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5 Lessons on Living a Meaningful Life from Legendary Hunter S. Thompson Letter

I recently posted Choose a Way of Life You Know You Will Enjoy: Letter to My Children based on gonzo journalist — Hunter S. Thompson's — 1958 letter to his close friend, Hume Logan, about how to find your purpose in life. Thompson's letter (reprinted below in full) is one of best advice pieces I've ever read.

Lesson 1: Define Your Way Of Life

Thompson writes,

...beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life ... decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living within that way of life.

This is my favorite part of Hunter S. Thompson's letter: "Identify how you want to live, not what you want to achieve."It's a deceptively simple idea, but one that cuts against the grain of how most people approach their lives. Because we live in a culture that idolizes wealth and achievement, most of us are conditioned to prioritize the what — the achievements, the accolades, the milestones — over the more profound and enduring question: How do I actually want to live? The costs of prioritizing the WHAT-ACHIEVE axis over the HOW-LIVE axis are immense, yet most don't recognize it until they've already paid the price.

Can we realistically know in our teens or 20s what we want to achieve by our 50s or 60s? In my younger years, I was certain we could. Now, I'm not so sure. And what about those rare individuals who do achieve everything they once dreamed of — will it matter if they never stopped to ask how they wanted to spend their days? What is the point of reaching the summit if the climb hollowed you out and left you unfulfilled?

I'm not suggesting at all that there's no place for considerations around 'what you want to achieve'. I just think that understanding 'how you want to live' deserves far more attention than we tend to give it, especially in our earlier years.

Example considerations of 'how you want to live': Close your eyes, clear your mind, and imagine the texture of an ordinary day in your ideal future life. Now, ask yourself —

These questions force us to confront the specifics of how we live, not just what we hope to accomplish. They strip away the seductive, goal-oriented visions of the future and ground us in something more real: the daily rhythms, the people, and the places that make a life worth living.

Lesson 2: Avoid The Perils Of Advice

Thompson writes,

I am not a fool, but I respect your sincerity in asking my advice. I ask you though, in listening to what I say, to remember that all advice can only be a product of the man who gives it. What is truth to one may be disaster to another. I do not see life through your eyes, nor you through mine. If I were to attempt to give you specific advice, it would be too much like the blind leading the blind.

Advice can be dangerous. Using someone else's map of reality is risky. When you ask for advice, people are most likely to default to specifics—telling you what they did to achieve what they achieved. But the real problem is one of specificity. Your world and theirs are very different, so you can't apply their exact steps, techniques, or protocols and really expect achieve the same outcome.

Here's what you can do: when giving or receiving advice, "focus on the general, not the specific. Then make it specific to you."

Lesson 3: Live By Design, Not Default

Thompson writes,

Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to follow (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real purpose in any of the eight. THEN— and here is the essence of all I’ve said— you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH ...I’m not trying to send you out 'on the road' in search of Valhalla, but merely pointing out that it is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it. There is more to it than that— no one HAS to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means convince yourself that you HAD to do it. You’ll have lots of company.

Powerful words. Useful, helpful, and so very true. My hope is that more younger people take this challenge on — it is not necessary to accept choices handed down to you by life as you know it.

Most people only get one shot. Stop playing games by default. YOU get to choose how you live your life. YOU, not them.

Lesson 4: Our Goals Should Conform To Us (Not Vice Versa)

Thompson writes,

So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES. But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors—but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal.

Please read that last line again and again. Build it into your soul and don't ever forget it. Too many of us tie our self worth to some arbitrary external achievement or timeline. YOU ARE NOT YOUR GOALS.

Lesson 5: Seek Experiences That Alter-Shift-Change Your Perspective

Thompson writes,

When you were young, let us say that you wanted to be a fireman. I feel reasonably safe in saying that you no longer want to be a fireman. Why? Because your perspective has changed. It’s not the fireman who has changed, but you. Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.

Neuroplasticity is the idea that our experiences actually change the structure and function of our brain. Our actions and reactions — what we do — shapes our reality.

The most successful people believe that finding the truth is way more important than being right. You can easily see this yourself. Observe any successful person for a little while and it will become very clear that they have no problem whatsoever being wrong. In fact, they enjoy, embrace, and appreciate new information and experiences as they see these as opportunities to learn and grow and change.

