CVIII. Relish the Trials
If not you, then who.
P.S: Most of you loved the previous entries on How To Deal With Toxic People & How To Negotiate.
“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.” —Sigmund Freud
“Generally, everybody starts giggling, blushing, and squirming until I ask. “If not you, then who else?” Which of course is the truth…If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities.” — Abraham Maslow
Life tests you because you hold significance. Because your ambition insists on competence. Because you dare to reach for the greatness that’s yours where others fear it - not most people get to experience their best. It’s as Abraham Maslow observed,
“We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments…We enjoy and even thrill to the godlike possibilities we see in ourselves… And yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness, awe, and fear before these very same possibilities.”
Can’t you see? "No man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity,” Seneca quipped, ”For he is not permitted to prove himself."
So, don’t complain. Every obstacle, every challenge, every weight pressing down on you, it’s an invitation - to prove, once again, that you belong to the highest order. You’re of the highest caliber. You’re different. It’s proof. Proof that you’re in the arena, proof that you’re playing at a level where the weak would break.
And look. You will pass. Not by accident. Not by favour. But because you know you can learn anything. Because you know pressure only strengthens you - makes your life easier. Because you devour obstacles and turn them into fuel, opportunity, the way.
Be proud. The ordinary are ignored. The average are left in peace. The weak are left unchallenged. But you? You’re tested, pushed, qualified - because you chase the highest, the rarest, the finest. The gods chose you to show others what’s possible.
Find confidence in the fact that, "Prosperity can come to the vulgar and to ordinary talents, but to triumph over adversity,” Seneca said, “is the mark of a great man." You’re of a higher calling.
Others want to see how you handle it. They watch with a mix of awe and fear. Will you break? Will you hesitate? No. You will meet the storm with steady hands, with a resolute conviction, with humor, with the unshakable certainty of a man who knows he was built for this. Who knows he can turn any negative into a positive.
So welcome the test. Welcome the responsibility. Welcome the risk.
And then walk through it - head held up high, unbeaten, undeniable, because it’s within the powers you possess to make good of it. To pass the test.
"Fire is the test of gold,” Seneca wrote*, “adversity, of strong men."
If not you, then who else?
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I like this; very edifying; not the ‘proud, ordinary average weak’ part so much (in today’s context) but I understand the social context it was made in at the time. Thanks 👌🏻
This helped me to reinterpret the pressures that I feel today as challenges that I am able to conquer. Thank you.