“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” ~Albert Einstein, adapted

I often feel like I was born into the wrong story.

I grew up in a time when success meant something quieter. My father was a public school music teacher. We didn’t have much, but there was a dignity in how he carried himself. He believed in doing good work—not for recognition or wealth, but because it mattered.

That belief shaped me. I became a teacher, filmmaker, and musician. And for decades, I’ve followed a similar path: one rooted in meaning, not money.

But somewhere along the way, the story changed.

All around me—especially in places like Los Angeles, where I’ve lived and worked—I see people running. Hustling. Branding. Monetizing. It’s not enough to be good anymore. You have to be seen. Promoted. Scaled. Life itself has become something to market.

And in that shift, I’ve felt something sacred go missing.

The False Promise

I’m not against success. I want to be able to pay my bills, support my family, and feel valued. But the version of success we’re fed—fame, visibility, endless productivity—is a lie. It promises meaning but often delivers emptiness.

We’ve replaced presence with performance. Care with clicks. Integrity with optimization. And the result? A society where exhaustion is normal and enough is never enough.

Psychologists call it extrinsic motivation—doing something for a reward, like money or applause. It’s not inherently bad. But when it dominates our lives, we lose touch with intrinsic motivation: the joy of doing something just because it matters to us.

When everything becomes a transaction, even joy starts to feel like a product.

The Scarcity Game

Sometimes I feel like we’re all scrambling for crumbs. Competing for attention, clients, gigs, or algorithms. Everyone trying to survive, to be seen, to matter.

It’s primal—like a twisted version of the hunter-gatherer instinct. But where ancient humans balanced competition with community, we’ve kept the fight and lost the tribe.

Now, even collaboration often feels strategic—a means to climb, not to connect. “Networking” replaces friendship. “Partnerships” become performance. We’re told to “collaborate” so we can get ahead—not because it nourishes our souls.

That scarcity mindset doesn’t just shape how we work. It distorts how we see ourselves. If someone else is thriving, we feel like we’re falling behind. If we’re not being noticed, we start to doubt our worth.

This isn’t just economics. It’s spiritual erosion.

Capitalism and What It Forgot

I’ve been thinking about capitalism—not as a political slogan, but as a cultural story. Adam Smith imagined markets built on freedom and mutual benefit. But today’s version often rewards extraction over contribution, performance over presence, and individual gain over shared good.

Even education and healthcare—things meant to uplift—are judged by efficiency, growth, and return on investment. I’ve seen schools cut arts programs in the name of data. I’ve watched care become content.

And I’ve felt it in myself—this pressure to prove my value with numbers, even when the most meaningful things I do can’t be measured.

Another Way of Living

I’ve spent time filming in remote indigenous communities in the southern Philippines, where life moves at a different pace. There, people didn’t ask how to monetize their purpose. They lived it. Storytelling was teaching. Planting was prayer. Taking care of elders wasn’t a chore—it was an honor.

Nobody was branding themselves.

But even in these places, that way of life is vanishing. Global markets, smartphones, and social media have arrived. The younger generation is pulled toward modern success. And who can blame them? Visibility promises power. But what’s quietly lost is the rootedness of belonging.

And it’s not just them. It’s all of us.

Do We Have to Disappear?

Sometimes people say, “If you don’t like the rat race, go live in a monastery.”

But I don’t want to disappear. I love music, conversation, cities, teaching. I want to live in the world—not retreat from it.

So the real question becomes: Can we live meaningfully within this world, without being consumed by it?

I believe we can. In fact, I think we must.

There are people everywhere doing quiet, vital work: teachers who never go viral, gardeners who share food, coders who write open-source tools, volunteers who show up without posting about it. They aren’t trending—but they are tending to something real.

Choosing What’s Real

I don’t have a formula. I still worry about money. I still wonder if what I do matters. But I keep coming back to this:

I’d rather make something honest that reaches ten people than fake something that reaches ten thousand.

I’d rather be present than polished. I’d rather care than compete.

If you feel this too—this ache, this fatigue, this quiet grief that something essential is being lost—you’re not alone.

And you’re not broken. You may be one of the ones who remembers.

Remembers what it feels like to listen deeply. To give without scoring points. To live from the inside out, not the outside in.

That remembering isn’t weakness. It’s your compass. And even in a monetized world, it still points you home.

The Truth Beneath the Lie

Here’s what I’ve learned: Success, as we’re taught to define it, is a moving target. You can chase it for decades and still feel empty.

But meaning—real, soul-deep meaning—is something we can return to at any moment. It’s in how we love. How we show up. How we make others feel. It’s in the work we do when no one is watching.

We may not be able to change the whole system. But we can tell a truer story.

One where value isn’t based on performance. One where success isn’t a finish line. One where we belong—not because we’re impressive, but because we’re human.

That story is still possible. And it’s worth telling.

About Tony Collins

Tony Collins is a documentary filmmaker, educator, and writer whose work explores creativity, caregiving, and personal growth. He is the author of: Windows to the Sea—a moving collection of essays on love, loss, and presence. Creative Scholarship—a guide for educators and artists rethinking how creative work is valued. Tony writes to reflect on what matters—and to help others feel less alone.

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“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” ~Alan Watts

As I enter the later stage of life, I find myself asking questions that are less about accomplishment and more about meaning. What matters now, when the need to prove myself has softened, but the old voices of expectation still echo in my mind?

In a world that prizes novelty, speed, and success, I wonder what happens when we’re no longer chasing those things. What happens when our energy shifts from striving to listening? Can a life still be meaningful without the spotlight? Can we stop trying to be exceptional—and still feel like we belong?

