“As little as possible. Great men of history didn’t sit around doing this stuff.”

That’s what Marc Andreessen said when David Senra asked, on his podcast, how much introspection he practiced in his life.

The internet exploded, because a billionaire funding the most important technologies of our time announcing that he doesn’t look inward is not, itself, a very introspective thing to do.

Now, the whole fight started with a word nobody bothered to define.

Marc says, “I found people who dwell in the past get stuck in the past.”

Dwelling in the past isn’t introspection. It’s rumination. And on that, Marc is right. Rumination can eat months of a person’s life

So strip the clip down, and he’s basically giving ambitious people two notes. Don’t get stuck in your own head. Go build things.

Fine.

Nobody ever changed the world by twiddling their thumbs (which, full disclosure, is roughly what I’m doing right now).

It’s the part he leaves out that’s the major problem, namely, that what you create in this world comes out of you.

Everything humans make is a thought, a feeling, an emotion first, and then it gets externalized into the world. The things you think are important, the problems that nag at you, the itch to build one thing instead of another all come from our psychology, which is itself a hand-me-down of your priors, conditioning, and physiological state.

Put simply, the outside world is the inside world, turned inside out (also: the inside world is the outside world turned outside-in… but we’ll leave that for another time).

Which means “just build, don’t look inward” was never actually an option. You’re going to build from the inside either way. The only question is whether you looked at what was in there first or shipped it blind.

And we’re not talking about shipping an oat latte, which I do mediocrely. We’re talking about shipping the most powerful technologies in human history (quite literally, in Marc’s case, as one of the biggest investors in SpaceX and OpenAI).

That’s the part I want to get stupidly curious about.

When you ship something into the world, you’re shipping many parts of your internal world at the same time. And most people have probably examined none of the three.

The first thing you ship is your “why”, which you almost certainly don’t understand.

A great philosopher, speaking to a group of powerful technologists, noted,

“But all this gets down to the basic question is, really, ‘What are you going to do if you’re God?’ If, in other words, you find yourself in charge of the world through technological powers… Then, simply: what do you want to do with it? But most people don’t know what they want, and have never even seriously confronted the question of what they want…”

Guess what?

That was Alan Watts presenting to a group of IBM employees in 1969! Almost 60 years ago!

Most people, if you stop them and ask what drives them, come up empty. I know this because I started asking many ambitious people why they do what they do! I once asked a founder worth 9 figures how he knows when enough money is enough.

This dude looked at me for a second and said, “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about that.”

Now I’d love to tell you I’m the exception. I’m not. About three years ago, when I was 21, I was talking with a mentor, and she asked me what I really wanted.

What was I prioritizing underneath, and where did it come from? And I realized, a little embarrassingly, that I had absolutely no f*cking clue.

I’m still working on it.

So that’s the first thing we ship blind. Our own motor, and we’ve never popped the hood.

The second thing you ship is your map of the world, which is incomplete.

Every one of us walks around with a map of reality in our head. We use it for everything: what’s worth wanting, what counts as a problem, what’s worth building. Every action we take is rooted in some idea we have about the world. For instance, we may think there is not enough architectural beauty in big cities anymore, so we begin designing novel types of skyscrapers.

So we have these ideas about the world.

And the cruel trick of being a person is that your map always feels like the whole territory (creds Alfred Korzybski for this one).

Our map never feels partial. It feels like plain reality, capital-R, which is exactly why you’ll bet a company, or a life, on it.

But every map is incomplete. EVERYYYY MAP IS INCOMPLETE. Yours, mine, all of them.

I don’t care if you’re Elon, Buddha, or Taylor Swift; you are working from a rough sketch of a world that is unfathomably bigger than anything you’ve seen. Anyone who’s had a certain kind of experience—a deep meditation, a psychedelic, a brush with death—inevitably comes back saying some version of the same thing: “oh, uhhhh, so the thing I was calling ‘reality’ was really a keyhole”.

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” — Anaïs Nin.

The third thing you ship is your ego.

Ego = fuel = ambition… usually

Even with a clear motivation and an honest map, there’s still the question of what is fueling the whole thing, and for most of us, most of the time, I think the answer is some mishmash of internal desires (creativity, insecurity, fear, anxiety, unease, etc).

