# Look up

**Published by:** [MICKY](https://paragraph.com/@amindfulcreator/)
**Published on:** 2022-08-01
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@amindfulcreator/look-up

## Content

I used to be obsessed with work. I was a gym rat. I’d tell other people if they worked harder they’d get what they want out of life. Because, like most of society, I was driven by outcomes. And when you seek answers for how to achieve those outcomes, most of them point you in this direction. But it wasn’t until I actually started achieving things that I realized the feeling I was looking for never came. I didn’t feel fulfilled. Play has been on my mind lately thanks to someone I’ve crossed paths with. I won’t go into it much yet because I think we may have a guest blog post from her soon. But for this one I’ll explore how we can get rid of this idea that fulfillment rests at the finish line and we have to work hard doing things we don’t like to do to get there. First I’ll set the stage. The drive to become something and achieve results is instilled in us early on. We’re constantly asked what we want to be when we grow up. We want to go to a good school, get a good job, and earn the social status and money we’ve been told will make us feel fulfilled. Mainly so we can accommodate the life we’re expected to live. So we can earn the respect of those who set the expectations and others we want to impress. But as Allan Watts said in this lecture I watched today, we work so we can play. But we don’t actually end up playing. We’re too tired from running ourselves into the ground so we resort to mindless activity or other distractions until we wake up and start over. Throughout my early 20s that was me. I had an idea in my mind of who I could be if I put my head down and worked for long enough. It helped me justify doing things I didn’t want to do and it didn’t matter how many steps I had to take if I felt like I was leveling up. But after a while, each step got harder to take. It was a staircase with no end. Most of us live this way with slightly different expiration dates based on when we see the true nature of the staircase. So if there is no destination that we’re working towards that will give us the sense of fulfillment we believe we want, how can we feel fulfilled? Maybe by seeing life not as a road we take that leads us somewhere, but an endless road we travel in different vehicles with different music playing at different levels, allowing ourselves to be engaged moment to moment, as we are then, but open to change instantly. If we can do that, we are able to discover more about ourselves and our growth can take shape in many forms during the ride. I know in my case I started to feel alive again when I accepted life not as the pursuit of happiness but rather the acceptance of emptiness. And by choosing nothing, I gained everything. With my head up, I saw more. I saw each misstep. With that knowledge, it’s easier to course correct as needed. To situations where work feels more like play.

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