A tree. Vineyards. A village in the distance. Nothing extraordinary. I like that.
Most of my life looks rather different. I travel the world, coach executives, facilitate workshops, write, build, train, make plans. My calendar is rarely empty, and I actually like it that way.
I like intensity. I like creating things and moving things forward.
This is not a post about slowing down.
It is about something I have become increasingly interested in:
Can we want the next thing without needing the next thing?
For high achievers, doing easily becomes more than something we do. It becomes part of who we are.
We achieve, solve, improve, build, develop. There is nothing wrong with that. Ambition has created much of what is meaningful in my own life.
The problem begins when doing is no longer something we choose, but something we need in order to feel like someone.
You may know the feeling. A day without progress feels strangely unsatisfying. Rest needs a purpose. Even doing nothing needs a business case.
You optimize your sleep to perform better. Exercise for longevity. Walk in nature to recover. Meditate to become calmer, sharper, more focused.
We have even turned presence into a productivity tool.
After roughly 30 years of meditation practice, I experience its deepest invitation differently.
Meditation is not primarily about becoming calmer or improving attention. It points toward something far more fundamental:
This moment is not preparation for life. This moment is life.
There is no life waiting for us after the next achievement, the next deadline, the next breakthrough.
Yet we have become extraordinarily good at instrumentalizing almost everything.
Presence for better leadership. Meditation for better decisions. Stillness for greater resilience. Nature for nervous-system regulation.
All useful. But still instrumental.
If every moment of presence has to make us better at something later, we have simply made being another servant of doing.
There is another possibility: to sit under a tree without making the tree part of your development plan. To experience a moment that has no function.
Not because you need to recover.
Not because it will make you perform better tomorrow.
Simply because this is your life, too.
Nothing missing.
Tomorrow I will work again. I will coach, write, create, train, travel and plan. I still have ambitions. I still love intensity. There is a lot I want to do with my life.
I don’t want less life.
I want to be fully engaged in it without asking every moment to take me somewhere else.
To want the next thing without needing the next thing.
Can you allow a moment to have no purpose at all?
Can you be fully there when there is nothing to achieve, improve, optimize or recover from?
Or do you still need the moment to get you somewhere?