How often do you say “no” to things that would interfere with your goals?
Probably not often enough.
My mother’s summation of my life is that I take on too much. I have come to think she is right.
I have spent much of my life assuming that I can fit one more thing in, especially if it is something I care about. That has rarely come from restlessness or ambition alone. More often it has come from passion. If something matters to me, I want to say yes to it. I want to give it energy. I want to make room for it.
That sounds admirable, and sometimes it is. But it also has a cost.
The question I keep coming back to is this: what would happen if I did less? Would I go deeper, or would I do nothing? I suspect that is why saying no has not always come easily to me. Doing less can feel risky. It can feel like missed opportunity, or even lost momentum.
But I am slowly coming to see that saying no is not mainly about shutting things down. It is about guarding what matters most. It is about making room for deeper yeses. Every meaningful life is shaped not only by ambition, but by refusal.
In the end, I think it comes back to passion. Passion can lead you to add more and more, until your life is spread too thin. Or it can lead you to go deeper, to give yourself more fully to fewer things.
My instinct has usually been to add more.
I think my mother was right. It would be better, more often, to say no. Not because I care less, but because I want to go deeper.
The Afterword 
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