This is our base setting… It’s written into our DNA. But it means the thing you build isn’t just solving the problem in front of you; it’s oftentimes also trying to solve something in you, the need to prove something, to matter, etc.

Three things, shipped at once. A motive you’ve never examined, a map you’ve mistaken for the world, and an ego running the engine. Now hand that person a billion dollars and see what happens.

Actually, I’ll just tell you what happens:

Four years ago, a very powerful man went on a Gary Vee podcast and told the world that the metaverse was the next frontier in social connection. He renamed his company around it, burned 80 BILLION DOLLARS trying to develop it, and promised a digital room where we’d all hang out together, forever, as legless cartoon avatars.

This person’s name rhymes with Snark Luckerberg.

I want you to truly sit with how specific and scary that vision is. Of all the directions “human connection” could go, he reached for the one where our bodies stay home, strapped into VR goggles. I can’t diagnose a man I’ve never met, and I won’t pretend to. But a vision that particular, and that off, doesn’t come from nowhere… it comes from an inner world, the way every vision does.

Zuck isn’t a villain. I don’t believe society’s biggest problems are created by cartoonish villains twirling mustaches.

I believe they’re built by regular, unexamined people who are given enormous leverage, and ship the exact contents of their inner worlds straight into the structures the rest of us have to live inside.

We didn’t build hell on earth (yes, that’s what “this” is… and yes, I’m still an optimist) out of malice. We built it out of not looking.

Jung said it more cleanly than anyone: “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”

The builder’s version is worse. Until you make the unconscious conscious, it won’t just direct your life; it’ll direct everyone’s, and you’ll call it strategy.

So what the heck do we do about this?

Because there’s nothing more insufferable than an internet writer laying out a problem and then offering no solution (see: internet writers).

First, let me kill the lazy version of my own argument before someone smarter than me does it in the comments. The answer is not “just be more introspective.” You can look inward, learn all your patterns, name every wound, and use the whole haul to get better at being exactly who you already were (see: spiritual narcissism).

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” — Richard Feynman.

I don’t have the expertise nor time to tell you exactly how to introspect correctly. There are people with far more degrees and years lived for that.

In my experience, though, some general principles and frameworks provide a foundation for what this should look like.

One: know why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Most of us have no idea why we’re doing what we’re doing. Step one is just getting honest about what’s actually going on. Why am I doing what I’m doing? Do I enjoy what I’m doing? What’s my north star?

That usually takes more than journaling in the park (see: me).

We must understand our own machinery before we run it, which, yes, also sounds like a sex-ed tagline.

Two: hold your map of reality loosely.

You can read every book ever written on human connection and still land on goggles. In the 1840s, doctors would go straight from dissecting corpses to delivering babies without washing their hands, and women died at staggering rates.

We have to admit, permanently, that the map of reality in our heads is just a sketch. We have to go looking for the parts of the reality we drew wrong. And the more power you have, the more aggressively you try to understand your own blind spots, because they aren’t just yours anymore; they’re everybody downstream’s.

Marcus Aurelius, running the entire Roman Empire, opened his journal with a list of the people who’d taught him where he was wrong.

And as a reminder, you do this WHILE you are building ambitiously. You don’t need to quit your job and do ayahuasca in the jungle (actually, some of you definitely quit your job and do ayahuasca in the jungle).

Three: clean your fuel.

Ambition = fuel. Ego—status, money, leverage, power—is high-octane fuel. It might get you up the mountain fast, but it doesn’t help others in the long term.

Clean fuel is the opposite. Ambition to serve others.

This might sound obvious (it is), so the real question becomes: how do I make my entire motivation about serving others? I’ll be honest with you: mostly outside the scope of one essay. Genuinely coming at the world from a heart that wants to serve, not the version you say at a dinner party (“I want to change the worlddd *cough cough* pass the $120 sauvy blanc”), is a long process of waking up and cleaning up that I’m nowhere near done with myself.

