Field Note #8: Why Does Everything Have to Lead Somewhere?

Last week, I sat on a Victorian bench by the sea watching an eclipse. It was a gorgeous hot day with plenty of sea breeze, and I could feel the salt on my face. I had about an hour and a half to myself, which these days is an event worthy of its own astronomical phenomenon.

There were people scattered along the seafront, all looking up. Some were wearing ordinary sunglasses (like me), some had the special eclipse glasses and one couple even brought their own home-made camera obscura.  At one point I heard a woman’s voice say, slightly bewildered:

“Well, okay, but why are they all looking at it?”

I loved that. Because really, why were we?

Nothing was going to happen afterwards, and we weren't going to achieve anything. We were not going to learn anything remarkable, and certainly nobody was going to be improved by the phenomenon. The eclipse wasn't going to reveal the meaning of life or make us better people. We were just watching something unusual happen in the sky.

And while sitting there, it struck me once again how rare it has become to do something that doesn't lead anywhere — to simply sit and be. 

We seem to want everything to somehow have a purpose. We read books to learn something, take courses to improve ourselves, exercise to become healthier. We meet someone and fairly quickly start wondering where this is going. We even rest so we can be more productive afterwards! We can barely cook dinner without wondering whether it has enough protein...

Even experiences are supposed to transform us: travel should broaden us, while difficulties should teach us. Relationships should help us grow. And, if something ends, we immediately start looking for what it was for.

What did I learn? How did it change me? What happens next?

As though an experience that produces nothing afterwards has somehow failed to justify the time it occupied.

But when I think about some of the happiest moments of my recent life, they're remarkably useless. Sitting outside a café in the sun with my dad, drinking coffee and talking. Having a cigarette in a garden in Southport at the end of the day. Watching an eclipse by the sea. And none of these moments changed my life in any way. I didn't have a breakthrough or learn anything particularly important - and they were not even particularly exciting. And neither did they lead to an opportunity, an achievement, or even a good story.

They were just very nice pieces of being alive.

And perhaps that's precisely what we're in danger of missing when we're permanently thinking about what comes next. There is a strange contradiction in the way we talk about happiness.

We spend enormous amounts of time constructing the conditions in which we imagine we'll finally be able to enjoy our lives. When I have more money. When the business works. When I move. When the children are older. When I've sorted myself out. When I meet someone. When things calm down.

Of course, some of those things matter. Money matters. Where we live matters. Relationships matter. There is nothing wrong with wanting a different or bigger life. I certainly do. But the danger is that life quietly becomes the waiting room for itself…

We build and plan and improve and recover and prepare for the point at which we'll finally arrive somewhere and start properly living. Meanwhile, life keeps happening in embarrassingly small pieces: ten minutes in the sun, a conversation that goes nowhere, a song playing while you're making dinner. Someone making you laugh. Coffee outside. A child asleep beside you. The moon doing something peculiar over the sea.

Maybe the point isn't that we should stop wanting more - maybe it's simply that not everything has to be part of getting there.

Some things don't need to teach us anything. Some relationships don't need to last forever to have mattered. Some afternoons don't need to be productive. Some experiences don't need to become memories we use to explain who we are.

Sometimes nothing needs to happen next. The moment wasn't a step towards a better life. It was the life itself.