On Inspiration
November 2014
Play in new tab: https://www.youtuberepeat.com/watch?v=H9SsY9dDeo4
People say they want to be inspired, but true inspiration is unforgiving. When you’re inspired, it steals you away from the rational and prudent. It compels you into a painful future.
Very few people choose this path. This essay is dedicated for those few.
True inspiration isn’t fashionable. It isn’t sexy. It appears obsessive, irrational, and frankly a waste of your time. The one thing you hunger for most — respect — will be in desperately short order.
Your every instinct cries out, “This isn’t what life was suppose to be like!” as you watch your peers live less ambitious but far happier lives.
There’s an undeniable comfort in doing well in a known track — a deeply gratifying feeling when you glance sideways and see other runners alongside you going after the same finish line.
That’s the dirty secret: We all wish we were normal, but better. We wish life were a linear race and we’re at the front of it.
It shakes us to our core to be in a race alone, with no one in sight. Everyone else had followed the main road and you’ve taken a side trail where you’re left alone, meandering.
It’s a true sense of loneliness when you find yourself crouched, digging in the snow for a finish line that may not exist. You look around and see no one with the unsquelchable voice that says, “Because they’re not as stupid as you.”
It makes sense why those running in the race don’t acknowledge you. It would mean conceding that their race might not be the best path towards happiness—opening themselves to the uncertainty they might have picked the wrong way to live life. So they ignore you.
To tinker alone in the quietness of the night.
There’s one small thing that inspiration does provide you — meaning.
Everyone spends their lives searching for meaning. They find small morsels of it here and there. They try to find meaning in relationships, in sex, in their career, in their children, and in their entertainment. They all hunger for something deeper and grand.
You’ve never had a wanting for more meaning. Inspiration robs you of your time, your happiness, your complacency, but gives an ocean’s worth of meaning. There’s so much you’re drowning in it.
You lie in your bed awake each night, sifting through the universe of work still left to be done and disappointed by the glacial pace of your progress.
You embrace inspiration despite the pain because its your most potent weapon to capture something unique.
To be unique is to be irreplaceable — to carry intrinsic value that no one can take away. It makes sense we chase it with all our might, for it is our vehicle to become infinite.
To know there will never be another being that will string together words in that exact order. To know that what you’re building will never be built if you don’t build it. The only word that can capture that scale is cosmic.
In this light, sadness is warranted and even expected. To imagine something as fragile as human mortality daring to challenge something on the cosmic scale. If it didn’t cause some anguish, it would be cheating.
Each hour you spend building your vision is an hour spent in rebellion against the futility of human life. It’s rejection of the reality you are but a bag of organs replaceable with another.
To be insignificant is your greatest fear.
As a gladiator doused with adrenaline waiting for the gates to open, you are fueled by that cold fear. Instead of the soft and supple life, you fashion an existentially chiseled body forged out of painful introspection.
You enter into the arena with fatalism that would scare mere normals, acknowledging the certain nature of failure. You live for that moment when the world is shouting your name when you have brought something glorious and unique into their world.
Here’s to you, my inspired friends and the wonderful things you are building for our future.
Play in new tab: https://www.youtuberepeat.com/watch?v=H9SsY9dDeo4
People say they want to be inspired, but true inspiration is unforgiving. When you’re inspired, it steals you away from the rational and prudent. It compels you into a painful future.
Very few people choose this path. This essay is dedicated for those few.
True inspiration isn’t fashionable. It isn’t sexy. It appears obsessive, irrational, and frankly a waste of your time. The one thing you hunger for most — respect — will be in desperately short order.
Your every instinct cries out, “This isn’t what life was suppose to be like!” as you watch your peers live less ambitious but far happier lives.
There’s an undeniable comfort in doing well in a known track — a deeply gratifying feeling when you glance sideways and see other runners alongside you going after the same finish line.
That’s the dirty secret: We all wish we were normal, but better. We wish life were a linear race and we’re at the front of it.
It shakes us to our core to be in a race alone, with no one in sight. Everyone else had followed the main road and you’ve taken a side trail where you’re left alone, meandering.
It’s a true sense of loneliness when you find yourself crouched, digging in the snow for a finish line that may not exist. You look around and see no one with the unsquelchable voice that says, “Because they’re not as stupid as you.”
It makes sense why those running in the race don’t acknowledge you. It would mean conceding that their race might not be the best path towards happiness—opening themselves to the uncertainty they might have picked the wrong way to live life. So they ignore you.
To tinker alone in the quietness of the night.
There’s one small thing that inspiration does provide you — meaning.
Everyone spends their lives searching for meaning. They find small morsels of it here and there. They try to find meaning in relationships, in sex, in their career, in their children, and in their entertainment. They all hunger for something deeper and grand.
You’ve never had a wanting for more meaning. Inspiration robs you of your time, your happiness, your complacency, but gives an ocean’s worth of meaning. There’s so much you’re drowning in it.
You lie in your bed awake each night, sifting through the universe of work still left to be done and disappointed by the glacial pace of your progress.
You embrace inspiration despite the pain because its your most potent weapon to capture something unique.
To be unique is to be irreplaceable — to carry intrinsic value that no one can take away. It makes sense we chase it with all our might, for it is our vehicle to become infinite.
To know there will never be another being that will string together words in that exact order. To know that what you’re building will never be built if you don’t build it. The only word that can capture that scale is cosmic.
In this light, sadness is warranted and even expected. To imagine something as fragile as human mortality daring to challenge something on the cosmic scale. If it didn’t cause some anguish, it would be cheating.
Each hour you spend building your vision is an hour spent in rebellion against the futility of human life. It’s rejection of the reality you are but a bag of organs replaceable with another.
To be insignificant is your greatest fear.
As a gladiator doused with adrenaline waiting for the gates to open, you are fueled by that cold fear. Instead of the soft and supple life, you fashion an existentially chiseled body forged out of painful introspection.
You enter into the arena with fatalism that would scare mere normals, acknowledging the certain nature of failure. You live for that moment when the world is shouting your name when you have brought something glorious and unique into their world.
Here’s to you, my inspired friends and the wonderful things you are building for our future.
You may know me from: Steve Jobs reinvents the pen.
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