Thought

No one can quite prepare you for the way life changes; it shifts subliminally and without notice, moving the ground under your feet and the landscape before your very eyes.

Every time I think I’ve got it figured out, the game changes.

The constant change allows two options:

You can evolve or decline. You either adapt or freeze. There’s no middle path. There’s no such thing as treading water.

I love the analogy of life as a game, because games are simple to comprehend and map broadly onto how life is in practice.

You must contend with opposing entities, forge alliances and do your best to win. There are rules and objectives. You know what you’re aiming at. The game has a point to it.

The point isn’t always so clear in real life. One can lose the plot and start to wonder what the objective is, what they’re aiming at, why they are living at all.

I think this is one one way that our society is failing our young people. People are taught from a young age how to follow orders, but not how to think for themselves.

What this looks like in practice is confusion, depression and anxiety once the training wheels are removed.

For example, college is just bigger children playing in a bigger sandbox. There’s an artificial objective called graduation. You’re told what to do and when to do it by. This isn’t how the real world works. For most, it’s only delaying the inevitable arrival of adulthood.

We should be raising adults, not overgrown children.

When you’re suddenly free to do anything, how do you find the right things to do? If you can even figure out what the right thing is, then there’s the problem of getting yourself to follow through and do it.

This isn’t a small problem. This may in fact be the central problem of life.

When I was younger, I had little money. This is one level of the game: figuring out how to provide for yourself materially.

Playing the money game is engaging. You have a clear direction and, if you play it correctly, get handsomely rewarded. One day, you realize that you aren’t stressing out about your bank account anymore. At this point, the money game is effectively over. You can keep playing it forever and must to a certain extent, but it’s “over” in that the rewards will start giving you diminishing returns.

To some people, an extra million dollars means absolutely nothing.

You see, you have to recognize when one game is won and it’s time for you to find a new game to play. If you try to just keep playing the old game, it leads to dissatisfaction and disorientation.

The post-economic game is the hardest to figure out. As money increases, your optionality increases to the point that you can virtually do whatever the hell you want.

This unlimited freedom has spelled the destruction of many men.

You can see it in society’s obsession with total freedom and its rotten fruits of moral degeneracy.

In the high seas of virtually absolute freedom, you need a polestar.

The compass to follow points at meaning.

If you aren’t filled with a deep sense of meaning by the life you are living, something is off.

Much like intuition, meaning is something that gets louder the more you pay attention to it.

The ancients found meaning in everything, the pattern of the clouds or a chance encounter with an animal. They were deeply connected to the world around them. I seriously doubt any of them were ever “depressed.”

This sense of aimlessness and despair is a modern phenomenon.

You have so many distractions today that it’s possible to numb yourself to a lack of meaning and, in doing so, let your entire life pass by unfulfilled.

This is not the way.

There’s no simple “Do X.” to rediscover meaning, but a start is to cut the distractions.

Disconnect from your phone for a full 24 hours. Sit in true silence for 5 minutes.

And don’t just do it once, it takes time to reconnect and hear the silence.

For silence is the Voice of God.

Tactic

This week’s Thought is something I’m actively contending with.

I don’t have the answer completely figured out yet.

When something isn’t clear to me yet, I write about it. Writing is a forcing function for clarity.

Each time I confront a problem and write about it, I get a bit closer to the Truth.

This is the nature of the spiritual realm. You can’t fully comprehend its laws by hearing them once. If you could, I could just say “Be a good person.” and that would be it for the newsletter.

Spiritual lessons must be engaged with again and again and again.

From different vantage points, with different eyes.

If you’re struggling with something, it’s a good time to sit down and write about it.

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If you found this week’s edition valuable, forward it to a man who will benefit from this message.

Hint: every man will benefit.

May your T be ever increasing.

In Victory,

Alexander | Valor Disciple