These questions have taken root in me—not just as passing thoughts, but as deep inquiries that color my mornings, my quiet moments, even my dreams. I don’t think they’re just my questions. I believe they reflect something many of us face as we grow older and begin to see life through a different lens—not the lens of ambition, but of attention.

Some mornings, I wake up unsure of what I am going to do. There’s no urgent project at this time, no one needing my leadership, no schedule pulling me into motion. So I sit. I breathe. I try to listen—not to the noise of the world, but to something quieter: my own breath, my heartbeat, the faint hum of presence beneath it all.

I’ve had a life full of meaningful work. I’ve been a filmmaker, a teacher, a musician, a writer, a nonprofit director. I’ve worked across cultures and disciplines, often off the beaten path. It was never glamorous, but it was sincere. Still, despite all of that, a voice used to whisper: not enough.

I wasn’t the last one picked, but I was rarely the first. I wasn’t overlooked, but I wasn’t the standout. I didn’t collect awards or titles. I walked a different road—and somewhere along the way, I absorbed the belief that being “enough” meant being exceptional: chosen, praised, visible.

Even when I claimed not to care about recognition, part of me still wanted it. And when it didn’t come, I quietly began to doubt the value of the path I’d chosen.

Looking back, I see how early that need took hold. As a child, I often felt peripheral—not excluded, but not essential either. I had ideas, dreams, questions, but I can’t recall anyone asking what they were. The absence of real listening—from teachers, adults, systems—left a subtle wound. It taught me to measure worth by response. If no one asked, maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe I didn’t matter.

That kind of message burrows deep. It doesn’t shout—it whispers. It tells you to prove yourself. To strive. To reach for validation instead of grounding in your own presence. And so, like many, I spent decades chasing a sense of meaning, hoping it would be confirmed by the world around me.

When that confirmation didn’t come, I mistook my quiet path for failure. But now I see it more clearly: I was never failing—I was living. I just didn’t have the cultural mirror to see myself clearly.

Because this isn’t just personal—it’s cultural.

In American life, we talk about honoring our elders, but we rarely do. We celebrate youth, disruption, and innovation but forget continuity, reflection, and memory. Aging is framed as decline, rather than depth. Invisibility becomes a quiet fate.

The workplace retires you. The culture tunes you out. Even family structures shift, often unintentionally, to prioritize the new.

It’s not just individuals who feel this. It’s the society itself losing its anchor.

In other cultures, aging is seen differently. The Stoics called wisdom the highest virtue. Indigenous communities treat elders as keepers of knowledge, not as relics. The Vikings entrusted decision-making to their gray-haired assemblies. The Clan Mothers of the Haudenosaunee and Queen Mothers of West Africa held respected leadership roles rooted in time-earned insight, not in youth.

These cultures understand something we’ve forgotten: that perspective takes time. That wisdom isn’t the product of speed but of stillness. That life becomes more valuable—not less—when it’s been deeply lived.

So the question shifts for me. It’s not just What’s the point of my life now? It becomes What kind of culture no longer sees the point of lives like mine? If we measure human value only by productivity, we end up discarding not just people—but the wisdom they carry.

Still, I don’t want to just critique the culture. I want to live differently. If the world has lost its memory of how to honor elders, perhaps the first step is to remember myself—and live into that role, even if no one names it for me.

In recent years, I’ve found grounding in Buddhist teachings—not as belief, but as a way to walk. The Four Noble Truths speak directly to my experience.

Suffering exists. And one of its roots is tanhā—the craving for things to be other than they are.

That craving once took the form of ambition, of perfectionism, of seeking approval. But now I see it more clearly. I suffered not because I lacked meaning—but because I believed meaning had to look a certain way.

The Third Noble Truth offers something radical: the possibility of release. Not through accomplishment, but through letting go. And the Eightfold Path—Right View, Right Intention, Right Action, Right Livelihood, and so on—doesn’t prescribe a goal—it offers a rhythm. A way to return to the present.

Letting go doesn’t mean retreat. It means softening the grip. Not grasping for certainty, but sitting with what is real. Not proving anything, but living with care.

Carl Jung advised his patients to break a sweat and keep a journal. I try to do both.

Writing is how I make sense of what I feel. It slows me down. It draws me into presence. I don’t write to be known. I write to know myself. Even if the words remain unseen, the process itself feels holy—because it is honest.

I’ve stopped waiting for someone to give me a platform or role. I’ve begun to live as if what I offer matters, even if no one applauds.

And on the best days, that feels like freedom.

There are still mornings when doubt returns: Did I do enough? Did I miss my moment? But I come back to this:

It matters because it’s true. Not because it’s remarkable. Not because it changed the world. But because I lived it sincerely. I stayed close to what mattered to me. I didn’t look away.

That’s what trust feels like to me now—not certainty or success, but a quiet willingness to keep walking, to keep showing up, to keep listening. To live this final chapter not as a decline, but as a deepening.

Maybe the point isn’t to be exceptional. Maybe it’s to be present, to be real, to be kind. Maybe it’s to pass on something quieter than legacy but more lasting than ego: attention, care, perspective.

Maybe that’s what elders were always meant to do.

About Tony Collins

Tony Collins is a documentary filmmaker, educator, and writer whose work explores creativity, caregiving, and personal growth. He is the author of: Windows to the Sea—a moving collection of essays on love, loss, and presence. Creative Scholarship—a guide for educators and artists rethinking how creative work is valued. Tony writes to reflect on what matters—and to help others feel less alone.

See a typo or inaccuracy? Please contact us so we can fix it!