CLASS TODAY!”

Since I’m always down for the bit, I signed up for a seven-week stand-up comedy course.

Every week, I built a new five-minute set from scratch. My favorite routine was poking fun at the bathroom situation on airplanes (uhhh, how do you lock the door with no light?).

And this routine… absolutely bombed.

But I loved the creative process. Finding connections, observational humor, and figuring out whether something was actually funny or just funny to me. I’m a big Curb Your Enthusiasm fan, and this scratched a similar itch.

Crafting something from nothing that makes people laugh is a very specific kind of high.

When I was honest with myself, though, I didn’t feel excited walking into the classes each week. I loved comedy. I loved watching it. I wasn’t sure I loved the solo grind of writing it. And I probably didn’t have the raw talent to take it much further.

Stand-up taught me something about what I liked. Travel taught me something about how I wanted to live.

Even after settling in Chicago in September, I was still very much a nomad. I went to Panama, Argentina, San Francisco, Austin, and NYC a few times.

It was fun. But I started noticing something toward the end of every trip: I was ready to come home. Which told me something simple but useful. I like having a home base. My own space to return to. The nomadic life is great in doses, not as a default.

The more interesting part of travel was the perspective shifts. In Panama, I spent a few days solo in Panama City before heading to a surf town called Playa Venao.

What struck me was how people at hostels answer the question “What are you up to in life?” There’s no nervous energy. No over-explaining. Just: “I don’t know, I’m traveling, I’m enjoying life.” That’s it.

It’s a perspective you don’t really encounter in the US, where “what do you do?” is basically code for “what are you worth?”

Another experiment was less glamorous but maybe more revealing: I just read. Like, a lot.

Some days I’d spend the whole day with books and podcasts about meditation, philosophy, AI, consciousness, and startups. Whatever I was drawn to. No agenda.

This sounds luxurious, and it was. But it was also confusing in a way I didn’t expect. Giving myself permission to just sit, think, and learn without producing anything felt almost wrong. Like I was cheating at life. There’s this voice that says you should be building something, going somewhere, earning something. And spending a Thursday afternoon reading Walter Isaacson's biographies in your apartment doesn’t check any of those boxes.

I also kept catching myself doing the thing I was trying not to do: thinking my way through it. I’d finish an experiment and immediately start analyzing whether it could be a career instead of just noticing whether I enjoyed it. I had to keep reminding myself: just pay attention to how it feels.

That’s it.

Stop turning everything into a spreadsheet.

And while this lifestyle is luxurious on the surface, it didn’t always feel that way in my head. There were mornings when I’d wake up and the openness that once felt like a blank canvas now felt like a void. I’d lie there, and the thoughts would spiral.

I’m 23. I’m not working. I don’t have a project. I don’t even have a real answer when someone asks what I do.

Some days, it was a quiet unease. Other days, it was a full-on existential panic.

I remember one night in particular. I was walking home from the movie theatre alone when a wave of unworthiness washed over me. My body felt heavy, my chest felt tight, and my mind felt lost. I remember thinking, very clearly: I am wasting my time on this Earth. I am wasting the best years of my life. I walked home fast, got into bed, and just laid there.

That’s the part nobody talks about when they romanticize “taking time to find yourself.” Some nights you’re not finding anything. You’re just completely, totally lost.

My meditation practice helped, actually.

Being able to sit with the panic instead of immediately reacting to it, to watch the thoughts spin without believing every one of them (like I did in Nepal). But even with a decade of practice, some days just sucked. Days where no amount of mindfulness made “I have no idea what I’m doing with my life” feel okay.

And sometimes, I’d catch it.

I’d ask myself: whose timeline am I comparing myself to? Whose definition of productive? Why does “not working at 23” feel like failure? Most of the time, when I actually sat with those feelings, they’d start to dissolve. They weren’t insights; they were just old conditioning. Stories I’d absorbed about what a life is supposed to look like at this age.

Right around the same time as my periodic existential meltdowns, I found energy in a place I didn’t expect: teaching and community.

I started leading free meditation classes around Chicago. I also started a men’s group where I’d facilitate conversations about the kind of stuff most guys never talk about. Vulnerability, masculinity, purpose. The things that actually matter but feel too uncomfortable to bring up over beers.

The energy I felt (and continue to feel) leading up to those sessions was unavoidable: I was genuinely, almost childishly excited. In one men’s group session, I led an inner child meditation. We visualized ourselves as kids who needed support or wisdom, and then practiced radiating compassion to that child.

People loved it, and I remember feeling an overwhelming sense of love, meaning, and peace afterwards. Not in some abstract spiritual way, but physically in my chest, in my hands, in my whole body.

