Passing fancies and shiny objects sap life of meaning, if you don’t know your values and how to live them
I said the following words today and realized I had to post them here:
Chasing shiny objects means you’re running away from what you value.
For background, I describe passing fancies in my book Initiative:
Passing fancies are things we enjoy in the moment but don’t bring long-term emotional reward. Since everyone’s values differ, your passing fancies will differ from mine. Our world is full of passing fancies like social media, fun classes, action movies, and some friendships. Our culture bombards us with more. From grade school through commencement, mainstream education spreads us thin with classes, extracurriculars, double majors, triple minors, sports, after-school jobs, and so on—too thin to go into depth with any of them. Most jobs continue the pattern.
Rarely do you act on your own interests enough to distinguish what you care about. Choosing a major or job hardly lets you explore your interests. Nor does starting a company in a Dog Show culture.
Meanwhile, marketers have learned to attract our attention. If they find out you like yoga, they’ll pitch you meditation, clothes, retreats, and the whole lifestyle. Same with cars, books, travel, or any other interest. Social media compounds the distractions.
The problem isn’t that those things aren’t valuable. It’s that they are, but we have finite resources. People who content themselves with unexamined lives, passively enjoying what others present to
them, rarely find enduring, deep reward.Meaningful interests, meanwhile, include hobbies, rewarding work, and things that bring long-term emotional reward, but not things that you’d devote your life to. Mine include cooking, my windowsill garden, some challenging courses, and closer friendships. Meaningful interests are candidates for life passions, though not the only source.
Life passions inspire us, giving us boundless energy. The challenge with life passions isn’t knowing what a passion is in principle, but identifying our own with enough confidence to choose them over competing interests and passing fancies. Once you commit to a life passion, you see passing fancies as leeches, sucking energy, time, and other resources from it. When you have nothing better, drinks after work with coworkers sounds fun, but when you’re a parent, you won’t let casual drinks keep you from your child’s recital.
If you want meaning, purpose, value, and passion in your life, I recommend the exercises in Initiative. I’m not trying to sell books. I see the results in people who do them earnestly. Their lives are transformed.
In any case, in the meantime, I recommend learning to detect and reject shiny objects from your life. It bears repeating:
Chasing shiny objects means you’re running away from what you value.
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