The Process and The River

As a teen on a kayaking trip with an uncle, he gave me his main life advice: “Follow the process.” He meant the conventional path. Good grades, university degree, respectable job, marriage, kids, then send your kids down the same road. This would allegedly bring happiness, self-worth, a good life.

I immediately smelled bullshit. This advice came from a man in a broken marriage with strained relationships with his children, stuck in a career he hated that he had lied his way into. He was miserable then. He is still miserable nearly two decades later. His kids barely speak with him. His marriage remains in shambles, held together by obligation alone. He holds no hobbies. The two of them spend their days complaining, being miserable.

I saw little value in following a process defined by everyone but myself. Advice from others can be valuable. The quality of the input, my own judgment matter more. I dropped out of high school at 16. By 17, I had my GED, was enrolling in college. Within my first year I realized I disliked my degree program. I transferred schools, moved halfway across the country to be with a woman, swapped to a degree program that would not be considered part of the process.

I graduated with a good GPA, various honors. My wife, I have been in each other’s lives for sixteen years, married for ten years this April. My marriage is strong. We have survived horrible medical diagnoses, other life events. I have built a career in a field I am interested in that differs from my degree by a significant margin. By multiple measures we are leading a rich life together.

Similarities between my path, the one defined by the process may be noted. Any similarities are coincidental. A rich life is not based solely on checking boxes. Plenty of people have followed the process, sometimes multiple times, and remain miserable.

Having a process is not wrong. What is wrong is building one from unfiltered inputs. Advice, expectations, examples from those around me accepted as is. I cannot control the inputs I receive from the world around me. I can control how I filter them. I need judgment to determine what fits my life, what does not. When I sit with myself, understand my vision for the life I want to live, then compare that to my anti-vision (the life I do not want or aspects I wish to change), I create the filter. I can then set goals, direction based on my values, not those imposed by the world.

Be the river that carves terrain, not the river that lets terrain impact the entirety of its flow.