It’s also where a real spiritual practice stops being optional, because you don’t reason your way into a clean heart; you have to do the slower work of loosening the ego’s grip. Nobody develops that from reading one Gen Z-er’s Substack.

(Ken Wilber’s Integral Spirituality is where much of my thinking has been coming from lately).

So that’s introspective ambition. Not less drive. Same fire, but you’ve actually checked three things before you pour your life into the flames: your why, your map, your fuel.

This approach is worth doing. But when you look around, most people are not doing “the work” (shoutout to another legend, Byron Katie).

Part of the answer, I believe, is that it can be scary as hell to look inside. Freud talked about this a lot… basically, introspection threatens to surface material we buried for a reason. The fear of looking inward is really the ego correctly sensing that if it looks, the original unbearable feeling of impulses and memories comes back up with it.

To the ambitious, type-A readers, I know what you might be thinking right now.

“OKAYYY, we get it. Do the inner work. But what about the people who skipped all this and built incredible things anyway? What about Steve Jobs? Elon?”

Sure.

But this is a category error in logic. For example, it’s like saying, “Look at the guy who smoked two packs a day and lived until 100 years old. You don’t need to eat clean to live a long life!”

“This person skipped the inner work and built great things for the world” is not evidence you should skip the work.

Marc Andreessen, to his credit, saw the sort of pushback I’ve outlined here coming and went even further in a tweetstorm. He posted a long teardown of introspection built on Adler, the gist being that your feelings aren’t honest signals → they’re tools you manufacture to serve a goal you set as a kid → digging around in them is just elaborate avoidance.

This argument eats itself, though.

Because if the goal running your whole life was installed in childhood and now operates below your awareness, then that goal is the single most important thing you could examine, and examining it is the exact thing he’s telling you not to do.

All of this has always been true. People have been shipping their unexamined insides into the world since the first king built the first iron throne (any GoT/HoTD fans here??).

But what has changed is the speed and the scale, and this type of work matters now more than ever.

Because of this little thing that rhymes with snarkifficial lintelligence.

AI.

It’s not just that AI is changing the world. It’s that the technology is changing faster and faster, and we are not. A model’s capability roughly doubles on a timeline measured in months. Human psychological development, the slow grind of growing up and cleaning up and actually integrating the stuff underneath, moves on a timeline measured in decades, if it moves at all.

E.O. Wilson, the Harvard biologist who spent his whole life arguing our wiring is ancient, put it best: we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.

Sounds like Hogwarts!

And the scary part is that he said that before ChatGPT existed!

Think about what AI actually is. A system like Claude or GPT is trained on the externalized interior of billions of human beings, i.e., every thought, bias, and blind spot we’ve ever written down. Then it gets shaped by a much smaller group of people deciding what it should value and how it should behave.

To be clear, I’m not saying the models are doomed because people are flawed. Honestly, they’re kind of remarkable, often kinder and more patient than most of us :)

The worry is that this is the most powerful thing we’ve ever built, a small number of human interiors are shaping it, and billions of people are going to talk to it at 1 AM, in the exact moments they’d never open up to another person. When the thing you’re shipping is that powerful and that intimate, “did the people building it do their own inner work?” stops being a soft question and becomes absolutely required.

Godlike technology, shaped by people who’d BETTER have looked at their own insides.

One honest note before we wrap things up. I’ve spent this whole essay telling ambitious people to look inward before they build. And I’m a guy who sold his company at 22 and has spent the last year looking inward instead of building the next thing. So there’s a version of this where I’m a prophet, and another where I’ve written 3,000 very sophisticated words to justify not shipping anything.

Which is maybe the most introspective thing I could admit. Or the most elaborate stall ever…

But I still think the broader point remains.

It was never introspection vs. ambition. It was introspective ambition. It’s introspection so that the ambition means something.

Keeping one eye turned inward while you build. No ruminating, not doomscrolling your own childhood, not booking a therapy session somewhere in the metaverse. Just looking, honestly, at what you’re about to ship, and doing the slow work of making it something you’d actually want to hand to the world.

This is exactly what Marcus Aurelius was doing. The single most powerful man in the ancient world, running an empire by day and writing to himself at night like a yogi on ketamine about his own flaws, his own death, all the things he was still getting wrong.

