The other day, I put this tweet out there,

As you age, you either get cynical or wise.

I’ve been thinking about wisdom and aging and I noticed that some people grow closer to the most important people in their lives as they grow older, while others isolate emotionally even when they are surrounded by people they have known for a long time.

I got a bunch of comments that were like, Why not both? but I don’t think it's really possible to be both cynical and wise.

If you have a fundamental distrust for others that grows over time, you will end up isolated. 

Close bonds require trust and isolation is simply unwise over time. It leaves you lonely and spiritually malnourished.

Plus, cynicism is a poor way to frame the world. 

Sure, there are rotten people out there, but there are wonderful people out there too, lots of them, and the longer we live the more opportunities we have to grow close to the good ones, to love them and to allow ourselves to be loved.

I got one comment on that tweet above that really stuck with me and I thought I would write about it here. Funny enough, the person who left the comment deleted it so I will have to reconstruct it through my own lens, the same lens that found it of interest in the first place.

The reply went something like,

Me and my friends are professionals in our thirties and more and more we see the world as headed downhill fast and so being cynical seems like the natural path.

This comment stuck with me so much because I observe this cohort and I see this growing despondency. And these are important people. They are helping to build the world we live in.

So I wrote out this post and I hope the guy who deleted his comment sees it and maybe even shares it with his friends.

The Two Worlds

There are two worlds. 

The world that exists out there and the world you create for yourself. 

The World Out There

The world that exists out there is madness, cold and ugly, and it has always been this way for millions of years. 

It just seems worse now because we have a 24/7/365 stream of bad news bombarding us from every direction. 

And what’s worse, it seems like you can’t do anything about it, like we are powerless. 

It’s important to know that the world has always been a mess. It’s just the state of the universe. Entropy is reality.

You didn’t create it, you can’t do much about it, and you don’t owe it anything.

Now, here’s where it gets better…

The World You Create For Yourself

There’s this other world, the world you create for yourself. 

The place where you have some control over outcomes, the place where you have agency. The place where you can make your life better for you and your family and friends and employees through your actions. This is the place where your home is.

This is where you work hard and smart and you take good care of yourself and you look out for your people.

This is where you focus 99.9% of your energy and goodness and creativity and time and attention and love. This is where the good stuff happens. 

This is the place where you make the good stuff happen.

Ignore the world out there where absurd bad news seems to come out of every corner. You can’t do anything about it anyway.

And focus everything you got on the world you create for yourself.

That’s my advice my guy who deleted his reply!

You will make the life you want for yourself and you will feel great about it and you will nourish yourself and the people you love.

The Kicker

And here’s the beautiful kicker.

It turns out that when you focus your energy and agency on the world you create for yourself, when you work hard and smart and you take good care of yourself and your people, somehow magically you do make the world out there a little bit better. A little less cold, a little less absurd and entropic.