Wise advice — unless you reserve time for what truly matters, you’ll always be trapped by the urgencies of others. Pay yourself first

You will always carve out time for yourself – ego and selfishness are so powerful. That’s why you must force yourself to do something nice with – and for – others.

I feel this acutely as someone who has niche interests and the ability to dive deep into them. I could spend all my time alone, curl up into myself, like some sort of autistic auroborous.

So, quite frequently, I have to interrupt my own work. To turn from the computer and listen to my daughter explain how she got stickers for making it a quarter of the way to “100 books read this year”. To look at the circular rhinestones, glitter hearts, and rhinestone butterflies (!?) arranged around the number twenty five. And to answer the fateful question: “Which one do you like the most?” It feels wrenching – to interrupt the flow, to break the experiment, to sever my line of thought.

I am so goddamned privileged. I have been pushed along by an unbroken line of survivors, smart-alecs and hustlers – and I’m lying there making splashing sounds, saying “Look how far I’ve come! I must be an Olympic swimmer!” My parents spirited me away from two countries that aggressively turning their men into mincemeat and soiling their souls with war crimes. Every day, I have to remind myself that I am a faintly ridiculous man. A man who has not chiseled from rock, or carved wood, or moved a couch under his own strength.

Ironically, the best way to grow as an individual is to tear away from what you want to do – to force yourself to be fully present with friends, family, even strangers. To look beyond your interests and obsessions. And maybe, through grudging practice, to enlarge your soul.

And once you have broken away from your own narrow interests, you’ll be rewarded with a wider field of vision. Insight into others’ worlds and others’ challenges you never knew existed. A world of curiosity.

There’ll always be something more that you can do for yourself. It’s possible to live a whole life that way – believing that you are the protagonist of the whole story. The whole thing! But my oh my, what a circumscribed story that would be…