Chip Conley

Wikipedia defines “stalemate” this way: “a situation in the game of chess where the player whose turn it is to move is not in check but has no legal move. The rules of chess provide that when stalemate occurs, the game ends as a draw.”

Burning Man meets Lawrence of Arabia meets Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (maybe with a tad of Mad Max). That was my experience last week when I made the pilgrimage to the White Sands National Park in southern New Mexico. As you’ll see in the video at the end of this post, this is a luscious lunar landscape that’s as curvaceous as it is transient.

This New York Times Op-Ed, “You Can Be a Different Person After the Pandemic,” prompted me to write this ode to the past year.

“Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off.” - Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit

Baja is famous for its treacherous roads with its stunning vistas. It’s heaven for anyone who loves to drive backroads. It’s hell for rental car companies. What an apt metaphor for life. We’re issued a vehicle at birth: our body. We’re offered expensive rental insurance (growing up with our parents), some driver’s education (school), and a roadmap (life lessons).

At least once a week, I meet a forlorn mid-lifer who whispers to me, almost embarrassed, “I don’t have a purpose.” It’s almost like they’re suggesting they don’t have a personality or a reason for living. Self-help gurus, like Tony Robbins, proclaim, “Activity without purpose is the drain of your life.”

At 15, I was a beanstalk of a kid, with shoulder-length, surfer-blond hair and a free-spirit that loved nothing more than dancing up a storm in my bedroom while listening to Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love.” If the rest of the family happened to be at one of my sisters’ sports matches, there was a good chance I’d light up a doobie and switch over to the Doobie Brothers. Such was my adolescence.

I’m not sure of the exact date yoga went mainstream in the western world, but I know when Yoda went mainstream: 1980. Thanks to his starring role in Star Wars, Master Yoda helped us see the magic of practically applied wisdom. And, of course, Luke Skywalker would never be the same.

Australian author and rebel Bronnie Ware has spent much of her life offering palliative care and has conversed with hundreds of people on their deathbed. This led her to writing a book, “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying,” dedicated to helping more of us live a regret-free life.

Newsflash: Our linear progression of learning through a single, lifetime career died last century. What is more, your job will likely evaporate this decade. And you’re going to live longer. These two facts essentially mean you’ll need to swerve into new careers at unpredictable points throughout your life.