Now that’s a GREAT MAN OF HISTORY!

“Are you polluting the world or cleaning up the mess? You are responsible for your inner space; nobody else is, just as you are responsible for the planet. As within, so without: If humans clear inner pollution, then they will also cease to create outer pollution.” — Eckhart Tolle

— Confucius

I think about my own death more than someone in their 20s probably should.

When I will die. How I will die. What death even is.

I sometimes visualize the process of dying… that brief moment where I go from being alive to not existing. Last month I was on a flight back to New York. Somewhere over Ohio (it’s always Ohio!), we hit a rough patch. The plane shook, the seatbelt sign dinged on, and I did my usual thing: I started visualizing my own death.

*The plane is shaking.

That means I’m dying! Yes, I’m dying. These are the last few minutes of my life. I will never see my family again… I will never see my friends again. Or The Office.

What will my funeral look like? Who will be there? Family, of course. Friends. People who weren’t really “friends” but wanted to show face.

F*ck.

I’m tearing up in the middle seat on a domestic United flight. It doesn’t matter—I’m dying.

I continue to visualize. How does my death impact my parents? How do they react? They’re heartbroken. I’m crying now. No… I’m bawling. I hope the guy in the window seat isn’t watching this!*

And then… the turbulence stopped. I am no longer dying.

HELL YEAHHHH!

I am alive.

And I feel different. Not physically, other than the snot melting out of my left nostril from crying. But mentally, emotionally. I felt lighter. My perspective on things felt different.

The guy next to me was absolutely hogging the armrest, but it didn’t bother me one bit. A baby one row back started screaming at the top of her lungs, and my first thought was: babies are f*cking amazing. I love babies!

My parents picked me up from the airport. Normally I’d be half-present, maybe a little irritated from travel, already thinking about what I had to do the next day. But this time I was just... there. Grateful to see them, to be alive, and to be going home at least one more time.

And then just as quickly as I felt different, I went right back to feeling the same before my death visualization.

I woke up the next morning, and someone had left their dishes in the sink, and I felt mildly annoyed about it. Back to normal, just like that! The whole perspective shift… gone.

I was back to caring about armrests, parking spaces, and whatever small thing was in front of me, without feeling the same sort of appreciation for simply being alive. And this wasn’t the first time. Somewhat frequently since my teenage years, I’ve visualized my own death, funeral, or the idea of “being nothing”. Sometimes on airplanes, sometimes not.

And I’ve also visualized the death of my loved ones.

What would it be like for one of my best friends to die? To no longer exist. What would I say at his funeral? What does it mean to come to terms with the fact that he could die at any moment? That I could die at any moment?

Suppose you’re thinking: jeeeeez! Someone find this kid a therapist! He’s thinking about death too much…Thank you for your concern… but you need not be.

Because these visualizations and exercises have made something quite clear to me: when I am reminded of death, the way I view life shifts in an overwhelmingly positive direction.

• Priorities clarify.

• The petty stuff falls away.

• Gratitude becomes automatic.

But I only feel this way sometimes!

Sometimes…

Which got me thinking: What is it about death (thinking it, visualizing it, living it) that can completely shift our perception of reality, even for a brief moment? Why is that shift positive? And if we can access that shift sometimes, can we access that shift all the time?

It was time to get curious.

Stupidly curious… about DEATH.

Quick disclaimer before we dive in.

When I talk about “death” in this article, I’m talking about the end of subjective conscious experience. The end of whatever “this” is. Lights off. Done.

This is a dualistic perspective, and I’m almost positive my understanding of death at 24 years old is, uh, pretty limited. I don’t really know what death is. I think we’re probably thinking about it the wrong way because of our incomplete understanding of consciousness. I’m not even sure “death” is the right word for whatever it is we’re actually describing.

How we relate to death as a whole is probably a way more interesting article than this one. This one’s just about how to remind ourselves of it. I’ll get to the bigger stuff eventually. But for now, I’m using “death” as most people do, because otherwise this article would be 40 pages long and nobody would read it.

I used to think my 13-year-old death visualizations were just me being dramatic on airplanes. But turns out this shift I’m describing is well-documented, and psychologists have been studying it for decades.