I felt whole.

And that told me something that no amount of reading, thinking, or podcast listening ever could. This is what it feels like when you’re doing the thing you’re supposed to be doing. When the work isn’t work. When you’d do it for free, for fun, and forever.

Not everything was so illuminating…

Over the last few months, I did a few advisory stints and mini internships with startups. Growth strategy, content advising, and the types of things I was good at from building The Neuron. I realized pretty quickly that I didn’t love it. Unless I cared about the thing immensely, doing ops work for someone else’s vision just didn’t move me. I also just really didn’t enjoy working for other people.

I’m basically unhireable, which sounds like a problem but was actually one of the clearest signals I got all year.

I made a few angel investments, too. Fun to be on the other side of the table. But it confirmed what I suspected: watching from the sidelines isn’t the same as building. Whatever comes next has to be my project.

So, where does all of this leave me?

I don’t have a startup, a job title, or a clean answer to “what’s next?” I still sometimes don’t know what I’m doing next month, tomorrow, or an hour from now.

But I have far more clarity about what actually lights me up: teaching, learning, writing, building something of my own, community, and stepping outside my comfort zone (as long as it doesn’t involve singing or dancing).

I also have a gut check for any potential commitments going forward. Does this give me energy or drain it? Would I do this for free? Do I think about it before I fall asleep? Do I feel like myself doing it?

One thing that keeps passing that test is writing. Funnily enough, writing is where my “career” began nearly eight years ago, when I published my first article online. It’s where thinking, learning, teaching, and creativity all meet for me. The kind of thing I’d do for fun, for free, and forever. What you’re reading right now is the result of a year of experiments.

It’s also an experiment in itself. I’m playing with different formats, styles, and topics to figure out what I actually enjoy writing about.

And with this criterion, I’m starting to think more seriously about the next business I want to build. Probably something in the mental wellness space, blending my interest in spirituality, teaching, and entrepreneurship.

I know I’ve been lucky.

I’m not saying that in some preachy way, but to ground everything I just wrote. The acquisition of The Neuron gave me a forcing function to really try to understand myself and my place in the world. When something lit me up, the signal was clean. When it didn’t, there was nowhere to hide.

But I think the broader point holds: we jump into things way too quickly. Careers, commitments, identities. The pressure to just pick something, especially in your twenties, is enormous. From family, friends, society, and yourself. I’m not immune to it. But I’m trying to resist it a little longer.

Because there’s something to be said for wiping the slate clean. Stripping away the expectations, the conditioning, the “shoulds,” and building back up by being honest about what you love. Even if you can’t take a full year to do it, even in smaller ways: before you commit years of your life to something, spend some real time figuring out if you actually want it.

Not what you think you should want.

What you actually want.

I still don’t know what’s next. But I know what I love. And it turns out that’s most of the answer.

P.S. Thanks so much for reading. If you liked this, definitely subscribe as I’ll be writing more pieces like it. I’d love to hear what you loved, what you hated, or what stuck with you after reading.

And if you disagreed with any of it, tell me. I mean that. The honest reactions are way more useful than the nice ones. That’s how the writing gets better :)

a monastery and a nightclub in Kathmandu

I checked my watch.

3:47 a.m.

I stumbled out of the bathroom into an avalanche of cigarette smoke and flashing lights. The music was deafening, but I could still feel my heart thumping in my chest.

That may have been the three vodka Red Bulls I'd smashed an hour earlier, or maybe it was the girl I was dancing with. I think her name was Sofia. Or maybe Lucia. 

It doesn't matter.

For a second, I forgot where I was. Then I remembered—Lord of the Drinks. Yep, you read that right. The "44th best club in the world," apparently, smack in the middle of Kathmandu.

A lot more happened that night. Some I remember, most I don't. What I do remember, I won't share here, because it's 7am, you're scrolling LinkedIn, and you haven't even finished your coffee.

You might be surprised to hear that a day earlier, five kilometers away, I was somewhere where drinking wasn't even allowed. Neither were music, phones, electronics, drugs—no stimulation of any kind.

Not prison, don't worry.

A beautiful Tibetan monastery in the foothills of Kathmandu. And that day—the tenth day of my meditation retreat—was just as intense as the night out, in its own weird way. Seven to eight hours of sitting meditation. Complete silence. Zero eye contact. 6 a.m. wake-up time, not bedtime.

These two experiences may sound contradictory. No—they definitely sound contradictory. 

Degeneracy versus equanimity. Fun versus boredom. Stimulation versus abstinence.

But I don't think they're contradictory at all. They're not opposites—they're just different parts of being alive.

