“I just thought there would be more.”

22 July 202326 July 2023 patmcg1 Comment

Sometimes a movie can have a real impact on your life.

One movie like that for me is Boyhood, which follows a boy growing up in Texas from ages six to eighteen and, famously, was shot with all the same actors over the course of 11 years as they actually aged. 🤯

Towards the end of the movie, the mom has a bit of a midlife freakout when her son is heading off to college. She frets that all the important milestones of her life are over – two marriages, two kids, building a career. She worries about her next milestone.

You know what’s next? It’s my fucking funeral!

It reminds me of the chorus to Nirvana’s All Apolgies: “Married, buried!”

Anyways, the son says, “Aren’t you jumping ahead by like 40 years or something?”, to which the mom replies, over her tears:

I just thought there would be more.

That line has really stuck with the last few years. It made me realize I needed to be aiming for something interesting of my own after the kids leave, beyond just my career.

That creeping thought – is this all there is? – has motivated me to work on other things in my life like friendships, writing, music, and hopefully a few more surprises down the pipe. 😉

Quotes

“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”

17 August 202124 August 2021 patmcg2 Comments

Back in college, I remember philosophy geeks loved to say, “Well, Kierkegaard said…” and would quote him and act all superior. It was so annoying.

But now I get it, dammit. 🤦🏻‍♂️ The dude was smart. Here’s one of my favorite quotes.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
Søren Kierkegaard

It’s the basic trick of life. Take what you’ve learned so far in life and use it to more forward. ➡

I really like this quote because, like with Rumi, it’s practical advice about living a good life. It’s right on the edge between “cool ideas” and basic self-help.

Wait, am I become a philosophy geek? 😱

Music

An ode to the midlife 🎶

9 July 202121 August 2021 patmcg1 Comment

The Talking Heads used to annoy me. They seemed too self-consciously nerdy, as if to say, “Hey, look how weird and nerdy we are! Come on, our music is so weird and confusing!” And David Byrne’s dance moves were super annoying!

Years later, I have come to realize two things:

David Byrne’s dance moves were so annoying because those are my dance moves. 😱. I’ll show you if you don’t believe me.
The song Once In a Lifetime is absolutely brilliant. 🤯

This song is all about time flowing relentlessly under your feet as you try to figure out what the hell you’re doing in your life.

At least that’s my take, thank you very much.

The tight, precise beat underneath emphasizes the odd arrangement layered on top, with perfect midlife observations like this:

You may ask yourself, “What is that beautiful house?”
You may ask yourself, “Where does that highway go to?”
And you may ask yourself, “Am I right? Am I wrong?”
And you may say to yourself, “My God! What have I done?”

But time doesn’t care. It just flows on.

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground

I guess we all hit a 500-foot waterfall eventually. The only question is what happens between here and there. Do you learn to swim with the river and enjoy the journey, or do you let the water knock and bruise you on the rocks?

Good luck out there. 🏊🏻‍♂️✌️

Quotes · You

“What a man can be, he must be.”

27 June 202127 June 2021 patmcgLeave a comment

Good ol’ Abraham Maslow, the American psychologist who gave us a pyramid and a hammer, is at it again with some pretty sensible insights.

This time he’s riffing on Aristotle’s function argument about what the heck we’re even doing here. Basically, we’re here to be useful.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization.

(Apparently he was an old-school fan of the “he/him/man” pronoun. 🤷🏻‍♂️)

It’s one thing to find your purpose — and those who do so should consider themselves fortunate. But the real trick is to actually do something about it.

It refers to man’s desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actually in what he is potentially: to become everything that one is capable of becoming.

Thank you for the reminder, Mazzy. Can I call you that? Because here’s another Mazzy who found her purpose.

You

“Meaning is what’s left when everything else is stripped away.”

19 January 202120 January 2021 patmcg5 Comments

Cool quote from this TED talk about almost dying and then living.

Meaning is not found in the material realm; it’s not in dinner, jazz, cocktails or conversation. Meaning is what’s left when everything else is stripped away.

There are lots of way to interpret that quote, of course.

One way I look at it is this: life is about who you are. If everything in your life suddenly disappeared and you were dropped into an empty field in an unknown country, what person would be standing there?

I’m not talking about some crazy Naked and Afraid survival scenario. Suppose you have some money and some clothes. But not much else. Who is that person standing in the field? What does he know? What does he want? How does he move forward? How will he impact the world around him? That’s who you are.

I’m not actually sure if that’s what that quote meant ☝️, but there’s my take. 😆

This goes with Aristotle’s idea that the meaning of life is what you do — how you impact the real world. As humans, we are uniquely gifted with smart brains and “rational faculty”. We are happiest when we use these minds for some purpose in the world.

A poet should write, a teacher teach, and a doctor heal. Not only should each person do their thing, but they should do it well.

I don’t know about you, but I find that pretty inspirational. 😊