Path Less Traveled
Stepping off the beaten path.
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Housekeeping note: Now that I am back from vacation, I’ll be posting every week on Thursday mornings. In the future, I’ll let y’all know if I am taking a break :).
What’s Up in Anime?
Jigokuraku (Hell’s Paradise) is popping & I hear Mai Hōmu Hīrō (My Home Hero), a story of a man who murders his daughter’s abusive mafia boyfriend & then seeks to protect his family, is good too.
Suzume is out in United States theaters!
Ōsama Ranking(Ranking of Kings) has also begun its second season w/ episodes dropping every Friday.
Let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see, something that could be done better or just to say Hi!👋 Email me at kiran@animebuff.co or leave a comment below.
Now to today’s piece 🤝
You’re hiking in an open space with the green, rolling hills of California surrounding you & the mooing of cows in the distance. How beautiful... As you trudge uphill, you come across a fork in the path.
One leads to an overlook; from the pictures on Google Maps, you already know it’s going to be a stunning view. The other takes you into a canyon where you’ll walk among a grove of eucalyptus trees, see the rustling of trees overhead and experience the calming scent of eucalyptus.
Which path do you take? It would be nice to catch a view... But checking out the grove of eucalyptus trees would be pleasant, I haven’t seen some in a while.
But while you're staring off into the distance to make up your mind, you see a small, meandering path. It’s not a path really, it’s just somewhere where the grass has been trodden before and it seems like someone or something went in that general direction.
What about that? A tiny voice in your head whispers.
What about it? You answer back.
Seems like we could walk it….
Yeah, I bet we could, but it might lead nowhere.
Yeah, it might…But wouldn’t it be a little fun to explore?
Yeah, yeah it could be…But what if I don’t get the view I want?
You might not, but you might get the view you didn’t know you wanted.
Huh... You’re pretty wise.
Yeah, you too.
*Mental fist bump*
So you head up the trail. You climb up the increasingly steep hill, passing cowpies, some dried some fresh.
Ah, it stinks here!
Yeah, it does.
If I’d just stuck to the path, I’d never have experienced this!
Yeah, but it’s an experience other people who stuck to the path don’t get. How often do you get to smell cowpies at your desk, eh?
The trodden grass falters and then dissipates. All that’s ahead of you is more grass.
What now? The trail ended!
Why don’t you keep hiking up to the top and see where you’ll go?
You finally get to the top and you have some tall undergrowth to your left and some trees to your right.
Well that led nowhere.
Turn around.
And so you do.
Wow.
To your left, you see the sprawling suburbs of the East Bay Area, the waters of the Bay, and directly in front, in the distance, the tops of the skyscrapers of San Francisco.
To your right, you see the green rolling hills of California with farms and cows grazing the hills. Two distinct worlds, urban and rural co-existing in one view. Incredible.
Life often takes us down sure paths. The beaten paths. The tried and true. These are life’s surest ways.
When graduating high school, we have to determine our college major. Do you want to get a Computer Science degree & spend your life in tech?
Get a pre-law degree and go to law school? Go into pre-med and compete in a spartan race to become a doctor?
How about marketing? Finance? Anthropology? Environmental studies?
We see each of these paths, just as intersections in the trail, and ask ourselves at the age of 17, “What do I want to spend the rest of my life doing?” And once we choose, we tell ourselves that our path is now heading in a certain direction.
And yet, after getting good grades in college, graduating college & starting our jobs, when some of us get to our predetermined destination (i.e. landing that incredible job) we often look around and ask ourselves, “This? This is it? I thought there’d be more…”
Then we’re told that it’s because we’re “too junior” and that excitement lies higher up the ladder. So we work, putting in the hours and late nights, finally getting that promotion.
But even then it’s not quite what we expected; the novelty quickly fades. Doubts start arising in our minds as to what we genuinely want. Questions such as What do I genuinely like doing? & When do I get to explore what I want to do?
But we suppress these inner questions as they appear way too existential to face and after all, they’re not going to help us get that next promotion or pay the bills, right? Along the way, thru this weary back&forth, we subconsciously resign ourselves to the answer that society constantly projects which is: retirement.
I just need to save up for retirement; that’ll be the day. My golden years! I’ll be able to do what I want when I want, eh?
But what happens when you are in retirement? You now look like this.
What can you do then?1
So why are we delaying pursuing excitement? Why are we not diving into the beauty of exploring our careers? Why are we not stepping off the beaten path?