And somehow, both felt completely right.

For those who know me well, this won't come as a surprise.

I've never been good at being just one type of person.

I love having a deeply serious, philosophical conversation, then joking about the same topic a minute later. I love that some days I want to take over the world and other days I want to fuck off to the woods and read all day. I love being viciously competitive in games and then soft and tender when they're over (only if I've won, of course). I love being super healthy for two weeks—my usual mode—then spending a night absolutely bodyslamming an entire bakery.

And I love growing my hair out for six months, then getting a buzz cut on a whim.

I love feeling the different parts of myself, no matter how extreme. 

Apparently, I like doing it with my career, too.

In January, I sold my company, The Neuron—a media company that taught people about AI. I spent a little over two years grinding every day, consistent and disciplined to a boring degree. I wrote hundreds of articles for millions of people, helped launch a top podcast and courses, and spent way too much time in Northwestern's most boring libraries. Every free second went to The Neuron.

It was intense, and I loved it.

After we got acquired, I flipped the switch from 100 to 0 almost overnight.

A lot of people expected me to jump into the next thing right away. Because I'm stubborn, I put my computer away and did the exact opposite. So lately it's been travel, not knowing what I'm doing next week, sometimes not even an hour from now. Reading. Traveling. Meditating. Trying comedy, calligraphy, ancient breathwork techniques, and sketchy internet-sleuthed health supplements I found on Reddit.

I love this, too.

Which brings me here: what is it about me that enjoys living in extremes? Am I just an adrenaline junkie who gets bored easily? Non-committal? Just curious about dipping my toes into the full range of human experience?

Three green smoothies, two garlic naans, and one good night’s sleep later, I landed on this: I don't want to be just one thing. I want to embrace each part of myself and each part of life as fully as possible. 

Or maybe I’m just rationalizing a hangover with Buddhist philosophy. 

Who knows.

Most of us hold onto our identities like they're the only truth.

And I get why—it's easier. Cleaner. You're either healthy or unhealthy. Disciplined or lazy. Thin crust or deep dish (IYKYK). 

Pick a side, defend it, reject the other.

I think it starts with how we see ourselves. We put ourselves in a box first—"I'm the type of person who wakes up early"—then we look at everyone else through that lens: "anyone who doesn't wake up early is lazy."

Once we've locked into these identities, we cling to them.

Why? 

Three reasons, I think.

First, evolution. Our ancestors who had a clear sense of self—"I'm the hunter," "I'm the protector"—survived better than those who stood around having identity crises while the tiger charged.

Second, a strong sense of self helps us move through the world. It's like an operating system—tells us what to do, what to care about, who we are. Without it, we'd be paralyzed by choice at every turn.

Third, we need to look consistent. Humans hate saying one thing and doing another, especially publicly. If you tell everyone "I don't drink," you're way more likely to actually not drink. You've put it out there, and your ego won't let you break it.

We all cling to identities.

At Kopan Monastery, our lead monk—a genuinely kind, funny, wise dude—took a swing at the modern world one afternoon and said, "You won't ever find happiness in a night club."

Okay.

Maybe usually true.

But the broad stroke misses why the night out matters for some people: friends, music, release, belonging. On the flip side, I've got "friends" back home—the go-out kind you only ever see on Friday nights—who laughed when I said I was studying Buddhist meditation in Nepal.

Eye roll, sip of vodka soda.

Same move, different costume. Both locked into their identity so tight they can't see past it.

For most of my life, I've held onto my identities like they were the only truth. Which meant I judged everyone who didn't fit how I thought the world should work.

• That person who prefers small talk over deep questions? Not philosophically deep.

• That person who meditates two hours a day? Hiding from real life.

• That person who smokes every weeknight? Frying their brain (and making my DoorDash order take an extra 10 minutes!).

The tighter I held my identity, the more everyone else was wrong. And the more everyone else was wrong, the less I actually got them.

The problem with holding onto identity so tightly isn't just that it's judgmental.

That's obvious.

It's that anything outside your box becomes suspicious, so you never test the edges that might actually teach you something. You lock into "my kind of person," and life gets smaller than certain anatomical features in a cold plunge.

About eight months ago, I was talking with my therapist about identity. 

My therapy sessions usually went like this: I'd come in with some random minor issue in my life, like a girl I kinda sorta liked, and by minute 20, we'd be deep in philosophical territory.

Sorry Carla!

I told my therapist I felt stuck in a little identity crisis—this sense that I'm "this kind of person," so doing that thing would be off-brand.

What he told me next really changed how I see things.

He said: identity is transient.

