I value my ability to do less. To relax without feeling like I’m wasting time. To take a break — a day, a week — to let myself be. I’m getting better at saying I’ve done enough today.

Is it laziness? I don’t know, man. I’m just tired of feeling like I’m doing something wrong if I haven’t spent every hour of my day “productively.”

There’s a paradigm in our modern culture that says productivity is good, being unproductive — i.e. laziness — is bad. But what does productive mean? Accomplishment? Checking items off of a to-do list?

Maybe productivity is just a distraction. And I get it. Getting things done is satisfying. It makes us feel good, like we’re worth something.

Yet the doing is to help us feel something inside, isn’t it?

We want to feel okay in there. We want to be happy. So we strive and strive, never giving ourselves a second to pause, take a breath and ask, what am I afraid of?

We’re running from ourselves.

We wouldn’t need to do so much if we were content meandering through the garden of our mind. But it’s scary in there. There are snakes, shadows, monsters. But if we just sit and we breathe and we face what’s going on inside, we may realize that it’s not as scary as we think.

We’re safe.

The shadows are nothing but passing clouds.

Thoughts.

They come and go.

The snakes, the monsters — I can’t say they aren’t real. But they are harmless, and worth befriending. It’s actually quite beautiful in there.

Boundless.

A garden that expands until the horizon, where wind may blow freely as energy, and sunlight shines as love, and it’s weird, and the seasons are always shifting, and it’s you.

If we’re truly able to sit with ourselves, the noise around us won’t matter. We won’t feel the need to do more just to be worthy. We won’t take other people’s words as gospel, because the longer we sit in our own garden, the more we realize others are just trying to navigate their own.

I want to be all that I can be in this life.

But what does any of it mean if we’re not journeying along joyfully, peacefully, lovingly?

I write not because I have the answers, but because this is what I’m grappling with, and I hope that by sharing, we may learn something together.

These changes don’t happen overnight. It’s a lifelong adventure, reserved for the courageous few who won’t accept the status quo.

It comes down to asking, who am I, and what do I actually want?

Again, and again, and again.

This morning, I got up early to write in my journal before the moon faded from the sky. I ran in the hills with no headphones, no phone, only the sound of the birds.

And now I’m home, drinking coffee, writing this story. I really don’t know what else I need. This makes me happy. The more I think about these things, the more I realize what truly matters to me.

It’s nothing I don’t already have. I may let the sirens of society that tell me I need more fall on deaf ears.

It’s hard to know what’s real these days.

We live in a world of endless metrics, the future at our fingertips, knowledge at the speed of light. But knowledge doesn’t equal wisdom.

Wisdom comes with time. Wisdom comes with experience. Wisdom is knowing the difference between what we truly want and what the world says we should want.

Just because we can know more, just because we can do more, doesn’t mean it’s best for us. It’s definitely not for me. To be more, I want to do less.

I count an afternoon spent outside laying in the grass or throwing the ball with the dog or joining a friend for dinner just shooting the shit as productive. Because productive for me is different than for you.

I’m here to enjoy the journey of being alive, and that means working on things I care about, but more importantly, asking myself what I truly care about.

And It’s not external success, or money, or fame. It’s freedom, health, inner peace, love, and a sense of meaning. We have one life. I don’t want to get to the end of mine, look back, and wonder whose life I was really living.

This is my story. I hope it builds slowly, meaningfully, with twists and turns I can’t foresee. A lotta love, inevitable pain, space between the words to breathe, and in the end, some well-earned wisdom.

“I heard that you blowin’ up fast, but I think it’s better to slowly erupt” — J. Cole and Smino, 90 Proof

This is one of my favorite verses in hip hop.

In our world of instant gratification, we want things to happen now. Again, I’m saying this because I, too, am tempted to want things now. I question if I’m doing things wrong, if I’m falling behind my peers.

But then I write. I go inside. I stay open. And I remember who I am.

Blowing up fast.

This doesn’t just mean being rich, famous, successful — the external stuff.

To me, it would mean having the answers to life’s perennial challenges. Healing quickly. Overcoming obstacles with ease.

Yet that’s not the way life actually works. It takes years, decades, to be an overnight success. It takes years to make it. And making it, getting there, crossing the finish line isn’t really the point, anyway.

I think it’s better to slowly erupt.

That means to grow slowly but surely with time. Perhaps a lifetime.

And man, while I’m definitely not blowing up fast, sometimes I think to myself, damn kid, you are slowly erupting. Incremental gains. Lessons learned from challenges — progress.

Progress, however slow, is all we can hope for. Seeds take time to blossom. And I figure I’m still planting seeds, laying the foundation for many more chapters in this life.

Seeds of health, from the effort I take every day to be strong, clear-minded and open-hearted.

Seeds of success sprouting from pursuing the things I love — writing, my podcast, producing things we can hold in our hands, things that take time to make.

I don’t get instant gratification from writing a book. So why do it? Because I get long-term satisfaction from seeing an idea come to fruition over years.

The point is: I don’t want to rush my life.

So I’ll do the work I long to do, the work that feeds my soul. I’ll do the work I need to do to support my dreams, too. But I won’t do just for the sake of doing.

I’ll live, just for the sake of living.

If it takes ten, twenty, thirty years to make these dreams come true, I want to have a damn good time along the way.

I’m thinking about planning a trip later this year, a solo trip in a city that’s captivated me for a while. A place where east meets west. Istanbul.

It’s bustling. It’s ancient. I want to go for a while and just be there, taking time to sink into the culture and the pace of life. I long to amble around, walk through the mosques at my leisure, study the art; settle into a routine of running at dawn, or just going on long walks without a plan, writing in my journal at cafes and taking photos at different times of day.

I’ll wander. Think. Observe the world and my inner garden.

Exploration keeps the fire in me lit. I must nurture my dreams of being a writer, a creator, and a citizen of the world. I’m not settling, ever. But I know things will take time.

I’ll continue to pursue what lights me up inside. I have to believe. I have to tell myself every morning, every day, that things are gonna work out better than I could possibly imagine.

They already are. I’m nothing but grateful.

We’re gonna be gone one day.

Relax. Step outside into the sun. Listen to the wind soughing through the trees, the call of the hawks circling above, the melody of your breathing.

Feel your feet in the soil, or in a pool, or maybe the ocean. It’s marvelous, being here. Being here is all we’re here to really do.

For weekly tales from this open heart, subscribe to Vinny’s Field Notes and support my writing. Much love.