Welcome to the YouTopian Journey, a Substack featured publication. Each week I will be sharing unique wisdom that can help you in the daily battles that we must all fight in the game of life. This week we discuss the importance of endurance in a world that is only getting more difficult and harsh.
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Now onto the good stuff.
ENDURANCE REQUIRED
“I will stay with it and endure.
And if the heaving sea has shaken my raft to pieces
Then I will swim.”-Homer, The Odyssey
Life isn’t easy.
It never was.
It never will be.
It wasn’t easy for your parents, who had to sacrifice to get you to where you are now.
It wasn’t easy for your grandparents, who lived through even more tumultuous times.
It certainly wasn’t easy for your great grandparents, whose world was rife with conflict, disease, and more.
So, why should we expect life to be easy for us?
Perhaps our technology and interconnected world has made us think so. We see so many people who apparently have it all. Wealth, beauty, happiness, fun, and smiles. We have everything we could possibly want at our fingertips, on-demand and ready to be summoned.
Food, vacations, rides, rentals, work, contractors, communication, employees, yoga, crypto, entertainment, dating, and more.
Everything is available to us.
Everything but an easy life.
Everything but the ability to endure.
Endurance, both physical and mental, cannot be summoned. It has become a lost art, one that has never been more needed nor required.
Because the easy life is a myth. A widely popular myth, but a myth nonetheless. Thanks to social media, this myth is becoming our new religion. Our new saints are the influencers that preach financial freedom. Our new religious texts are books that offer happiness in just a few easy steps. Our places of prayer are the seminars. Our monasteries are paid group retreats.
This is the life of the fool and the path of the gullible. The person who belittles their own ability and sacrifices their innate talent for the myth of the easy life and even easier path.
This is not the life for you.
The life you desire can be gained. It can be earned, but only through blood, sweat, tears, and work. It cannot be instantaneously summoned and cannot be purchased. It doesn’t come from seminars and advice from social media stars, but from within. It comes from an idea, a thought, a dream, and the power to act. The power to make it a reality.
Above all, it comes from the ability to endure the inevitable doubts, fears, failures, and setbacks that will plague you with each step that you take. There is no avoiding these, there is only their mitigation.
This is more difficult than it sounds.
This mitigation comes from practice and experience. It requires you to live through these feelings and thoughts, many of which are unpleasant. It requires you to face failures and defeats, which are always difficult to experience. This is precisely why so few do.
Everyone wants to be rich and happy but no one wants to endure the process that leads to the riches and the happiness that await them. Everyone wants to be a king or queen yet few would want to live under the sword of Damocles each and every day.
“It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.”-Julius Caesar
There is no other path, there is only the ability to endure whatever comes our way.
Enduring means going from crisis to crisis without losing yourself. It means going forward when everyone around you is going back. It means staying the course, especially when the course seems impossible. It means taking criticism, both from your peers and from strangers.
It means pain.
It means hardship.
It means suffering.
It means failure and starting over again.
Few will state this, even though it is obvious and right in front of their faces.
Why?
Because no one wants to be the bearer of bad news. No one wants to shatter the illusions.
No one wants to speak the truth.
But I will.
You deserve it.
You deserve to know what awaits you. More importantly, you deserve to know what you are capable of achieving.
Those who can endure whatever life throws at them and can keep moving forward are the people that change things for the better. They are the true leaders and innovators. They inspire and motivate others to do the same. They aren’t bogged down by the pain that comes from enduring hardship, but are instead motivated to keep going.
On and on, for what seems like forever.
Until you achieve victory.
Until your goals are met.
Until you arrive at your destination, where you always knew you belonged.
“Endurance is one of the most difficult disciplines. But it is to the one who endures that the final victory comes.”-Buddha
A LACK OF ENDURANCE BREEDS WEAKNESS
“To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures.”-Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power
In an age of trigger warnings and safe spaces, where safety is prized over daring and one must constantly tiptoe through life, weakness becomes widespread. This lack of endurance may be the safe choice, but it is not the right choice.