It's a tool, not a truth. Identity is just a label we slap on a stream of thoughts. "I hate seat-recliners on planes" becomes "I'm the kind of person who never reclines unless the person in front of me is reclined." And now your lower back hurts for three hours because your label said so!

When you actually look for this identity, where is it?

In Buddhism, they call this anatta—non-self. The idea isn't that you don't exist. It's that the "self", the little “you” that you think is so solid and permanent is more like a river than a rock. 

It’s constantly moving, constantly changing, even if it looks the same from the outside.

Think about it. 

The person you were at 15—the music you liked, the things you cared about, the opinions you'd die defending—how much of that is still "you"? That person felt just as real and solid as you do right now. And in ten years, you'll probably cringe at some of the stuff you're doing today.

So where's the fixed self in all that?

There isn't one. Identity is just a story we keep telling ourselves, updated constantly but narrated like it's always been the same book.

So my therapist said: your identity isn't real in the way you think it is. You can just let it drop. You can be anyone you want, at any time, without holding onto some idea of who you think you are.

Alan Watts put it like this: "You are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago."

And here's another wise philosopher: "Every moment we're changing. Every moment we're a new person."

JK. I said that.

But it's true, right?!

This isn't some abstract philosophy thing. It's actually pretty practical.

Because if your identity isn't as fixed as you think it is, you don't have to defend it so hard. You don't have to reject experiences that don't fit the story. You can be the person who meditates AND the person who stays out until 4 a.m. You can be intensely ambitious and completely directionless. You can contain contradictions without exploding.

It's like watching a movie of your own life. You see yourself at 15, obsessed with whatever you were obsessed with, totally convinced that was the real you. Then 18, different obsessions, different personality, equally convinced. Then 22. Then now. Each version felt permanent at the time. None of them were.

AMC, probably

When you watch it like that—from a little distance—you start to notice: oh, I'm not any of those versions. I'm the one watching them change.

You still feel each scene fully. You still experience being disciplined or lazy, serious or silly, monk or party-goer. But there's a part of you that knows you're not permanently any of those things. They're roles you're playing, scenes you're in. And when the scene changes, you don't freak out about being inconsistent—you just recognize it's a different scene.

And you might be thinking, wait, Noah, isn't this just confusion posing as philosophy? The risk of dissociation, of not knowing who you are at all, of using impermanence as an excuse to run away from yourself. Maybe you're not becoming who you are. Perhaps you're just scattered.

Fair. 

But here’s why I think there’s a difference.  

Ken Wilber, a great American theorist, has this idea he calls "transcend and include." It's about how we grow as people. Each new stage of growth doesn't erase what came before—it builds on the previous stage while keeping the good parts.

You can't skip stages, and the later stages actually need the earlier ones to be there.

Think of it like learning a new language. 

You don't forget your first language when you learn a second one. You transcend the limitation of only speaking one language, but you include what you already knew. You're not less fluent in English because you "learned" Spanish (i.e., you got a 2 on AP Español).

You're just... more.

That's what I'm trying to do with different parts of myself. I'm not rejecting the disciplined, grinding version when I take months off. I'm not rejecting the free-flowing version when I buckle down to work. 

I'm trying to include both.

They're both part of the larger whole.

There's this moment in Everything Everywhere All at Once (overrated movie, btw) where Evelyn sees all her possible lives at once—the movie star, the chef, the laundromat owner, the kung fu master. The point isn't that one of those is the "real" Evelyn.

They all are. 

She's not rejecting one life for another. She's holding ALL of them.

That's what I'm trying to do. I'm not rejecting one life for another and then switching back. I'm including both. It's not either/or. It's both/and. 

It's about maintaining balance and evenness of mind regardless of what you're experiencing. There’s this phrase I like in Buddhism called Upekkhā. It means equanimity. You can be out at a bar or at the monastery, working intensely or doing nothing, and the equanimity is what stays steady underneath. Not the experiences themselves, but how you relate to them.

The swing of life is fine. 

It's the clinging that messes with you.

I keep coming back to this idea that embracing different parts of ourselves can help us understand other people better. Not because you have to do the night out → retreat whiplash thing, but because being open to different ways of living gives you a wider map of how people actually move through the world.

As great as the retreat in Nepal was, there was something off about monks who meditate all day and then teach classes to 50 Westerners who live much more conventional lives.

At times, it felt like they didn't fully get the life we were coming from.

We had this teacher at the monastery. A super kind, funny guy from India. One afternoon, he was talking about the modern world and how it's creating suffering in our minds. His English wasn't great; it wasn't his native tongue. He said, "You know, uh, I think the internet is maybe not so good."