Thompson's Original Letter to Hume

April 22, 1958
57 Perry Street
New York City

Dear Hume,

You ask advice: ah, what a very human and very dangerous thing to do! For to give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies something very close to egomania. To presume to point a man to the right and ultimate goal— to point with a trembling finger in the RIGHT direction is something only a fool would take upon himself.

I am not a fool, but I respect your sincerity in asking my advice. I ask you though, in listening to what I say, to remember that all advice can only be a product of the man who gives it. What is truth to one may be disaster to another. I do not see life through your eyes, nor you through mine. If I were to attempt to give you specific advice, it would be too much like the blind leading the blind.

“To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles … ” (Shakespeare)

And indeed, that IS the question: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make consciously or unconsciously at one time in our lives. So few people understand this! Think of any decision you’ve ever made which had a bearing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been anything but a choice however indirect— between the two things I’ve mentioned: the floating or the swimming.

But why not float if you have no goal? That is another question. It is unquestionably better to enjoy the floating than to swim in uncertainty. So how does a man find a goal? Not a castle in the stars, but a real and tangible thing. How can a man be sure he’s not after the “big rock candy mountain,” the enticing sugar-candy goal that has little taste and no substance?

The answer— and, in a sense, the tragedy of life— is that we seek to understand the goal and not the man. We set up a goal which demands of us certain things: and we do these things. We adjust to the demands of a concept which CANNOT be valid. When you were young, let us say that you wanted to be a fireman. I feel reasonably safe in saying that you no longer want to be a fireman. Why? Because your perspective has changed. It’s not the fireman who has changed, but you. Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.

So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything other than galloping neurosis?

The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all, or not with tangible goals, anyway. It would take reams of paper to develop this subject to fulfillment. God only knows how many books have been written on “the meaning of man” and that sort of thing, and god only knows how many people have pondered the subject. (I use the term “god only knows” purely as an expression.) There’s very little sense in my trying to give it up to you in the proverbial nutshell, because I’m the first to admit my absolute lack of qualifications for reducing the meaning of life to one or two paragraphs.

I’m going to steer clear of the word “existentialism,” but you might keep it in mind as a key of sorts. You might also try something called Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre, and another little thing called Existentialism: From Dostoyevsky to Sartre. These are merely suggestions. If you’re genuinely satisfied with what you are and what you’re doing, then give those books a wide berth. (Let sleeping dogs lie.) But back to the answer. As I said, to put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.

But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors— but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal. In every man, heredity and environment have combined to produce a creature of certain abilities and desires— including a deeply ingrained need to function in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE something; he has to matter.

As I see it then, the formula runs something like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is fulfilling a need (giving himself identity by functioning in a set pattern toward a set goal), he avoids frustrating his potential (choosing a path which puts no limit on his self-development), and he avoids the terror of seeing his goal wilt or lose its charm as he draws closer to it (rather than bending himself to meet the demands of that which he seeks, he has bent his goal to conform to his own abilities and desires).

In short, he has not dedicated his life to reaching a pre-defined goal, but he has rather chosen a way of life he KNOWS he will enjoy. The goal is absolutely secondary: it is the functioning toward the goal which is important. And it seems almost ridiculous to say that a man MUST function in a pattern of his own choosing; for to let another man define your own goals is to give up one of the most meaningful aspects of life— the definitive act of will which makes a man an individual.

Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to follow (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real purpose in any of the eight. THEN— and here is the essence of all I’ve said— you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.

Naturally, it isn’t as easy as it sounds. You’ve lived a relatively narrow life, a vertical rather than a horizontal existence. So it isn’t any too difficult to understand why you seem to feel the way you do. But a man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.

So if you now number yourself among the disenchanted, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else. But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life. But you say, “I don’t know where to look; I don’t know what to look for.”

And there’s the crux. Is it worth giving up what I have to look for something better? I don’t know— is it? Who can make that decision but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward making the choice.

If I don’t call this to a halt, I’m going to find myself writing a book. I hope it’s not as confusing as it looks at first glance. Keep in mind, of course, that this is MY WAY of looking at things. I happen to think that it’s pretty generally applicable, but you may not. Each of us has to create our own credo— this merely happens to be mine.

If any part of it doesn’t seem to make sense, by all means call it to my attention. I’m not trying to send you out “on the road” in search of Valhalla, but merely pointing out that it is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it. There is more to it than that— no one HAS to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means convince yourself that you HAD to do it. You’ll have lots of company.

And that’s it for now. Until I hear from you again, I remain,

your friend,
Hunter

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