It’s two things.
1. We criminalize fear & uncertainty, sometimes even unintentionally. We label it a bad thing. If you ask someone, “Hey do you want more uncertainty in your life? More fear?”
They’d be like, “Yeah… no thanks. I’m good.”But we also do so unintentionally in how we recognize others.
When we see a successful, wealthy person such as Elon Musk, it seems blatantly obvious that he would become successful. Media articles all point to signs of his genius from an early age and it’s evident that he’d go on to do incredible things.
But there’s an issue with that; hindsight will always be 20/20.
The unknown is scary because we do not know where it will lead. In a world where many common actions have direct consequences, delayed consequences can be unsettling especially if we are expecting them to be positive.
You know that if you click “Buy” on the Amazon app for that toilet paper, you can be fairly sure that it’ll show up at your front door. Direct correlation. Pressing Buy on Amazon = Toilet Paper at my door + peace of mind while on the loo.
But what about, say weight loss? You go to the gym every day for two weeks, commit to that new diet and get those blissful 8 hours of sleep each night. After two weeks, you notice nothing major has changed. Doubts grow in your mind. What about those people dropping 5 lbs in a week?… I guess it must not be working. I clearly don’t know what I am doing. You shrug and give up.
But there’s an issue with remaining with the status quo especially if you know that is not something you inherently want.
Yes, there is no known payoff to trying your own things but there is a certain & known cost to continuing your actions as before. Yes, going to the gym, implementing a new diet, and sleeping well each night for two weeks may not have been reflected visibly in your mirror but being overweight has serious physical and mental health complications, so a price is being paid.
Your trajectory, without deviation, will be the path of least resistance, the autopilot path.
2. It’s hard to listen to your sincere wants, needs & desires in a world that is constantly peppering you with information and seeking to grab your attention.
The world has a lot going on; paying attention to & giving consideration to everything is impossible. Between your job, your friends, Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, Tinder, Hinge, family obligations, keeping yourself healthy, paying bills, romance, and thoughts on what’s going on in the world, you’ve got a lot going on! It can be easy to experience life as a constant conveyor belt on which you are the recipient. That you must go to that event or like that post or watch that next video or care about that one cause.
Each of these technologies (from social media apps) to the way something is delivered (spunky headlines on the nightly news) is designed by teams of engineers/producers to hit specific emotional needs. It’s a war for attention where the default state is not neutral but where you spend all of your time engaged with their platforms.
This is why I am fiercely determined to manage my attention by blocking most notifications & various blocking apps.2 I’ve also removed most social media from my phone and maintain an arms-length distance from it. I think it can be a powerful tool when used appropriately but can be dangerously addictive when used too liberally. Humans have not evolved to be exposed to god-like technology.
“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.”
Edward O. Wilson, 1929
In addition to that, I do weekly planning, a daily review at the end of each day(5 min) + light daily planning for the next day(5 min).3
What happens when we try stepping past fear & uncertainty & listen closely to our sincere wants & desires?
We realize that the beaten path is just a path; one of n number of paths around us that we could take at any moment in time. Even the meandering trail was just a guide; the grass is something that can be walked on too!
This is what the paths of schooling, college, career & life experience prepare you for. It’s not necessarily the paths themselves but what these paths afford you to be able to do. At any point in the journey, you can decide and say, “Here. Right here. I’m going to step off and forge my own path.”
In so many ways, this is why anime & other animated works draw me. It’s the creation of separate worlds that we can design to our rules, expectations, and desires, devoid of or inclusive of rules from this world. It’s the forging of our own paths.
So remember it’s not the beaten path that matters. You can follow it and reach a place with a great view. Or, you can step off the path & might, just might catch those experiences that are not on the reviews on Google Maps or people’s Instagram feeds. Views like this one.
East Bay & the Bay(left) SF in the distance (center), green hills(right)
-Kiran
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Based on Owen Stoneking’s Would You Trade Places with Warren Buffett.
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Intelligent Change’s Productivity Planner. (No sponsorship or commission, just what works for me!)
Kiran’s Gems 💎
Where to Watch
Hell’s Paradise
Stream: Crunchyroll (Season 1)
Suzume
Theaters only rn. (United States)
My Home Hero
Stream: Crunchyroll (Season 1)
Ranking of Kings
Stream: Crunchyroll (currently releasing)
Buy: AppleTV (Season 1), Amazon (Season 1)