Written on 2023-04-15

My son,

As you navigate through life, you will face countless challenges. People won’t like you, things you try won’t work out, you won’t get the girl, you won’t have enough money, you’ll be clumsy or careless or destructive. When these things happen, you will feel frustration or anger or heartache or loneliness.

It is very tempting in these times to feel put-upon by the world. “It’s the world’s fault,” you will feel. You might think, “If only she saw my true worth,” or “If only that thing had gone the other way,” or “If only I hadn’t had a bad day.”

These are seductive traps. They aim to seduce you away from true power, true control, with comforting, poisonous victimhood. It will feel good to not be responsible for the outcome. To be the casualty in a sequence of bad luck. After all, if you did everything right and the outcome wasn’t good, you are not to blame.

But the reality is that you always have choice, because you always decide what to focus on and how you interpret the events of your life. This choice can never be taken from you. The characterization of “bad” in “bad things happen to me” will be your choice. You can view the events that occur in your life as “bad”, or you can view them as opportunities for growth and self-development. The choice as to which they’ll be is in your complete control.

Likewise, the events themselves result from the choices you make about how you act, the situations you put yourself in, what you tolerate, and the boundaries you draw. Some examples, drawn from my own life:

  • You are not “stuck” in a bad relationship; you are choosing to stay rather than leave or have the hard conversations necessary to improve the relationship.
  • You are not “too busy” to connect with your friends and family; you are choosing not to carve out time and energy for them.
  • You are not “failing” at business or sport or academics; you are choosing not to study or practice or learn what’s required to succeed (and you might even be choosing to regard the challenge as insurmountable).
  • You are not “bad with women”; you are choosing not to be humble and learn and push yourself out of your comfort zone (risking embarrassment) so that you build experience.
  • You do not “get injured”; you are choosing to put yourself into a sport or activity that carries risks, and you might even be choosing to willfully ignore those risks with a comforting illusion that you are immortal.
  • You do not “have a condition”; you merely have a limit to your current capabilities and are choosing to let the limit define you. We all have limits to our current capabilities, and we can either accept them as something we don’t care to change right now or grind out the hard work to improve them.
  • Nobody “makes you angry” and nobody “hurts you”; you are choosing to give the other person power over your emotions, ceding control and giving in to insecurities.
  • Nobody “takes anything” from you; you are choosing to let them have it without fighting for that thing - to the death if necessary. Remember, someone who will fight to the death rather than give up their freedom is someone who can never be a slave.
  • Nobody “made you” into who you are; you are choosing to accept it, and you are choosing not to change yourself.

These are hard words to hear, I know. It is far more comfortable to think that you are not responsible for everything that happens in your life. Yet succumbing to victimhood is an insidious poison that tastes sweet but robs you of mastery over your life.

For if you are responsible for everything in your life, then you are capable of changing and being anything. The price is the burden of ownership - of being wrong or inexperienced or slow or awkward - but the reward is total freedom. You can do or be anything as a result of your choices, if only you accept full responsibility for them. And when you do succeed - when you attain academic and professional success, when you play hard and win, when you achieve victory in the fight, when you are sufficiently prepared to overcome the challenge - it will be because you did it.

After all, if you are never responsible for your losses then how can you take credit for your wins?

This, my son, is the secret to life that I want to impart to you. It was all because of you, all along, and it will always be because of you. Set down “That happened to me”, take up “I choose this”, break free from slavery to “luck” or “fate”, and become the master of your own destiny.

With all the love in my heart,

Your father