“Life is neither a daring adventure nor nothing” — Me.
It feels kind of good to start out by quoting myself! But I should give credit where credit is due, Helen Keller ought to have said that “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing”, so I just added the “N”s, but I did so for a reason — I did so because I am a middle way person.
I’m right there, smack in the middle between the awe-inspiring neon-colored blue ocean full of wonderous life and cool stuff topped with almost too perfect smooth waves, and that damp beach, with small lifeless rocks usually filled with fishbones, plastic, glass, and other shit that no one wants and that should not be there!
Such is life, you have both of these sides to it and both of them hold equal importance and value, at least to me, they seem to do so. Although most people only focus on one side or the other.
The beach, and beach people
Let us start with exploring the beach a bit, and the people who hang out there.
The beach would be the place where you are fixing things, where you are planning and doing all the “boring” yet very necessary stuff. All the washed-up shit is there, your problems and life’s challenges and you should take care of them!
As a beach person you might spend your time trying to improve yourself or your circumstances, most likely both. A beach person focuses on getting better grades, getting a healthy body, making more money, reading self-help books, trying to improve or at least maintain their relationships, and a hundred other things. Some people end up spending the best of their days on the beach, never going out on the ocean at all. Because most beach people often have some strange feeling that they are not ready for the ocean yet because more and more stuff will keep washing up, that is what the beach will always be like, and therefore end up staying on the beach.
Examples of beach people are most likely your parents. They went to school, they got a job, they got married and had kids, and they lived a textbook life. They cleaned their homes, gave you breakfast for 18 years, and all that other jazz, they took care of the things around them and they took care of themselves.
Beach people might have all the right excuses, it could be that they need to save more money before they can travel, that they need to finish college before they can focus on their art, get a certain job, find the perfect partner, and so on, and IF they ever end up fulfilling all of these, and get a clean beach, they will sadly be old, and they will also likely really scared of swimming by that time.
The beach is safe, it is a great place to stay for a long time and it will likely give you a good life on paper, at least in the long run, but it might also be kind of boring and will it always look shit on Instagram.
The ocean, and ocean people
On the other side, you have the ocean, the ocean is the place with all the emotions, all the “YOLO” nights, all the travel, all the sex, drugs, and rock and roll, you get it, the ocean is where all the seeming fun is at.
Ocean people are the ones seemingly not giving a fuck about their grades, on how they are to make money or better themselves in any active way, they see all this as distractions from living. As an ocean person, you spend your days trying to squeeze out the maximum amount of life overall, at whatever cost. They might even look down on the beach people for their planning and fixing and suggest that they have another beer, go quit their job or education to follow them on a long holiday, that they should care less and stop focusing on improving themselves and their life, because they are missing it whilst trying to do so.
While the ocean mentality might sound nice for some at a first glance, the risk with being an ocean person is that life is a mean bitch, so it will inevitably hit them with a few big waves and they to will end up on the beach. And since they have not taken care of it whatsoever, it is likely to be so full of shit that they will panic big time when this happens!
Examples of people experiencing this might be the cool kids from high school not caring about their grades realizing that that was a huge mistake after having been stuck in a job they hate for five years seeing no way out. It might be the playboy/girl who valued sex over any type of commitment in their twenties and thirties reaching their forties seeing everyone else has kids and starting to feel sad and lonely. It might be the hippie spending their time between boring jobs and Thailand finally being getting hit by the fact that they have no idea about what to do in the future now that Thailand is not as fun while also realizing that money was a nice thing to have saved after all.
So while the Ocean is bound to always look epic on Instagram, the reality of it is not necessarily the same as what you get to see, at least not in the long run. But do not worry, you are likely not a true ocean person, true ocean people do not read medium posts!
The middle way, and the middle way people
This brings us to the third place, and its kind of people, what you see in the picture, the middle way people, between the beach and ocean and all their people.
As you might be able to tell, there are a lot of different kinds of ocean people and beach people, and most of them usually stick with their crew, the money beach people stick to the money beach people, the hippie ocean people stick with their own, the self-improvement beach people with the other beach improvers and while the party ocean people might meet all of the others during their ocean parties, they too most prefer their own kind.
