In the midst of any great endeavor, being humble enough to suck is part and parcel of being daring enough to win.

When I successfully wage war against that treacherous piece of myself—the one that schemes against my better nature—I experience a clarity that allows me to harmonize with the outer world, along with an unimaginably deep sense of peace.  I think it’s because I’ve won the fight that truly matters, and I’m reaping the rewards of victory. 

The important thing is to keep doing it.

From what I’ve seen, (s)he who consistently disciplines their inner monstrosity is usually an asset, and also possesses the highest capacity for good.

Conversely, those who refuse to acknowledge (and reign in) their inner monstrosity seem to tend toward ineptness, and in the worst cases, unchecked evil.

If you can reserve judgment of worth (whether someone is “good” or “bad”) and simply assess each action instance by instance and grasp how to frame them as inspirational anecdotes or cautionary tales, you can cast aside the veil of love and hate, of heroism and villainy, of damnation and worship, and surf a river of useful information.  I believe this is the most harmonious—and in the long term, stress-free—mode of being.

Being prized for your competence—being asked to demonstrate a given skill again and again and being well-compensated for it—is the ultimate compliment, but when faced with someone who feels threatened by your aptitude, someone who turns their nose up at you no matter how good you are, the ultimate revenge is to not lash out at them.

The ultimate revenge is to go somewhere else, and be instantly appreciated for your obvious proficiency.

If there is some luminous presence that forms everything and destroys all semblance of separation in its unvarnished completion, then it would only make sense that as we jump from style to style, from insight to insight and declare one thing “better” than another, that these “better” things would inevitably disappoint us, forcing us to judge phenomena not by some illusory measure of inherent worth, but by the value of their application for a specific set of circumstances.  So that’s where the idea of “spirituality” and practicality meet.

Or to put it in plainer terms:  context is key.

To have a decent chance at pulling off (and sustaining) greatness, life will ask us to endure monotony and discomfort.

Then it will ask us to strive for a transcendent state where the repetitive drudgery becomes a matter of habit, and then stick with it until it becomes an enjoyable ritual—to teach ourselves to love what we once hated (or to “have no preferences,” as Musashi once said) and forget about the reward, for it may or may not come.

It all starts with discipline.

It isn’t luxury or fame that makes us happy, it’s meaning and purpose.  Consequently, to make my writing relatable and exciting, I believe it must be built around a driving crisis that entices my protagonist to strive and overcome. 

That crisis has to ring so true that it jumps off the page and electrifies the reader with a tantalizing sense of worth and possibility.

In those harrowing times when we must take a stand against the majority, competence and clarity become precious beyond measure, for they wield an authority that is much higher than one that’s born from gross consensus.