I want to introduce you to a field of study called Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG).

It’s basically about how people transform after a major life crisis or trauma, like *ahem* nearly dying.

There are these researchers, Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun, who have spent years studying people who’ve faced serious brushes with mortality—terminal diagnoses, car accidents, heart attacks, the works.

And what they found is counterintuitive: a significant number of these people don’t just recover… they transform.

Like, in a good way.

After not dying, these people report greater appreciation for life. Deeper relationships. A clearer sense of what matters. 60% of women who survived cancer reported positive changes in priorities, for instance.

This isn’t toxic positivity or “everything happens for a reason” nonsense. It’s a documented psychological phenomenon. Proximity to death does something to people.

There’s another tranche of research that puts the nail in the coffin.

Bad analogy? Sorry.

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent eight years in palliative care (think: hanging out with people right before they die), and wrote about the top regrets of dying people.

This brings it full circle—how does a person’s perspective on life shift when they’re ACTUALLY about to die?

• “I wish I hadn’t worked so much.”

• “I wish I’d stayed in touch with friends.”

• “I wish I’d let myself be happier.”

At the end, people see clearly what matters… what many of us can barely glimpse when death is an afterthought.

Okay, so here’s where I want to pause and say something that took me a minute to figure out while piecing this article together.

I’ve been writing about death this whole time. The airplane, the PTG research, Bronnie Ware, and her dying patients. All of it framed around this one word.

Death, death, death.

But I don’t actually think it’s just death doing the work.

Meet Laura Carstensen, a Professor of Psychology at Stanford. Her research found that when people perceive their time as limited, their priorities shift. The mechanism she identified wasn’t death. It was time perception. The felt sense that this—whatever “this” is—isn’t going to last forever.

That felt sense has a name: impermanence.

Death is the loudest possible reminder that everything is impermanent. It’s the anchor. Without death in the picture, impermanence is just a philosophical concept you nod at and then forget.

With death in the picture, it becomes visceral.

So the airplane shift wasn’t random. The turbulence forced me to reckon with death, which made impermanence go from abstract idea to felt truth. For forty seconds, I actually knew—not intellectually, but literally in my body—that I would never get this moment back again.

My parents waiting at the airport. The armrest dude. The crying baby. All of it, one-time-only.

That’s what dropped me into gratitude. Not the fear of dying, but the sudden, undeniable sense that this won’t last, so I’d better actually be here for it and appreciate it. So death is the anchor and impermanence is the shift. Let me repeat: death is the anchor and impermanence is the shift.

Now, the thing is, most of the people I’ve been talking about got this shift of impermanence through crisis. A near-fatal accident. A cancer diagnosis. A nurse sitting at their bedside as they counted the regrets.

Which raises the question I keep coming back to: do we have to wait for death to wake us up to the impermanence of this moment? Is there a way to access this transformation (the clarity, the gratitude, the aliveness) without the cardiac arrest? Without waiting until we’re eighty and full of regret?

Can we get the wisdom of the deathbed while we’re not, y’know, on the deathbed?

I think we can.

But not by skipping past death and going straight to impermanence. That doesn’t work. Impermanence without death is too abstract, too easy to nod at and forget. You need the anchor.

The trick is learning to use death as the anchor on purpose, rather than waiting for a plane to shake or a diagnosis to come. To bring death close enough that impermanence becomes felt, not just understood. Then let the impermanence do its work. The gratitude, the clarity, the urgency to actually be here for this moment because you’ve really grasped that it isn’t coming back.

There’s a version of “thinking about death” that’s overwhelming, anxiety-inducing, and frankly unhelpful. I used to get actual panic about this as a kid and teenager. Like if I thought about death hard enough, my heart would start racing, my palms would become sweaty, and I’d do anything to distract myself.

There’s this somewhat ridiculous, somewhat profound clip of Gary Vee (y’know… the “work 18 hours a day for 7 years” guy) saying that he frequently visualizes his family members getting shot in the face.

Like… multiple times a week. He argues that it keeps him grateful. That he never takes anyone or anything for granted. And look, I respect the commitment. But I’m not asking you to imagine your loved ones getting murdered during your morning commute.

