November 11, 2025
In the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
David Foster Wallace
This is Water is my favorite commencement speech of all time. I listen to it once a year as a reminder of what matters. I was thinking of the quoted section above recently. The reason why, simply, is that I had a chance at a significant outcome professionally. But I missed it, and it’s gone. There was a bit of pain thinking about what could have been. A life-changing sum, for sure.
But then, what does it matter, really? There’s this beautiful Ingrid Michaelson song (don’t judge) called The Lotto, where she says:
That money's not for me
My oh my, I don't gotta hit the lotto
'Cause I gotta lot of loving for free
It’s all karmic. Wasn’t meant to be, and that money was not for me. That’s OK, because I don’t worship money. I came accept a while ago that beyond a certain point, money doesn’t really matter. I’m very fortunate to be beyond that point. A lot of it comes down to a mindset, and feeling satisfied. Feeling fulfilled. It’s better to want the things you have, than to have the things you want. I feel the love, and sense the peace. That’s enough. Next play.