Dear Family,
It’s interesting to me that in the midst of rising education costs, housing prices, and the cost of living in general, so many of us still feel an incredible amount of pressure to look successful rather than actually be successful.
The nice car. The expensive apartment. The designer clothes. The table at the restaurant. The vacation you probably wouldn’t have taken if nobody else was going to see the pictures.
None of these things are inherently bad.
I like nice things as much as the next person. But I think there’s a bigger question underneath all of it that is worth asking ourselves:
Who do you want to be a hero to?
Because whether we realize it or not, many of us are performing for an audience. Sometimes that audience is our friends. Sometimes it’s our coworkers. Sometimes it’s people we went to school with twenty years ago. And increasingly, that audience is a bunch of people on the internet who we don’t even know.
We make decisions based on what we think will impress them.
We buy things we hope they’ll notice. We chase titles we hope they’ll respect. We measure our lives against what they choose to show us about theirs. And before long, we can find ourselves building an entire life around the approval of people who have very little to do with the life we actually want to live.
Personally, I want to be a hero to my family.
I want my daughter to grow up knowing that her father was present, that he kept his word, that he took care of his body, that he loved her mother, and that he had the courage to pursue work that mattered to him.
I want the people closest to me to know that when they needed me, I showed up.
Those are the people whose respect matters most to me. And the older I get, the less interested I am in impressing people who are not part of the life I am actually trying to build.
What about you? Who do you want to be a hero to?
From LUX, With Love.
Matt Aaron
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