Finding Contentment
In the movie Troy, Versace asks Achilles why he chose to become a great warrior.
Achilles responds, “I chose nothing. I was born and this is what I am.”
I remember getting into a fierce “Fate vs. Free Will” debate a few years ago. Everyone in the room was arguing free will, because everyone wants to believe that their choices are their own. After all, if you’re driving down the road, you can choose to swerve off a cliff at any second. Isn’t that proof of free will?
What isn’t free will is a child’s natural strengths and weaknesses. Some kids are highly intelligent, others are highly athletic, or highly artistic, or highly social. There are an infinite number of natural strengths that different people discover in themselves as they get older, and there’s simply no denying it, they are a natural.
Achilles, like Connor McGregor or Sean O’Malley, discovered as a teen that he was a natural fighter. There was no explanation for the ability, especially when paired against much more experienced fighters. It’s hard to argue nurture over nature when a 16 year old amateur destroys a 26 year old veteran.
I believe nature and fate play a much larger role in our lives than we care to realize. We want to believe more things are within our control than they really are. We want free will, and the ability to control outcomes. We do control our effort. But someone can put 10x as many hours into developing a skill and still not be as good as a natural.
It’s infuriating, but it’s true. Some people are truly gifted in certain areas. Real contentment lies in the area or areas of your natural gifting.
To quote Achilles, “You choose nothing. You are born, and this is what you are.”
There is a passage in the Tao te Ching that resonates deeply with me. It reads as follows:
The Master gives himself up
to whatever the moment brings.
He knows that he is going to die,
and he has nothing left to hold onto:
no illusions in his mind,
no resistances in his body.
He doesn’t think about his actions;
they flow from the core of his being.
He holds nothing back from life;
therefore he is ready for death,
as a man is ready for sleep
after a good day’s work.
When you imagine your entire life as one good day’s work, it becomes vital that you work on the right thing, that you put all of yourself into that work, and do everything in your power to ensure its success.
In the movie Gladiator, Maximus says, “What we do in life, echoes for eternity.”
Ambitious people throw themselves into work passionately, but sometimes, they try to force success in an arena that is not for them.
The reason the ancient Greeks were so adamant about the axiom “Know Thyself” is because it is the only way to truly know if you are working to accomplish YOUR life’s task, or someone else’s.
If you want to be ready for death, as a man is ready for sleep after a good day’s work, you need to be certain that what you are working on is meant for you.
You need to be as certain as Achilles when he says, “I chose nothing. I was born and this is what I am.”
I was listening to the music producer Rick Rubin talk about his creative process. As one of, if not the greatest music producer of all time, he has been entrusted with some of the greatest albums by artists of nearly every genre. From Rap to Rock to Pop, he’s made it and you’ve sung along to it.
What interested me most about his creative process, is how he sees his work. In his words, “Everything I do is an act of devotion and an offering to God.”
Not a commercial product. Not something that will appeal to a specific demographic. Nothing calculated or targeted.
What he believes is that with each work of art that he is entrusted with, it is an opportunity for him to create an offering to God through supreme devotion to his craft. These are the words of a Master.
Rick Rubin gives himself up
to what each album brings
He knows that he is going to die,
and he has nothing left to hold onto:
no illusions in his mind,
no resistances in his body.
He doesn’t think about the music;
it flows from the core of his being.
He holds nothing back from life;
therefore he is ready for death,
as a man is ready for sleep
after a good day’s work.
This is the path to contentment. There are hard days. There are easy days. The only thing you decide, the only free will you have, is your effort, or rather, your devotion.
I know that it is difficult to show up and do the work when results are not materializing. What we all need to remember (myself more than anyone) is that the mastery itself is the reward. The transformation of ourselves, through the work, is the reward. Becoming who we were meant to be, through selfless devotion to our life’s task, that is the reward.
Contentment doesn’t come from sitting on a beach and sipping margaritas. It comes from fully immersing yourself in something that brings you satisfaction and fulfillment. It sounds counterintuitive but contentment comes through hard work, on the thing YOU care about.
The Chinese had a name for the highest level of mastery. It was called Kung Fu. It meant “supreme skill through effort.” The masters of any craft in ancient Chinese society, whether it be blacksmithing, poetry, or martial arts, were considered to have Kung Fu.
Our modern culture is obsessed with results. We don’t want supreme skill, we want the rewards of minimal effort, as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, a get rich quick scheme does not a master make.
What is missing in the modern formula is devotion. Devotion to a craft. Devotion to the work itself.
I have a problem with the “Hustle Culture” and “Success Chasers” on YouTube. I don’t like how they talk about effort and motivation. It isn’t about trying. It isn’t about chasing. It isn’t about hustling. It isn’t about putting on a show. It isn’t about attention. It isn’t about money. It isn’t about fame. It isn’t about mansions and fast cars. It is about devotion.
Are you fully devoted to your task with every fiber of your being?
If you are, it shouldn’t be a chore, it shouldn’t be a struggle, it shouldn’t be a grind. Sure, there are harder days than others, but the act of devotion to the right thing will be supremely satisfying and fulfilling.
It is still a choice, day in and day out, but when you commit to that devotion you are rewarded by the work itself.
I don’t need to talk about Jonah and the Whale for you to understand that running from the work is a bad idea.
Hinduism is largely ignored in the West, but Oppenheimer has successfully made one line from The Bhagavad Gita stick to our imaginations.
“Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.”
This line happens after the prince Arjuna is told by Krishna that he must fight, for he is a warrior. Arjuna doesn’t want to fight. His friends and his close family are in the other army. He doesn’t want to kill his brother and cousins.
Krishna explains to him that he has no choice. He was born and this is what he is. I imagine this is what Oppenheimer clung to, to rationalize his decision to complete the atomic bomb. He was born a natural scientist and atomic physicist. In his mind, he chose nothing. He was born and this is what he was. How then, could he not finish the work he knew he was capable of finishing?
The reason Oppenheimer generated over $700 Million in box office sales, is because we are all fascinated by the complex predicament he was put in by his “natural ability.” A genius like Rick Rubin should be grateful that his talent lay in music rather than atomic physics. It is easy to claim the moral high ground and say we would have done differently in Oppenheimer’s shoes, but in many ways, he chose nothing. He was born and that is what he was.
One of the top business gurus on YouTube is a self-proclaimed workaholic named Alex Hormozi. I enjoy his content because he is clear, straightforward, and honest. No cars and yachts and mansions. No frills or pageantry. He is devoted to his work. Devoted to his craft.
The only thing that consistently bothers him is people’s recommendation that he take time off, find hobbies, or do anything besides work. As he puts it, he is doing what he enjoys all day, every day. The reason he is such a great business teacher is because it is actually about the work for him. It is about the devotion to the craft. It’s not about the results or the rewards. It may be hard for many of us to understand, but he loves business and he loves to work. It really is all he is driven to do.
He knows what he is, and he is fully devoted to his task with every fiber of his being.
The first stage of life is exploration because we need to discover our natural gifting through trial and error. Once we know our natural gifting, within that, we find our life task. The only choice any of us have, once we discover our natural gifting and within that, our life task, is whether we are going to devote ourselves to that task with every fiber of our being. Deciding to do so, and showing up to do the work, hard days and easy days, rain or shine, devoted to our craft, regardless of results or rewards, that is what I would call “contentment.”
You chose nothing. You were born, and this is what you are.
