Your Accomplishments Won’t Make You Happy

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. The idea that we strive for certain goals assuming that’ll be it. We’ll feel fulfilled, successful, and happy. And yet often we encounter stories of those who have reached incredible heights and yet what they all tend to report is a fleeting sense of accomplishment, a stagnation, and even a sense of emptiness from having poured so much of themselves into a goal, only to find it ultimately not it, not the end, and not as fulfilling as they’d hoped.

And really, I don’t have to look that far to know this truth. Even now, I’m living one of my dreams. I have a remote filmmaking job that allows me to travel the world. Yet, the sense of accomplishment is fleeting, and the next necessary destination looms: now what?

But does this need to be a necessarily painful process? What if we created and strived with the understanding that our accomplishments are fleeting, that our creations are no more than sandcastles? I’ve found this thought to be freeing. To know that although I can create beautiful monuments and achieve incredible accomplishments, they will never be my salvation, and lacking any achievement, will not rob me of it.

I can be enough right now. And yet, I can choose to create, to act, to participate with the goal of achievement, without the strain of it. I can strive playfully.

I have a suspicion that this is not the first time I’ve reached this conclusion, and that I’ll need reminding of it soon again.

I hope you are well. Thank you for appreciating my sandcastles and have fun building yours.

With love,

Naser