That’s... a lot. Nor do I suggest that you make death the focal point of your life, obsessing over it, visualizing it, all to get yourself into that “wisdom state”. This isn’t the sustainable way.

What I am suggesting is something steadier.

A way to hold the reality of death without white-knuckling through it. A way to let the wisdom of the deathbed show up in your actual life, not just in moments of turbulence at 30,000 feet.

My framework is simple: let death sit in the backdrop of your day-to-day: a guide, a reminder, not a helicopter parent that won’t leave you alone.

An analogy helps here.

You know when you’re at a restaurant and someone’s playing piano in the corner? Maybe it’s some Vivaldi, maybe it’s jazz, whatever. The music fills the room. You can feel it. But you’re not focused on it. You’re eating dinner, talking to wifey, sipping wine. The music is just... there.

And then she goes quiet for a second. You turn toward the piano. And suddenly you hear it… Really hear it… and it’s beautiful… a little reminder of something bigger. Then you go back to the conversation. The food… the wine… then the piano again.

That’s what I’m proposing with death. Not to stare at it constantly. Not to make it the main course. Just let it play in the background, quietly reminding you that this is temporary, quietly shaping your decisions, your priorities, how you treat people. Death is the piano. Impermanence is the song it plays.

So what does this look like in practice?

The Stoics had this phrase: memento mori. Latin for “remember you will die.” It’s like the piano reminder.

What Is Memento Mori? (Explained In 5 Minutes)

Romans would literally have slaves whisper this to generals during victory parades. Some kept skulls on their desks. Casual décor to remind them that all of this—the glory, the power, the whatever—was temporary.

I just bought a “Life Calendar” from WaitButWhy (the G(b)OAT — Greatest Blog Of All Time). It’s a poster of 89 years, week by week, visualized as tiny boxes. You fill in one box every week. Way better than scrolling TikTok during... y’know.

It’s background music that says life is short. A quiet nudge that life is short, that I’m going to die, and given that, what actually matters?

A few other ideas for pulling death into the background of your day-to-day:

• A memento mori coin in your pocket or on your desk (The Daily Stoic… no affiliation!)

• A single photo of someone who’s died somewhere you’ll see it daily

• Keep a small hourglass on your desk—not as décor, as a nudge

But let’s go back to the Vivaldi thing for a second.

Remember, it’s not just background music. Sometimes you turn your full attention to the piano. It’s no longer ambient. It’s the whole experience. You’re in the music.

The same goes for death. Most of the time, let it sit in the background. But sometimes you need to face it directly. That’s what the airplane exercise was. Because sometimes we forget the background music entirely. We start living like we have infinite time, and therefore zero urgency.

I want to share a few practical exercises I’ve found helpful. All of them use death as the anchor. All of them are really trying to drop you into the same shift: a felt sense that this is temporary, and therefore worth actually showing up for.

Here’s one question to start with: If I had 5 years left, how would that change how I act today?

Not one day. “Live like it’s your last day” sounds inspiring, but it’s useless. If today were my last day, I’d throw a $5,000 party with everyone I love, take an irresponsible amount of psychedelics, and have zero concern for tomorrow.

Five years is different. Long enough that you’d still want to build things, maintain relationships, and take care of your health. But short enough that you wouldn’t waste time. You wouldn’t stay in a job you hate. You wouldn’t put off the trip. You wouldn’t leave the important things unsaid.

That’s the sweet spot. Not “I’m dying tomorrow” panic. Not “I’ll live forever” denial. Just a realistic sense of limited time.

Spend three minutes in the morning, and actually write down an answer to that question. If I had 5 years left, how would that change how I act today?

Seneca said, “Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day.”

A few other exercises I’ve played with:

1. The Conversation Reframe. Before a conversation—especially with someone you love or someone you’re in conflict with—ask: If this person wasn’t here tomorrow, how would I want this to go? It’s a useful filter for cutting through ego and regret minimization.

