Transformation is possible
How a mix of acceptance, humility, and strength powers the transformation. They also aren’t aware of how common this is in history, how many figures took seemingly terrible situations – a prison sentence, an exile, a bear market or depression, military conscription, even being sent to a concentration camp – and through their attitude and approach, turned those circumstances into fuel for their unique greatness.
Francis Scott Key wrote the poem that became the national anthem of the United States while trapped on a ship during a prisoner exchange in the War of 1812. Viktor Frank - l refined his psychologies of meaning and suffering during his ordeal in three Nazi concentration camps.
Not that these opportunities always come in such serious situations. The author Ian Fleming was on bed rest and, per doctors’ orders, forbidden from using a typewriter. They were worried he’d exert himself by writing another Bond novel. So he created Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by hand instead. Walt Disney made his decision to become a cartoonist while laid up after stepping on a rusty nail.
Yes, it would feel much better in the moment to be angry, to be aggrieved, to be depressed or heartbroken. When injustice or the capriciousness of fate are inflicted on someone, the normal reaction is to yell, to fight back, to resist. You know the feeling: I don’t want this. I want ______. I want it my way. This is short-sighted.
Think of what you have been putting off. Issues you declined to deal with. Systemic problems that felt too overwhelming to address. Dead time is revived when we use it as an opportunity to do what we’ve long needed to do.
As they say, this moment is not your life. But it is a moment in your life. How will you use it?
A hardened criminal could have doubled down on the life that brought him to prison. Dead time isn’t only dead because of sloth or complacency. He could have spent those years becoming a better criminal, strengthening his contacts, or planning his next score, but it still would have been dead time. He might have felt alive doing it, even as he was slowly killing himself.
“Many a serious thinker has been produced in prisons,” as Robert Greene put it, “where we have nothing to do but think.” Yet sadly, prisons – in their literal and figurative forms – have produced far more degenerates, losers, and never-do wells. Inmates might have had nothing to do but think; it’s just that what they chose to think about made them worse and not better.
That’s what so many of us do when we fail or get ourselves into trouble. Lacking the ability to examine ourselves, we reinvest our energy into exactly the patterns of behaviour that caused our problems to begin with.
It comes in many forms. Idly dreaming about the future. Plotting our revenge. Finding refuge in distraction. Refusing to consider that our choices are a reflection of our character. We’d rather do basically anything else.
But what if we said: This is an opportunity for me. I am using it for my purposes. I will not let this be dead time for me. The dead time was when we were controlled by ego. Now – now we can live.
Who knows what you’re currently doing. Hopefully it’s not a prison term, even if it might feel like it. Maybe you’re sitting in a remedial high school class, maybe you’re on hold, maybe it’s a trial separation, maybe you’re making smoothies while you save up money, maybe you’re stuck waiting out a contract or a tour of duty. Maybe this situation is one totally of your own making, or perhaps it’s just bad luck.
In life, we all get stuck with dead time. Its occurrence isn’t in our control. Its use, on the other hand, is.
As Booker T. Washington most famously put it, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” Make use of what’s around you. Don’t let stuborness make a bad situation worse.
Francis Scott Key wrote the poem that became the national anthem of the United States while trapped on a ship during a prisoner exchange in the War of 1812. Viktor Frank - l refined his psychologies of meaning and suffering during his ordeal in three Nazi concentration camps.
Not that these opportunities always come in such serious situations. The author Ian Fleming was on bed rest and, per doctors’ orders, forbidden from using a typewriter. They were worried he’d exert himself by writing another Bond novel. So he created Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by hand instead. Walt Disney made his decision to become a cartoonist while laid up after stepping on a rusty nail.
Yes, it would feel much better in the moment to be angry, to be aggrieved, to be depressed or heartbroken. When injustice or the capriciousness of fate are inflicted on someone, the normal reaction is to yell, to fight back, to resist. You know the feeling: I don’t want this. I want ______. I want it my way. This is short-sighted.
Think of what you have been putting off. Issues you declined to deal with. Systemic problems that felt too overwhelming to address. Dead time is revived when we use it as an opportunity to do what we’ve long needed to do.
As they say, this moment is not your life. But it is a moment in your life. How will you use it?
A hardened criminal could have doubled down on the life that brought him to prison. Dead time isn’t only dead because of sloth or complacency. He could have spent those years becoming a better criminal, strengthening his contacts, or planning his next score, but it still would have been dead time. He might have felt alive doing it, even as he was slowly killing himself.
“Many a serious thinker has been produced in prisons,” as Robert Greene put it, “where we have nothing to do but think.” Yet sadly, prisons – in their literal and figurative forms – have produced far more degenerates, losers, and never-do wells. Inmates might have had nothing to do but think; it’s just that what they chose to think about made them worse and not better.
That’s what so many of us do when we fail or get ourselves into trouble. Lacking the ability to examine ourselves, we reinvest our energy into exactly the patterns of behaviour that caused our problems to begin with.
It comes in many forms. Idly dreaming about the future. Plotting our revenge. Finding refuge in distraction. Refusing to consider that our choices are a reflection of our character. We’d rather do basically anything else.
But what if we said: This is an opportunity for me. I am using it for my purposes. I will not let this be dead time for me. The dead time was when we were controlled by ego. Now – now we can live.
Who knows what you’re currently doing. Hopefully it’s not a prison term, even if it might feel like it. Maybe you’re sitting in a remedial high school class, maybe you’re on hold, maybe it’s a trial separation, maybe you’re making smoothies while you save up money, maybe you’re stuck waiting out a contract or a tour of duty. Maybe this situation is one totally of your own making, or perhaps it’s just bad luck.
In life, we all get stuck with dead time. Its occurrence isn’t in our control. Its use, on the other hand, is.
As Booker T. Washington most famously put it, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” Make use of what’s around you. Don’t let stuborness make a bad situation worse.
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