All-in

There is this beautifully striking passage from Ruha Benjamin in a recent podcast with Trevor Noah:

“I think part of it is that I don’t identify strongly with this very uptight, insulated sort of ideal of what it means to be an academic or professor. I have one foot in the academy and always one foot out. I will never turn to these institutions for my sense of self-worth or self or mission. It’s like, I don’t give them my all, and so they can’t take anything from me in doing this either.”

Capitalism rewards obsession, passion and diligence. Especially when you’re all-in.

We understand that this laser-focus is one of the most reliable paths to progress.

The challenge is that when we go all-in on something, our ego attaches our self to this thing.

And that is the riskiest of places. That is the place that burns us out, partly because we’ve convinced ourselves of that supposed truth.

The better truth is that the longer we can run, the further we’ll get. One foot in front of another, all applied in the general direction of a finish line.

Some parts of what comes next will suck. Others will be downhill.

Neither should diminish your conviction, and neither is a measure of who you are.

When you survive this onslaught on self, you have so much capacity for tackling the real world problems you have already identified.