2. The Math. Tim Urban, the WaitButWhy guy, wrote this article called “The Tail End“ that broke my brain. He does the math to figure out how much time we actually have left with the people we love. And it’s like... not a lot. If you see your parents twice a year and they’re in their 60s, you might have 50 visits left. So the exercise is to calculate how many times you’ll realistically see your loved ones again. Let the number sit with you, and give yourself weekly or monthly reminders of it.

3. The Funeral Visualization. This is basically my airplane thing, but on purpose. Picture your own funeral. Who’s there? What do they say? What do you wish they could say that isn’t true yet? Picture your loved one’s funerals. It sounds dark, but it’s clarifying.

4. The “Last Time” Frame. At some point, you’ll do everything for the last time. Last time you pick up your kid. Last dinner at your favorite restaurant with your dad. Last time you see your college roommate.

And if you want to go deeper, Buddhists and many ancient spiritual traditions have been practicing formal contemplations of death and impermanence for thousands of years—sitting with the reality of your own mortality as a practice.

Here’s one I turn to sometimes:

Guided Meditation - Death & Impermanence

OK, so if meditating works and all the ancient wisdom traditions have been doing it for thousands of years, why does nobody do it?

The simplest answer, I believe, is that our society is allergic to death.

Ask someone about death, and you’ll probably be met with confusion, a touch of anxiety, and a rare “go f*ck off!”

There’s a reason we don’t take death seriously as a culture.

Well, MANY reasons.

To name a few:

• It’s uncomfortable. Duh.

• It surfaces grief and trauma from people who’ve actually died in your life.

• It’s associated with violence, killing, and generally scary stuff we see in horror movies.

And most importantly, IMO: it brings up anxiety about your own death. About not existing.

The idea of not existing… forever… for the rest of history… can create a wee bit of anxiety!

So we do anything to not think about death.

There’s one author, Ernest Becker, who goes even farther in his Pulitzer-winning book The Denial of Death.

He says we’ve built an entire culture around not dying. That humans are uniquely cursed (we’re animals who know we’re going to die), so we’ve created these “immortality projects”—religion, legacy, fame, children, creative work—all ways of pretending some part of us will live forever.

Which is why, left to our own devices, we don’t get the shift. The shift requires letting death in. Not forever… nobody’s asking you to get a skull tattoo… but enough to crack the denial.

I should be clear: I am not good at this.

I forget constantly. All the time. I write about death, and then three hours later, I’m annoyed that someone took too long to order at the coffee shop. (I watch too much Curb Your Enthusiasm).

I’m not writing this from some enlightened mountaintop where I’ve transcended pettiness and live each day with perfect presence. I’m writing from the same messy middle as everyone else.

TBH, part of why I’m writing this is to remind myself. To force these ideas back to the surface. Because left to my own devices, I’ll drift right back to forgetting that life is short and armrests matter.

So if you try this stuff and forget immediately, welcome to the club!

One last thing worth saying: the test for whether any of this is working is simple.

Does thinking about death make you more present or less? Does it make you a better person or a worse one?

If contemplating mortality makes you anxious, panicky, or paralyzed, you’re not doing it wrong, exactly. But it might not be the right tool for you right now. The point is to feel more alive, not more afraid.

And if you’re in the middle of grief, or you’ve had a lot of loss recently, or death is already too present in your life, you don’t need some 23-year-old telling you to think about it more. Maybe the opposite advice applies: let yourself forget for a while.

This is really for people who have the luxury of not thinking about death. People like me, who can go weeks without it crossing their mind, drifting on autopilot until turbulence shakes them awake.

The goal isn’t to think about death all the time. That would be exhausting and weird and probably bad for your relationships.

The goal is to let death inform how you live, without letting it dominate. To keep it close enough that impermanence stays felt, and every ordinary Tuesday gets the attention it deserves. That’s what the Stoics offered. A way to use death as a tool.

Remember that you’ll die and let that sharpen how you live.

NOW GO LIVE!

“It’s not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it’s been given to us in generous measure for accomplishing the greatest things, if the whole of it is well invested. But when life is squandered through soft and careless living, and when it’s spent on no worthwhile pursuit, death finally presses and we realize that the life which we didn’t notice passing has passed away.” — Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life

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 :)

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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