Written on 2023-04-03

I’ve recently come to appreciate life as a sequence of elaborate sacrifice rituals. To do it well, you trade something you want less for something you want more. I want knowledge and power and respect and success, and to gain it I must sacrifice deeply.

Meaning, I must be broken down. I must fail. I must cry. I must feel defeated. I must wonder if the suffering will ever end. I must be scarred.

These things are necessary so that when I do gain what I seek, I treasure it and use it wisely. We know what it looks like to have success without deep sacrifice: it’s Justin Bieber and Britney Spears, child actors and lotto winners and trust fund children and political dynasty progeny. Power that hasn’t been bought with blood destroys the wielder, for he cannot appreciate the value of it.

Meaning, those who attained and stayed at the top have given up so much more than we realize. Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Warren Buffett, and so on. Hollywood likes to tell stories with fully-formed main characters who came out of the womb geniuses and heroes. I now believe this trivializes all that our real-life superheroes gave up to attain that status, and confuses everyone else about what’s actually required to be successful.

My relationship with adversity is changing as a result of this reflection. I used to consider stress and hardship necessary evils, to be avoided when possible. Now, they might just be boons necessary for imbuing my future self with the wisdom I’ll need to handle eventual success. The Buddha says that life is suffering. Beyond merely a fact of life, this might be a good thing.