Alex Blanton

(The following is the message I emailed to colleagues and friends on my last day at LinkedIn. At the request of many of them, I’ve decided to post it publicly….For the last month and half I’ve been residing, volunteering, and meditating high in the Andes Mountains near Cuenca, Ecuador.)

“In nooks all over the earth sit men who are waiting, scarcely knowing in what way they are waiting, much less that they are waiting in vain. Occasionally the call that awakens– that accident which gives the ‘permission to act ‘— comes too late, when the best youth and strength for action has already been used up by sitting still; and many have found to their horror when they ‘leaped up’ that their limbs had gone to sleep and their spirit had become too heavy. ‘It is too late,’ they said to themselves, having lost their faith in themselves and henceforth forever useless.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Everyone holds his fortune in his own hands, like a sculptor the raw material he will fashion into a figure. But it’s the same with that type of artistic activity as with all others: We are merely born with the capability to do it. The skill to mold the material into what we want must be learned and attentively cultivated.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

These past six years of young adulthood have marked, for me, a sort of personal odyssey. From my simple roots back in Nashville, I ventured first to the gridiron of college athletics, then to the competitive urban jungle of Manhattan, and finally out to the oasis of creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurial endeavor that is Silicon Valley. All of this done in a relentless pursuit to experience and consume the extremes that life has to offer. My restless spirit impelled me onwards in this quest for More. An unquenchable thirst that, for better or worse, pushed me to pursue maximal achievement, status, and upward mobility.

In truth, this pursuit, starting early in my youth, emerged from deep seeded feelings of confusion and discontentment within myself. I wasn’t happy. And so, as an ambitious American with a deep belief in romanticized consumerism, I genuinely thought that a journey of external achievement and consumption would eventually lead to a mountaintop of satisfaction and peace in my life. I thought that should I defer happiness to a later date, and focus my stress and energy in the present moment on building towards something in the distant future. My problems would eventually be solved by acquiring prestigious degrees, elevating my social circles, and embarking upon the pathway to becoming rich and successful. I just needed to reach that “higher level”, and everything would one day be okay.