Then you have us “the middle way people” or TMWP as we can call us, of which I am one, we like all of these other people.
As a TMWP, I have been obsessed with the beach, with optimizing and fixing whatever could be optimized and fixed for about ten years now. And since I still think it needs fixing and a whole lot of it, I do intend to keep the beach practice up, I intend to keep helping and improving myself as best as I can. I would say that I am a beach leaning middle way person. BUT and this is a big but, I am also kind of an ocean person, I take risks, do stupid stuff, drop out of school and go to Thailand, I accept who I am and at times I might just be bold enough to say that I love myself and my life.
Us TMWP see that all of the others have a lot to learn from each other, knowing how to make money, party, meditate, date, improve, and how to work out are all important skills to have, at least to some degree. So we focus on this, on balancing all of them.
By the way, since I am a TMWP myself, I am inevitably going to portray us as being the best, because in some ways I think we are. The reason for this belief is likely a mix of in-group bias, of me liking myself, and because I would want you to like me as well.
Likewise, I equally have an easier time pointing out what sucks about us, for example, that final part of the previous section, the “I would want you to like me as well” part, is probably the first and biggest downfall of us TMWP.
Our middlewayishness is usually based on the fact that we want to be liked, by everyone — at least that holds true for me. Therefore we might get lost in our balancing and start to think that we are all of these people at once while actually never fully being any of them and therefore simultaneously secretly being envious of everyone else while also being happy for the fact that you were not as single-minded as they are. Yes, we middle-way people are strange, trust me, I know.
Yet another curse of being us is that if you get too caught up with this whole balance thing, which is likely that you will, the risk is that you spend your whole life walking there in the middle, not fully committing to either for long enough to get the benefits. This will lead to suffering a kind of strange anhedonia in feeling the nice ocean on your feel whilst also being able to see your somewhat nice beach, not feeling at home in either and not being able to fully relate to the two kinds and life will sort of flatline, which really sucks.
Yet another bad thing with being a TMWP is that we make for the worst politicians and decision-makers. I do not think left and right is something you have to choose between but I rather like and dislike both of them in different respects. If you were to ask me what my favorite movie is I would say it depends, if you ask me who my best friend is I would say it depends. Pretty much if you ask me anything, I would either respond that I do not mind or that it depends, so once again. Being a TMWP might often feel like a life lived in fifty shades of gray (with a whole lot less sex, remember sex is mainly for the ocean people) not ever seeing the true black or white, we might never have our life as figured out as the true beach people, nor have as much extasis as the ocean people.
But to end on a cheerful note, we TMWP would do quite a good job on Instagram! Because the beach people would be envious of our pictures from strange lands and cool parties, while the ocean people being envious of us seemingly having stuff figured out — Because that is the goal of Instagram right, to make people a bit envious?
Take-aways, if there are any
While it is kind of obvious it is still important to point out that these are all caricatures, no one is all ocean or all beach or all middle way, we all have periods where we are more on or the other, but most of the time we are one.
In the culture of today I think most people want one of three things:
Beach people: They just want to feel good and they believe that if they could only become less neurotic and stop focusing on all their to-dos and it would all be better.
Ocean people: They want to become a bit less absent-minded and careless so they could just manage to stick to at least some of their to-dos making it all better.
TMWP: We want to be able to do a bit of both, as they are, but without having the feeling of being super confused and semi-crazy half the time, as we do.
Neither is necessarily better than the other, the worst-case scenarios are bad for each of them and the best are also good for each! In other words, we should all try to learn a bit from each other.
So the recipe for a person who is stuck on the beach is likely to get some ocean friends and learn from those because the ocean is epic, and vice versa because you need to have some stuff figured out!
… And for the TMWP like myself who already believe what I just said, I think it is to accept that we will never become the best at anything nor be fully relatable to most, but that being where we are is already kind of cool in and of itself, so we should accept that and be thankful for it!
If everyone tried to look at the world from their own and the other side’s real eyes, and not only through their Instagram, they would likely see more of what it is actually like.
Whoever you happen to be out of these three I think that you should do your best to figure that out, and once done with that, be proud of that person. Because it is likely great to be you in a number of ways and it likely sucks to be you in several others, people will look up to you and people will look down on you, and you will never live happily ever after either way!
