Lately, I’ve been feeling like there’s a trade-off between drive and presence. Drive, I’m using in the sense of purpose: having a cause that you want to work relentlessly towards. It’s something that gives you a deep sense of fulfillment; you love the process. For some people, it’s building a startup, for others it’s training for a marathon. What’s common to these is a desire to be one of the best and to “make it”. 1

Presence, I’m using in the sense of inner peace. It’s slowing down to smell the roses—looking around yourself and being in childlike awe of the world. It’s being content and grateful for what you have.

Maybe it’s how I defined these words, but they’re fundamentally at odds with each other. Having drive and purpose stems from a lack of satisfaction with the present. Slowing down and enjoying what you have in the present takes away from your ability to hyper-focus on your goals. Drive is about motion, presence is about stillness. 2

Growing up, I’ve always had this fire inside of me to make it—there was something I had to prove to others. I distinctly remember saying once, “I want the history of the world to feel incomplete if it didn’t include me”.

And now, I think I’m on the opposite side of the spectrum. I’m focused on how I feel and how I can affect the ones closest to me. I’m taking time to slow down and be grateful for the present. I’m not amazing at it, but I’ve worked hard to get here, and I keep at it. 3

This sounds great, but there’s always something that tugs at me: I’ve been given the opportunity to live life, and I know I have the potential, so why squander it? Is producing something valuable for the world at the price of my peace worth it?

When I reflect, I think the intention behind your drive matters. Drive should be less about proving something to others and feeling like you’ve made it. It should be something that calls to you. Something that makes you want to drift off from the serenity of presence. I think back to some of the cool projects I did in my free time in high school and earlier; they never were things I did as an end; I loved the process. It was an idea in my head that I just had to do.

And finding that drive isn’t something that walks into your lap. You’ve got to branch out a little bit to find it, getting out of your comfort zone. And when you find it, it’s okay to lose your presence—frankly, once you’ve had a taste of it, there’s no going back.

  1. I know this isn’t exactly what purpose is—I’m using it as a placeholder for an uncontrollable desire to be a part of something bigger than yourself. People find purpose in a lot of things—raising a family for example; I’m more interested in the intersection with drive. ↩

  2. As an aside, it’s very plausible to have no drive and no presence—being caught up in everyday things and not pushing yourself for something bigger. For that reason, I see these two concepts as strongly negatively correlated, but not opposites of each other. On a 2D plane, if presence is $\widehat{x}$, then purpose isn’t $-\widehat{x}$, rather $-\widehat{x}+\epsilon \cdot \widehat{y}$ (normalized). ↩

  3. I love this short video I came across some time ago; it talks about the need to justify our existence to others, something I felt captured a core belief of mine, at least before. ↩