This marks the beginning of a journey toward equanimity and non-attachment to status and material possessions.
Yes.
Once you let it go you can relax.
You start out thinking we're smart and destined to greatness. You strive to impress others (parents, lovers, siblings, bosses, neighbors...) with how smart, strong, successful you are.
Sometime in your 40s that little voice inside starts to tell you that you're not going to be great; never going to attain sufficient power, wealth and status. For even what you do attain is never enough.
You can ignore that voice and try to stifle it: with more stuff, new stuff. (I think this is where middle age crazy kicks in).
Or you can listen.
You're never going to have all you wanted. Did you really want it in the first place? Or were you always told that you wanted it? Were you told that you had to stick to the script or else? Or else what? That people would not appropriately admire you?
You do have all you're going to get. And that's probably enough.
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"What will people think?"
I don't care.
"What do you do?"
Very little.
"What do you do in you spare time?"
I don't understand the concept of 'spare time'.
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Occasionally I feel competitive, but I am usually successful at dismissing it.
It's interesting to watch the (figurative) snorting and hoof stomping that goes on at the office, in traffic, on various message boards: people simply can not back down. It doesn't even matter what the original idea or action was; it's the principle of the thing. And it is often people in their 40s. I guess they still feel they have to prove something.
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Mongol General: What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.
Khan: To watch the squirrels.
