A few years ago, I had a conference to attend in Istanbul. At a family dinner, I mentioned to my brother Sanjay that I’d be gone for seven days. My mom, sitting at the table, announced she was coming with me. I told Sanjay make it ten; that would give us a few extra days to see the country.
While we were planning, we found out we could get to Cappadocia, the hot air ballooning capital of the world. I asked my mom if she wanted to go up in a balloon at sunrise. She said yes before I finished the question. I reminded her she was afraid of heights. “I’ll figure it out,” she said. “I don’t get to do this every year.”
It was her 70th birthday. She got the balloon ride. She sat in on my entire conference and enjoyed dinner with 850 entrepreneurs in the Grand Bazaar. None of it was something she’d have booked for herself.
I didn’t think much about why that trip mattered to me until a recent conversation, when someone asked me a simple question: What’s important to you? I gave the easy answer: family, health, my business, and friends. She pushed me a little further; she can be pesky that way🥹! What did I need in order to actually enjoy all of those things?
Peace of mind, I said.
That led us to start imagining a pyramid. Peace of mind at the base, because without it, everything above it becomes harder to enjoy. Then health, family, work, all deeply important, but also answers some version of which most of us would probably give.
And then we got to the small section at the very top, the final piece, and she asked, “What’s important to you that isn’t necessarily important to everyone else? What’s the thing that makes your pyramid yours?” I thought that part would be easy. It wasn’t.
I tried “giving people I love experiences they’d never give themselves.” It felt true, and it explains Cappadocia. But when I pushed on it, I wasn’t sure. I love experiences myself, and I love bringing people I care about along for the ride. That’s certainly part of who I am. But is it the top of my pyramid?
I wasn’t convinced. So, I turned the question around on the person who had handed me the pyramid in the first place. Surely, she had her top layer figured out.
“Not a clue,” she said. “That’s why I balked when you told me I should write about what’s important to me. Beyond the basics, I don’t know.”
I expected an answer. Instead, I discovered we were wrestling with the same question.
Maybe that’s because the lower levels are easier to name. We don’t have to think very long before saying that health, family, friends, or peace of mind matter. They’re important, but they don’t necessarily tell us much about what makes each of us different.
The top is harder.
It asks us to separate what we’re supposed to value from what we actually value. Not what sounds good when someone asks and not what most people would agree belongs on the list; but the thing that makes our particular life feel like ours.
I don’t have a tidy ending for you. I have a balloon ride over Cappadocia that brings me joy, that I’m still trying to understand. I have a base I can name without thinking and a peak I can’t name at all.
Maybe that’s the actual assignment.
What’s important to you? What has to be true for you to actually enjoy the things you just named? And then the harder question: above all of that, what’s yours, the thing that belongs at the top of your pyramid?
If you already know, you’re ahead of me. Let me know.
“Know thyself.” – Inscribed at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi
Have a great weekend.
-Vijay