The Agony and Ecstasy: The Blade Cuts Both Ways
I remember this specific scene in the documentary “RoadRunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain.” He is talking with a rocker friend Josh Homme about traveling on the road, feeling guilty and missing family.
Bourdain says: “It’s weird when I’m home, I’m ridiculously happy for a week. But then I start to get crazy and feel like I should be doing something.”
Josh responds:
“I call it the Bittersweet curse. Nothing feels better than going home. Nothing feels better than leaving home.”
I know exactly that same feeling.
I’ve struggled with this personally, having the privilege of building a relatively good career doing more international business travel than the average business person. It’s been immensely rewarding financially, emotionally and psychologically. Overall it’s been such an amazing experience. But it’s come at an enormous personal cost healthwise and it has had a negative effect on my family life too. Hard to build a deep relationship when you aren’t around.
I over-invested in my career. The result is I think I’ve become a pretty damn good businessman and investor. But this at the cost of what should be the most important thing in your life. 2 decades away from my aging parents and my brothers. Precious time away from my growing and beloved daughter & wife. I used to consider my family life something of incredible personal joy. But now it’s one of great pain & sadness, due to my own choices and decisions.
It’s like you spent decades building a house but it gets burned to ash because you did not take care of it properly. Or just took it for granted.
Yet, I acknowledge that this was the personal choice that I made and now have to live with.
I have regrets but they are useless as you can’t go back in time. A functioning adult should take responsibility and fix it if he can.
So you have to focus on the present and move into the future. Re-quoting the wise and super cool Han in “Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift”, “Life is simple, you make choices and you don’t look back.” Easy to say, hard to do especially for a history major like myself.
We always want what we don’t have. We think the grass is greener on the other side. But this is false.
Everything is a double edged blade. Most things in life are neutral. Things are usually never as good nor as bad as it seems at first. Sometimes removing the emotion lets us see things more clearly so we can deal with it.