Like, okay, monk, no TikTok for you today. Only Dharma. Go study!

Sure, there are problems with being online all the time. But just having the broad thought of "the internet is bad" felt incomplete. He'd never felt what it's like to have the whole world in your pocket from the time you were twelve and actually try to resist looking at it.

So his advice—"internet = bad"—was partly true but completely useless.

To be clear, Buddhism is great at building empathy. That's one of the things I learned most at the retreat. When we meditated on compassion, death, and suffering, visualizing other people's pain—that was really helpful.

But I also think what helps with empathizing is letting yourself experience the full range of being human—not just the parts that fit your identity.

Actually feeling what it's like to be offline for a day and then to scroll TikTok deep into the night. Sitting in silent meditation and going to all-night ragers. Eating $75 omakase dinners in Japan and staying at $5 hostels with questionable hygiene standards in Nepal.

I think we need to "embrace the different parts of life" more than ever. Because our culture feels weirdly close-minded about people who live different realities from us—and the internet, which was supposed to connect us, mostly just shows us more people to judge.

Look at our generational divides.

Boomers look at GenZ spending six hours a day on TikTok and talking to AI chatbots and see entitled kids who can't touch grass. My generation looks at Boomers and can't understand why they stayed at the same company for 30 years waiting for a gold watch.

It's not just generational.

Tech people judge humanities majors. Humanities majors judge tech people. Sober people judge partiers. Partiers judge sober people. The monk judges the internet. The guy refreshing X judges the monk for not understanding "the intellectual town square."

I think if we can actually experience different parts of being human—even for a week—we can meet people where they are instead of where we think they should be. You know what the phone addiction feels like, so you can offer something better than "just stop." You know what the silence does, so you can explain it to someone who thinks meditation is boring hippie shit.

Maybe there's nothing here. But maybe there's something.

And you might be reading this like: "Okay, Noah, we get it, enough with the philosophical preaching. How practical is any of this for someone who didn't just sell a company and can't do whatever the fuck they want?"

Fair.

In a way, I'm the monk on the hill yelling about city life. I'm not living your Tuesday with daycare, a boss, and a 6 a.m. commute. This mindset can be unstable and out of reach for some people. Some people thrive with strong identities. I'm working out what works for me, not telling you what should work for you.

But I do think there's something here that applies to any life.

Noticing the different parts of yourself—how they come and go, how they show up—and holding that instead of rejecting it. Not just rejecting the way other people live. Sometimes trying it to see what you learn.

You don't need to quit your job and backpack through Asia like a middle-aged tech bro who found “God” during an ayahuasca retreat. Maybe it's just trying the meditation app even though you're "not a meditation person." Or going to the event even though you're "too serious for that." Or letting yourself sleep in on Saturday without the guilt trip.

The point isn't to live in chaos. The point is to hold your identity lightly enough that you can move when life asks you to move.

I'm working on this now in my own life.

Saying yes to things that don't fit my usual identity. Catching myself mid-judgment and asking: okay, but why does this person actually do that? What does their world look like?

I'm not the Buddha on the hilltop. I don't think the Buddha binge-played Catan for three hours last night before binge-watching The Sopranos.

But we all have to start somewhere.

me, at some point in the future

One afternoon at the monastery, I was sitting in the cafe when a nun came up to me. We started talking about her life in the nunnery. She told me she was about to go into a two-month retreat where she'd have to stay inside the whole time—no going outside, total seclusion. A serious, intense retreat.

When she was leaving, I joked, "Hey, no going outside!" and waved my finger at her.

She laughed.

It was a great moment.

Here was someone about to enter one of the most disciplined, serious practices you can imagine, and she could still laugh about it. She wasn't holding her identity as a nun so close that she couldn't joke around. It wasn't that serious. Or maybe it was that serious, and that's exactly why she could be light about it.

This stayed with me.

I'm writing this from a coffee shop in Chicago now. A few months removed from the monastery, a few months into whatever comes next. I'm still figuring this out. I still don't know what the heck I'm doing next hour, much less next week.

Maybe I'll buckle down and start building something new. Maybe I'll keep wandering. Maybe both. I don't know if I'm choosing different parts of myself or if they're choosing me. But I'd rather keep exploring than spend my life defending one costume.

The point isn't that everyone should quit their jobs and ping-pong between extremes. The point is that we're allowed to change. We're allowed to be different tomorrow than we are today. We're allowed to be serious and silly, disciplined and spontaneous, spiritual and worldly.

You don't owe anyone a consistent character. You just owe yourself an honest life.

And maybe that's all this is—permission to stop being so rigid about who you are.

Permission to use your identity as a tool, not a truth.