We must constantly be engaging in risk taking behavior in order for us to grow, mentally, physically, and spiritually. This risk-taking behavior doesn’t always result in victory. In fact, more often than not, you will be faced with defeats and setbacks.
An artist is faced with a final product that they deem useless, after countless hours of work.
A writer is faced with thousands of words that need to be rewritten, edited, and even removed.
An entrepreneur is faced with a company that is outdated and whose customers needs they can no longer serve, thus causing them to pivot or die.
And so on and so on.
The most successful people you know have faced more pain, setbacks, headaches, and loss than they care to admit. This is precisely the reason why they don’t. They just keep moving. They know that if they can endure whatever challenges await them, they can succeed.
They can endure.
And they often do. Whereas those lacking endurance complain and bemoan their position and fate, the strong and successful get right back to work. They have no time for weakness. They have faced too much and are still here. They know if they can keep enduring, they can win.
So can you.
But you must not fall into this trap of safety and weakness. You must keep daring. You must face what you are afraid of. You must enter the arena and emerge, regardless of victory or defeat, only ready for more. If you can endure this constant battle with yourself and with circumstances, you can achieve anything.
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”-Khalil Gibran
ENDURANCE IS POWERED BY MEANING
“Man, the bravest of animals, and the one most accustomed to suffering, does not repudiate suffering as such; he desires it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering. The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far.”-Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
As life only gets more difficult by the day, it is up to us to hold fast to our purpose, our goals, and our meaning. When you do this, life doesn’t become easier, you just become stronger. You begin to focus on the big picture and the grand strategy.
You no longer become bogged down by the trivial.
Drama ceases to affect you.
Things that once commanded your attention now fail to even make a dent in it.
All of the obligations you once had now seem petty. The happy hours that give you no benefit, the relationships that offer no comfort, the career that is only a way of killing time, the truth of it is all revealed.
Why?
Because when you are enduring minor pains to unlock the doors to greater achievements, you understand what matters and what doesn’t. You begin to focus on yourself. You realize that your goals are meaningful, your dreams are legitimate, and that whatever difficulties you face are minor in comparison to what lay ahead.
This is transformational on a level that many cannot fathom, but you can. Why is this the case?
Because you are living it. You may not be where you want to be at the present. This is normal. However, I can promise you that by aiming to meaningfully endure whatever challenges you are facing right now, you are on the way. The small and petty details that hold others back will no longer constrain you.
“Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level.”― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
You are transforming the difficulties of your task, of your entire existence, into something meaningful and powerful.
When this happens, life changes for you.
You think bigger and act bigger.
You no longer let the difficulties bring you down. You acknowledge them, but keep moving forward.
And you must keep moving forward. You must keep going through the high gas prices, higher rents, inflation, new virus variants, supply chain shortages, a possible recession, war and conflict, and every other crisis that is around the corner.
Because there is no end to them.
There never was and there never will be.
The history of our species is one of disaster, conflict, famine, drought, and war.
Yet we endured and survived.
You will endure and survive.
Small people get stuck in the mire of the challenges of life and you are not small. You are enduring the challenges and surviving them, so that one day surviving is transformed into thriving.
“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”-Sigmund Freud
But what about those lacking meaning and purpose?
My advice remains the same.
Experiment.
Take chances.
Explore, both yourself and the world.
You may stumble upon something wonderful. You may find new powers that you never realized that you had. You may find new interests that could be life changing and worthy of all of the challenges that life throws at you. Ultimately, you may unlock the meaning that you seek.
Doing something may not always lead to something but I can promise you that doing nothing will always lead to nothing.
It is up to you. Find that meaning which will be your super power. Find that special purpose which will be your armor. Pursue it to wherever it takes you. Allow yourself to endure the challenges and pains of society as you push forward and press on.
And change your life for the better.
“There is nothing in the world… that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life.”-Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
ONE LAST THING
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I’m Shaun Gold and if you are reading this, you are already on your journey. Catch you next week.
Hit the nail on the head, as usual. No pain, no gain.