My thumb caught on the serrated edge of the brass casing, a sharp reminder that the metal remained colder than the North Atlantic spray hitting the gallery glass 135 feet below. I did not pull away. The sting provided a grounding wire to the reality of 15-knot winds and the relentless rhythm of the rotating lens. Up here, in the crown of this stone pillar, the air smells of ozone and ancient grease, a mixture that hasn’t changed since 1885. I was supposed to be checking the alignment of the reflectors, but my mind kept drifting back to that cramped office in the city, months ago, where a man with a very expensive watch told me I needed to ‘optimize my personal output.’

I yawned right as he reached the climax of his slide deck regarding strategic life-mapping. It wasn’t a gesture of defiance, at least not consciously. It was a physical rebellion, a tidal wave of exhaustion that crashed through my jaw because I could no longer pretend that his 5-step plan for total self-actualization mattered more than the way the light hits the water at 5:45 in the morning. He looked at me as if I had just committed a felony in his sanctuary of productivity. Perhaps I had. We are told that the self is a project to be managed, a piece of software requiring constant patches and upgrades. We are convinced that if we just find the right routine, the right 25-minute block of meditation, or the right 55-page journal, we will finally arrive at a version of ourselves that is polished, efficient, and profoundly whole.

The Performance of Growth

Flora C.-P., they called me in the official reports, the woman who walked away from a senior consultancy to scrub bird droppings off a Fresnel lens. My supervisors think I am eccentric. The truth is far more jagged. I am here because I realized that the more I focused on growing, the more I felt like a sapling being pulled by its leaves to make it taller. We have turned growth into a performance, a frantic race where the finish line is always moving 5 miles further down the road. We are exhausted from the labor of being ‘better,’ yet we feel stagnant. It is the core frustration of our age: the more we polish the surface, the thinner the material becomes.

Our lives are similar, yet we spend 85 percent of our energy staring at the glass, pointing out every smudge of our character, every hairline fracture in our discipline. We have forgotten that growth is a byproduct of existence, not the primary goal of it. It is a quiet, accidental result of doing something else entirely. It is what happens when you stop looking in the mirror and start looking at the sea.

Growth is a byproduct of neglect, not focus.

The Liberation of Distraction

This sounds like heresy in a world that sells us ‘mindfulness’ as a tool for corporate efficiency. We are told to be present, but only so we can produce more. I suggest a different path, one born of the 25 years I spent trying to be the best version of myself, only to find that the ‘best’ version was a hollow shell. Real development happens in the dark corners we forget to light. It happens when we are distracted by a task that matters, like keeping a 1000-watt bulb burning so 55 ships don’t find themselves smashed against the jagged teeth of the coastline.

When you are focused on the safety of others, or the precision of a craft, you forget to monitor your own progress. And in that forgetting, the soul finally finds the space to expand without the crushing weight of your own expectations.

There are 45 individual prisms in the lower section of this lens. Each one must be cleaned with a specific solution, a task that takes me roughly 75 minutes if I am being thorough. While I work, I do not think about my ‘personal brand’ or my ‘career trajectory.’ I think about the refraction of light. I think about the way the salt air erodes the iron over 15 decades. I think about the 5 different types of silence that exist out here on the edge of the world.

In this state of total external focus, I find that the anxieties that used to plague me have simply evaporated. I did not ‘solve’ them through therapy or self-help books. I neglected them until they realized they weren’t invited to the party. We give our problems too much oxygen by constantly analyzing them. Sometimes, the most radical thing you can do is look away.

The Dignity of Unreflective Action

We are obsessed with the ‘why’ of our behavior. Why am I procrastinating? Why am I unhappy? Why did I yawn during that 25-minute presentation? We dig into our pasts with shovels made of pop psychology, hoping to find the golden nugget of insight that will fix everything.

But the lighthouse doesn’t care why the wind blows from the North-East; it simply stands against it. The light doesn’t ask why the fog is rolling in at 5:15 PM; it just shines. There is a profound dignity in simple, unreflective action. By focusing on the maintenance of the world around us, we inadvertently maintain the world within us.

The Reduction of Self

I often think about the 135 steps I climb every evening. Each one is a physical rejection of the digital world I left behind. On step 25, I usually lose the feeling in my left calf. On step 75, my breathing becomes a rhythmic rasp that echoes off the cold stone. By the time I reach the top, I am not a ‘professional’ or a ‘success’ or a ‘failure.’ I am a set of lungs and a pair of hands.

There is a specific kind of silence that happens when the wind drops to 5 miles per hour. It is a heavy, expectant quiet that makes your ears ring. In that silence, you cannot lie to yourself. You cannot pretend that the 15-book reading list on your nightstand is making you a better person. You realize that you are just a human being, standing on a rock, surrounded by water. And that is enough. It has to be enough. If we require constant ‘growth’ to feel valid, we are essentially saying that who we are right now is worthless. We are living in a permanent state of ‘not yet.’

I have seen 15 different assistants come and go from this station. They usually last about 25 days before the isolation drives them back to the mainland. They miss the noise. They miss the constant feedback loop of likes and comments and performance reviews. They miss being told they are doing a good job. Out here, the only feedback is the fact that no ships have sunk. It is a binary existence: the light is on, or it is off. There is no ‘exceeds expectations’ rating for a lighthouse keeper. You either do the work, or you don’t. This lack of nuance is incredibly liberating. It removes the need for the constant internal monologue of self-evaluation.

I made a mistake last week. I forgot to check the fuel pressure for 35 hours. Nothing happened, the backup system kicked in, but the error was mine. In my old life, I would have spent 15 hours analyzing the ‘root cause’ of my oversight, creating a 5-point plan to ensure it never happened again, and likely flagellating myself for my lack of discipline. Here, I just fixed the pressure, wiped the oil off my hands, and watched the gulls. The mistake didn’t define me; it was just a thing that happened in the course of the day. There is a massive difference between taking responsibility for a task and taking responsibility for the entirety of your soul’s condition at every moment.

The Keeper vs. The Light

We are tired because we are trying to be both the light and the keeper of the light at the same time. We are trying to shine while simultaneously checking our own alignment. It is impossible. You cannot be the observer and the observed without creating a feedback loop that leads to a nervous breakdown.

I choose to be the keeper. I choose to focus on the brass, the oil, the glass, and the 15 gallons of cleaning fluid I have left in the shed. I will let the light take care of itself. I will trust that if I do the work, the growth will happen in the shadows, unbidden and unmanaged.

Tonight, the moon is at 75 percent visibility. The reflection on the water looks like a silver road leading toward a horizon I will never reach. I am okay with that. I no longer feel the need to reach the horizon. I am content to stay here, on step 135, and let the world be exactly what it is. I am not a project. I am not a piece of software. I am Flora C.-P., and I am tired of being better. I would much rather be present, even if I yawn during the most important conversation of my life. Actually, especially then. The yawn was the most honest thing I had said in 15 years. It was the sound of a soul finally giving up on the impossible task of being perfect.