*A QUICK NOTE FROM NOAH*

Hey, thanks for reading. I'm probably wrong about at least half of this. One thing I've learned over the past year is that most of my strong opinions have a shelf life of about six months before I cringe at them.

But I love writing this stuff, and I want to do more of it.

So hit reply and tell me what you thought. Where I'm right, where I'm full of shit, what the monkey illustrations did for you (or didn't). All of it's fair game.

Thanks.

Check out my website

plus field notes from Panama

playa venao /// panama

"Yeah mate, I saved up $100,000 from working and traveled all around South and Central America for twelve months. Got robbed in Chile and lost $10,000. But now I'm back."

Wow, I thought.

Not wow that he got robbed. He seemed like the type to get robbed. Wow that he was willing to drop his entire bank account on a year-long backpacking trip with no second-guessing.

I wondered if I should do something like that.

Nah, I'd probably get bored.

I shouldn't have been surprised though—that summed up most of the people I met that night. It was day two in Panama City, and I'd promised myself I'd say yes to everything. 

panama vs. panama in panama

So after watching a local soccer match (literally Panama vs Panama) with three people from my hostel, I had no choice but to say yes when they invited me out with 20 other geezers from the hostel.

Most of the people there were like the Australian guy who got robbed.

When I asked why they were traveling in Panama, they almost looked confused.

Their answer: just cause.

That was it. No justification for traveling, for Panama, for any of it. And as someone who'd just spent two days explaining (and internally justifying) to friends why the hell I was going to Panama for a week in the middle of October, I felt something crack in my psyche.

Then I realized I was still deep in beer-to-beer convo with the Aussie.

"By the way, do you want to do coke?"

"What?"

"Coke. Do you want some?"

"Uhhh, I think I'm good for now. Thanks though."

That was where my YES MAN night ended. Probably for the best. Mama always said don't take drugs from strangers!

The week after I got back from Panama, I was browsing YouTube and came across this video:

The video is 8 minutes of monotonous, quiet, exhausting footage of a Japanese salaryman taking the train to work. That's it. No talking, no smiling, no interaction. 

"Every morning, millions of people move in perfect synchronization like blood flowing through the veins of the city. Shinagawa station becomes a living organism, endless streams of suits and heels merging, splitting, flowing again. No words, no emotions, just motion. Everyone knows where to go, but no one knows why."

Jeeeeez, well that's a debbie downer!

The last sentence really got me thinking: "Everyone knows where to go, but no one knows why."

No one knows why.

Ever heard the Mexican Fisherman parable? 

This is my Shakespeare, my Bible, if you will.

Short version: An American investment banker meets a Mexican fisherman and tells him he should catch more fish, scale up, build a company, eventually IPO his... fishing business, if that's even a thing. When the fisherman asks why, the banker says, "So you can retire and spend your days fishing, playing guitar with your amigos."

The irony is that the fisherman's already doing all of those things. He skipped straight to the end.

also playa venao

I’ve always tried to think this way .

In high school, I worked as a tennis coach during COVID and realized my stubbornness extended beyond sibling bickering: I hated working for other people. 

So I worked backwards. Who had the type of life I wanted, and how did they get there? Once I figured out the means, I had a crystal-clear playbook. I started a company, got lucky, and got my freedom.

But in Panama, something changed in my thinking. 

I met a handful people who weren’t asking "what's the end?" in the first place. And they seemed... fine. Better than fine, actually.

Back to Panama.

panama city /// panama

I'd had enough of random Aussie dudes offering me coke... time for something new. That night, I went back to my hotel early (i.e., 1 AM) and slept like shit. Could've been the three beers I chugged to fit in, or the pillow that felt like it was stuffed with straws.

Either way, next morning I dragged myself to the Panama Canal, saw some boats, then headed back to meet my cousin Ian for our 5-hour drive down to Playa Venao—a tiny surf town known for checks notes absolutely nothing.

The drive to Venao was five hours through mountains and abandoned ghosttowns. We drove through towns with one gas station and no people, hitchhikers running onto the highway, and hand-painted signs for hole-in-the-wall tacquerias. 

While Ian drove, I started thinking about what I wanted from this trip. What was the goal? What would success even look like?

Maybe the theme was building new skills, like surfing. No—I wouldn't get good at surfing in three days. Being uncomfortable? Stepping out of my comfort zone? Connecting with family? It could be all of those things, maybe. 

Means-to-an-end thinking, right?

playa venao

Next morning, after crushing some overpriced, mid avocado toast, I headed to the ocean for my first surf lesson with Itay. 

