I Missed Ryan Holiday Even if He Was Right in Front of Me

Oh, the costs of mindlessness.

Three years ago, I was on vacation in Denver, Colorado. And apparently, the weather there is like girls with PMS.

It was a lovely, sunny day in downtown when suddenly rain clouds appeared and I felt a drizzle on my skin.

I ran to that huge bookstore called Tattered Cover before the rain worsened. At least I could keep myself busy while waiting it out, I thought.

When I entered, I saw a group of people listening to some guy on a podium.

Oh, just a book signing event.

I glanced at the crowd, picked up the book titled Conspiracy, and scanned the summary at the back.

Non-fiction mystery books aren’t really my thing.

He also authored this other book The Perennial Seller.

Now that sounds a bit cooler. I’ll just make a mental note to google it later.

Then I walked away.

Later that evening, I was bored at home and randomly thought of googling that book signing event.

And that’s when I realized what I had missed.

I was about 10 feet away from Ryan Holiday and I didn’t even know it.

Obviously, I wasn’t a fan then. I had heard of The Obstacle is the Way and Ego is The Enemy, but I didn’t know how famous these books were, let alone how famous Ryan Holiday was.

I ran to my sister and told her what I had just found out, equally in shock and awe of my stupidity and obliviousness.

How could I have been so mindless?

We regret the things we don’t notice.

For a very long time, I was very mindless about how I’d go about my daily life. I’d misplace or easily forget where I put things. I’ve lost more wallets and phones than I’d care to admit. I didn’t know much about current events, nor did I bother asking. I did well in school because of my memorization skills and learned most things by rote.

I honestly thought I was a rather attentive person given that I had a rather strong ability to focus when I needed to. But it turns out that I was just highly selective with my attention.

Mindless people have many blind spots. And the most dangerous one is the mindlessness itself.

If I had been more curious or more concerned with my surroundings, I would’ve noticed who the author was. I would’ve bothered to check the event right then and there, brought home a signed copy of his books, discovered more of his brilliant writing earlier, and led even just a slightly more insightful life for it.

Mark Twain said, “You will be more disappointed with the things you didn’t do than by the ones that you did.”

But what about the things we didn’t know we’d even regret? The things we didn’t act on because there was no hard decision to make or because we didn’t think we had to?

These are the hidden, unintended regrets. The things we miss out on simply because we failed to pay attention. The moments that pass us by because it didn’t occur to us to notice them.

We may not recognize these unplanned regrets, but they’re there. They lurk in the shadows for years — Sometimes forever, if people don’t wake up from their unconsciousness.

You are the cause and casualty.

Over the years, I’ve snapped out of it. I’m still a work-in-progress when it comes to practicing mindfulness, but now I see that there is no end to the damage brought by the lack of it. When you’re mindless, you risk to:

• Lose the moment — You fail to soak in your surroundings and truly be in the moment. Chances slip through your fingers without you even knowing you had them. Windows are missed. If not opportunities, you miss lessons that could’ve altered your life in a meaningful way. Either way, you fall short of realizing the moment and living it.
• Unconsciously hurt people — Mindlessness leads to poor self-awareness. Poor self-awareness robs you of sensitivity and the ability to form meaningful connections. And if you don’t know how to truly connect with people, you end up hurting them even if you don’t mean to. Even if (you think) you’re generally a kind person, mindlessness handicaps you from practicing real empathy.
• Belittle the little things — When you’re mindless, you become “insensitive to the ways in which meaning changes depending on subtle changes in context.” You thanklessly overlook how the nuances and intricacies of something affect the bigger picture. And because of this, you fail to appreciate the joy that the little things can bring to your life.
• Forget things — This is one way to spot a mindless individual. When you do things without much conscious thought, you don’t thoroughly track your behavior. You put your car keys down but you don’t register the movement in your brain to recall where.
• Stunt your growth — A mindless disposition is your ticket to a highly inaccurate & misguided evaluation of your self. It just doesn’t occur to you notice certain things about yourself and the world around you, even when you could’ve gained an advantage for doing so. So, you form an incomplete picture of your strengths and weaknesses, and that hinders you from improving and bringing out the best in you.
• Know but not understand — Most of us are wired to treat commonly accepted rules as absolute truths. Fork should be on the left, spoon on the right. Though harmless in some situations, carrying this mindless disposition in absorbing information as you grow up freezes your understanding of the world. You become a parrot learner — only mimicking information without digging deeper or questioning it.

The world is full of mindless people — an unfortunate thing I’ve realized over time. Seeing how they act has helped me spot the gaps in my thoughts and behaviors. Conversely, being around wiser people has helped me become more attuned to myself and my surroundings.

And, well, if observing other people doesn’t do the trick, the perils of mindlessness will catch up to you, hopefully, sooner rather than later.

Life has its way of biting you in the ass for your thoughtlessness. Like missing the chance to meet a famous & influential person.

Today, Ryan Holiday is one of my favorite thought leaders, which is why it sucks even more to remember the experience.

But at least I see it now for what it was — a “non-experience”. But more importantly, I see myself more clearly.

I have a long way to go in this journey towards mindfulness, but I know this much: It takes effort, brave introspection, daily systems, a little bit of guidance, and a whole lot of time.

But if there’s anything I’d want you to take away from this story, it’s that the costs of mindlessness are more costly than we’ll ever know. We overlook way too many important things, underestimate the power of moments, trap ourselves unwittingly in unfounded perspectives, and hurt ourselves and others without even trying.

We miss out on life by default.