What you want

Remember that question, "if you were going to be stranded on an island and could only take three things with you, what would they be?" Well when I was young, I tried to come up with all sorts of deep, meaningful answers, such as a loved one. But having been on the hot, sweltering island of Crete for 8 days now, I know my true answer: maximum strength sunblock, a water purification system and a Kindle loaded with books. I suppose with the modern development of iPad, most people might replace one of my items with a laptop or iPad, but let's just say that on this island there is no WiFi. I pretty much think I could be really happy on my stranded island with my Kindle, water and sunblock. Sure, at some point I'd probably wither away from hunger, but until then, I could adequately quench my thirst, avoid getting sunburned, and keep myself entertained with my books.

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I just finished reading The Book of Joe, a pretty terrific read about friendship, homosexuality, father-son relationships, coming-of-age, love, loyalty, forgiveness. The author, Jonathan Tropper, is a cross between Dave Eggers (for perfecting the voice of a sarcastic, self-deprecating asshole who is, underneath it all, a good guy) and John Irving (for descriptive details that seem so real that even the most improbable events seem real). In one section, one of the characters, reminiscing on high school, says that she misses being so full. Full of promise, full of dreams, full of shit. So full you're bursting. Then you get out into the world, and people empty you out, little by little, like air from a balloon.

The words rang so true to me, although I think I was most "full" somewhere during college or law school. The character goes on to say that as you get older, you try like hell to fill yourself up with fresh air, from you and from other people. But back then, it was so damn effortless to feel full. All you had to do was breathe.

El Hombre and I have been traveling for 20 days, and it took a full 18 days for me to finally, truly RELAX. Every single day before yesterday, I was constantly planning - making sure we saw the must-see sights in Barcelona and Crete, planning our meals, even planning the ideal time to take siesta so as to maximize our time in each locale. Bad habits die hard - my anal nature, combined with my anal career choice, combined with a year in Tokyo spent planning my days carefully so as to fill the time so that I didn't have time to reflect on my unhappiness - all it took was a year to ingrain the truly bad habit of doing what I "should" do, what I expected myself to do, instead of what I want to do.

In the book, another character notes that what makes something really matter is when you do what you want to do, instead of what you expect yourself to do. And at the end of the day, nothing else matters except the things that truly matter.

In some ways, I suppose it's emotionally immature to do what you want to do all the time, instead of what you SHOULD do. That's what differentiates children from adults, in many ways. And yet, I think there's a lot of truth to the statement. As adults, I find myself and my friends often doing what we think we SHOULD be doing - climbing up the corporate ladder, trying to get rich or successful or both, obtaining the material things (cars, homes, gadgets, spouses) that give us a sense of security that we are achieving success at the rate we expected of ourselves. Because there is a certain satisfaction to doing what you expect yourself to do, or what others expect you to do. But it's a fleeting satisfaction, because as soon as you've achieved it, you have to aim for the next thing - the next expectation, the next goal, the next toy.

My year in Japan - which was the unhappiest year of my adult life, while ironically being filled with so many happy things such as making great friends, ample opportunities to travel, snowboarding on the best snow of my life, eating some of the most amazing food on the planet and actually getting published - turned me into a planning machine. I've found that the best way for me to forget my unhappiness is to plan, plan, plan. As long as my hours were filled doing something according to plan (running 10K, meeting friends, reviewing restaurants), I didn't have time to dwell on being unhappy. That didn't take the unhappiness away, of course - as evident by my year of "hater" blogging about life in Japan. But it filled the hours and minutes, and at the time, it was the best I could ask for. But it instilled in me a truly bad habit (no doubt helped along by my already anal nature) of having to plan everything all the time, to maximize every minute of every hour. I mean seriously, who PLANS when to eat and when to relax on VACATION? And yet, that's honestly what I did until yesterday. But finally, yesterday, I allowed myself to do what I truly wanted. I wanted to read. I wanted to not eat Greek food anymore, even if it broke my rule of eating only local foods while traveling. I wanted to sleep when I felt like it, shower when I felt like it, do what I really wanted when I really wanted to do it.

And that's the thing - as we get older, I think it gets harder and harder to do what we really want because we're so busy doing what we expect ourselves to do, sometimes disguised as what we think we want. I think the test is this: after you do what you think you wanted to do, do you feel happier? If so, then it probably was what you really wanted to do. If not, it was probably what you expected yourself to do, but not what you really wanted to do.

So yesterday, I thought I wanted to explore more of Chania - after all, we're on this beautiful Greek island surrounded by gorgeous scenery, we shouldn't waste a minute of it sitting inside. But then it felt so good to just lie down in our air-conditioned room, curled up with my book, with El Hombre's arm lazily wrapped around me playing with my hair while he read his own book. And finally, I let myself give in to the simple pleasure of doing exactly what you want at precisely the moment you want to do it. And finally, everything just kind of fell into place.