Itay was maybe 5'7", all muscle, sun-bleached hair down to his shoulders. He moved like someone who'd spent the last year either in the ocean or sleeping. When I word-vomited the only Hebrew I remembered from study abroad, he just nodded. 

Not impressed, not annoyed. 

Just... Israeli.

The next hour—no small talk, just surfing (if you can call it that). I thought I might catch a few waves like a cool surfer dude but spent most of the hour being pushed onto whitewater like a toddler afraid of getting splashed in the face. Every time a wave crushed me, I came up with sand in places I didn't know sand could reach.

Thankfully, no beautiful surfer girls were witnessing this complete embarrassment (they were all surfing the real waves).

I stood up on one wave. 

Well, "stood up" is generous. 

Itay was literally behind me, hands on my back, shoving me onto a wave that a five-year-old could've ridden. But I got vertical for maybe three seconds before eating shit, so let's call it a win.

Walking back to shore, I learned more about what Itay and his crew were up to. They were living here in Playa Venao for now. Days spent teaching surf lessons to noobs like me, playing cards, making music, working out, sipping beers.

I asked Itay what was next for him. He said, "I'm not sure."

Later, I was talking with my cousin, who caught infinitely more waves than me that morning. He joked, "Y'know cuz, you should just move down here and live with these guys. Do what they're doing."

He was theoretically right—I couldddd move down there for no reason other than to do it—but it felt impossible. 

I shot back: “C’mon we both know I’ve got empires to build back home.”

view from the lighthouse

Later that day, I met a second long-haired, Jesus-looking specimen also living temporarily (or permanently?) in Playa Venao.

I was walking around this surftown kibbutz and stumbled on the local wellness center—infrared saunas, 50°F cold plunges, mushroom-infused lattes.

I found my synagogue, I thought.

Then, straight out of a movie, a guy shouted down at me from the roof: "Hey man! Can I help ya?"

I look up. Well-built, handsome, 30-something dude wearing a t-shirt with Where's Waldo meditating, legs crossed.

#spirituality

Usually, I would've said "oh, I'm good, thanks" and avoided the whole thing, but curiosity pulled me in.

His name was Cashmere. 

We called him “Cash” for short.

I walked upstairs. Over tea, Cash explained that four years ago, he, his friend, and his friend's wife took a trip to Playa Venao for a few days, not unlike mine.

Within 48 hours, they all looked at each other and said, "We have to move here. Not someday—right now."

So they picked up their bags, left Los Angeles, left their conventional lives and careers, and moved to this tiny beachtown in pursuit of something deeper, more meaningful. Bought a small coffee shop shack and turned it into a full wellness center that, in their words, was built for community with no other end in mind.

Cash gave me a tour. 

The wellness center smelled like eucalyptus and something vaguely burnt—incense, maybe, or whatever happens when you brew mushrooms into coffee. Books scattered everywhere, cats running around, and a speaker in the corner played the kind of music you'd hear in a yoga studio that takes itself too seriously.

Cash also gave me a monologue. And his thoughts on breathwork-centered healing practices. And a brief—no, extended—history of his life leading up to this point. 

Guy could talk. 

The more he talked, the more I couldn't tell if this whole thing was wooey spiritual bypassing (he kept saying stuff like "I just want to expand 1% of the world's consciousness") or real, scientifically-backed healing practices, or something in between.

It didn't really matter.

Cash was down here, he hadn’t checked his phone once in forty-five minutes, and when he talked his hands moved like he was conducting something. 

Who was I to judge?

mushroom-infused latte, whatever that means!

But it wasn't just Itay or Cash living life their own way down here. There were families—lots of them—who'd also left conventional lives up there to build new ones down here.

They built schools around nature, surfing, and exploration. Not iPads, tests, or homework. They hung out together on the beach at night, dancing, cooking organic food, drinking beers, connecting. 

One night, I watched a group of about eight 8-year-olds practicing aerial skills while their parents watched from the sidelines. There was not a single iPhone in sight. The audio from this moment may have actually been more special than the visual: laughing, yelling, chatting, awe-ing. 

The kids played, the parents chatted, and I watched attentively, hoping no one thought I was a creep. 

Watching my own mind throughout this week, I saw a mix of admiration and judgment.

Actually, judgment and admiration. In that order.

I saw the families in Venao and my first thought was: they're running away. Maybe they abandoned family or friends to pick up and move here. Maybe they couldn't hack it back home—the traffic, the social media, the daycare waitlists, all the mundane bullshit the rest of American families just deal with. Part of me watched Itay walk back to shore and thought: this guy's pushing 30 and his biggest accomplishment today is keeping a tourist from drowning.

What an asshole thought, right? 

Then, once I got a hold of my ego, laughed at it, and told it to fuck off, admiration took over.

Something's happening in this tiny town in the middle of nowhere. I could feel it. These people weren't running away from anything—they were running toward something. Living according to their own ideals, in nature, with connection instead of notifications. How many people in your life can you say are truly living on their own terms, in harmony with something larger than themselves?

I could count mine on ten fingers.

The people in Panama realized something I sometimes miss—the end is often possible right now, today. Not in some distant future. And sometimes you don't need the means. The means become the end. 

The Mexican fisherman wanted to fish, play guitar, hang with his friends. The banker told him to spend 20 years building a business so he could eventually do... what he was already doing.

The families in Venao wanted to be present with their kids, cook together, escape the rat race… so they did.

The question I've always asked is: What's the end? What are the means to get there?

The people in Venao, I think, ask different questions: What do I want to be doing today, right now? How do I want to feel?

When I was in Panama, I kept asking myself: "What's the goal of this trip? What would success look like?"

Building new skills? Being uncomfortable? Connecting with family? 

But when I was actually sitting on the beach playing Monopoly Go with Ian (getting my ass handed to me), I wasn't thinking about goals. I was just there. Laughing, talking shit, watching the sunset.

And it was exactly what I wanted to be doing.

help settle a family debate: who’s taller???

Now, at this point, I've thoroughly confused myself philosophically.

Do I have goals or not? Am I building empires or playing cards on beaches? Should I travel again or stay in Chicago? 

And honestly, I start to get annoyed at this whole exercise. Like, what's the point of all this navel-gazing?

P.S. I used the word navel-gazing to sound smart. I have no clue what it means.

But here's where I land: the end can often be experienced today.

Seriously—ask yourself what future you're "doing today" for. Are you working hard now so you can make money, settle down, spend more time with your kids someday? Are you grinding through a job you hate so you can eventually do something you love?

To be clear, there's nothing wrong with that approach. I'm not judging it. What I'm proposing is simpler: look at the end and ask if it's possible, in some form, right now.

Can you spend more time with your kids today? This week? Can you pick up that hobby you've been meaning to try now instead of waiting for some mythical free decade that may never come?

Some ends will be out of reach—that's normal. But I think people's ends can often be achieved today, without the means. The Mexican fisherman was already fishing.

And if you do choose an end—some future thing you're working toward—hold it loosely.

I'm 23. 

My worldview has shifted more in the last three years than in the previous twenty combined. It would be arrogant to think I can accurately select an end right now—even if I could magically skip to it today. The person I am at 23 is picking goals for the person I'll be at 43. Those might be two very different people.

The real risk isn't that the journey sucks. It's that you grind for decades, finally arrive, and realize: this isn't it. You optimized for the wrong thing.

So have direction, but don't white-knuckle it. Find a path where the day-to-day feels worth it on its own—not just suffering you're tolerating to get somewhere else.

On my last day in Venao, Cash invited us to a breathwork session at the wellness center.

I showed up not knowing what to expect. 

Six of us lying on mats in a circle, blindfolded, shirts off. The room was hot—no AC, just a ceiling fan pushing warm air around. Some kind of psychedelic music played from a speaker in the corner, the kind with no lyrics and too many layers, like someone was trying to soundtrack an ayahuasca trip. Cash paced between us, talking loud over the music, guiding us through the breathing—fast, deep, primal.

By minute fifteen, my fingers started tingling. Then my lips went numb. My mouth got so dry I couldn't swallow. I started seeing things behind the blindfold—not quite visions, but shapes, colors, like my brain was throwing random images at the wall to see what stuck. I felt lightheaded in a way that was quite enjoyable, like I was slowly lifting off the mat.

After about 30 minutes, Cash told us to let out whatever sound wanted to come out. A primal scream, basically.

People started releasing. I screamed as loud as I possibly could for about 15 seconds. Other people wailed. Some made sounds I didn't even know were humanly possible.

And then someone from the corner screamed at the top of his lungs:

"I'M FREEEEE!"

It echoed through the room.

Whether or not that scream was spiritual bypassing (think toxic positivity to avoid emotional wounds), I'm still thinking about it.

Freedom isn't something you build toward. It's what happens when you're honest about what you actually want, and you just do it.

I'm not there yet. Some days I'm the fisherman, present and content. Other days I'm the banker, optimizing and planning and grinding toward some future version of success.

But at least now I'm asking myself more: Is this what I actually want? Or is this what I think I'm supposed to want?

I don't have the answer yet—maybe I just need to scream a little more sometimes.

BYEEEEE PANAMAAAAA

the truth

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