You may think that telling people they can improve by taking responsibility for their lives and that every flaw can be turned into a strength is kind. I must admit, this is a very shallow view of warmth. I can tell that after trying to develop warmth for months on end as part of my improvement.
Let me explain. It's this very subtle realization, and you must find it yourself. For example, when a skyscraper gets built, everything works together, from the design, planning, recourses, transport, financing, and construction. I'm amazed at how civilization is kept together. Aren't you amazed too? It gets even more breathtaking when one realizes that no one is truly steering the ship of the world. No one knows what will happen tomorrow except for God. Anything could happen tomorrow, and if something brought us forward through every adversary, it's kindness.
If one gets lost at the high sea between the waves, and someone notices, almost half an army gets mobilized to save someone who doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Even if redemption feels far away and the problem overwhelming, if someone is lost in a sea of danger and someone else becomes aware of it, help will come—no matter how difficult it is or who is to blame. Call it duty, call it compassion, or call it love. God didn't abandon the earth either, just because humans a flawed. If there is one thing that brought humans through every adversary that ever existed and will ever exist, it is kindness.
Not so fast. Realizing that everything is held together by love took me months. Warmth is also not as straightforward as you might think: There are two herculean forces: the heart and the mind.
Let me show you how the mind and heart fought.
I have zero empathy. Call me whatever you want. Why should I care about a stranger's self-inflicted suffering? Why should you care? Everyone has problems, and everyone is responsible for his own life. Why should you pity anyone? The way forward in life is to take full responsibility for it; if someone is too weak to do so, they must be left behind. Even if destiny strikes with something outside of your sphere of influence, the choice of how to respond is yours. If it starts to rain, you could have brought an umbrella. You are responsible for everything that happens, regardless of whether it was your fault.
Petty complains. Even if one's complaints were a hundred percent objective, their impact is zero. You can forget about sympathy. The world is built on doing, not on complaining. I can't think of a single situation where one benefits from listening to a negativity dump.
You deserve no pity; save it for those who need it. You can pity someone who lost his legs, and it doesn't matter whose fault it was. However, those who are young, safe, and healthy deserve no one's pity. From a cultural-philosophical perspective, boys become men the second they take full responsibility for their lives. If everything is your fault, then where is the sympathy? I couldn't care less about anyone's struggle if it's self-inflicted, and my indifference turns into disgust if the person struggling is a spoiled brat. I doubt you disagree; do you sincerely care if a random spoiled girl says that her lipstick has the wrong tone of red? Showing sympathy for someone who has never struggled is evil. It seems the only reason one would do that is to gain attention, validation, or relief from their negativity.
Most people I know people have never struggled. I wrote in one of my texts that every man has a similar life. Firstly, they are born, grow a bit up, are bad in every area of life, then fall in love with a random girl who rejects them, their heart gets broken, and they stop being a loser. As it turns out, many people haven't ever experienced a genuinely broken heart. A broken heart made me suffer for approximately a year, so I know what I'm talking about. Yet, that's nothing compared to what billions of people went through or are going through. One billion people live on less than a dollar a day. There are thousands of people or even children who had their entire families killed by a bomb, and they still have to get up every day and make ends meet. Every time I think of my problems, I remember that I have none. Heartbreak? Remember the kid who lost his parents in war and is now completely alone and still gets up every day? Your problems, my problems, your friends' problems, … they are completely pathetic.
Warmth is, it seems, often an excuse. If you want to win, you need to be hard on yourself. Period. Sympathy is for peasants. It’s a scam that warmth will drive you to success, only the depravity thereof. Let me tell you a story. There was a nineteen-year-old classmate I used to be friends with. He is the antidote to me when it comes to sympathy. He is understanding, tolerant, and compassionate. On the question of whether life is better as an owner or a peasant, he responded with the latter. Anyway, with all of his compassion, sympathy, and empathy, what do you think happened when he wanted to free himself from his digital addiction? His compassion turned into tolerance, weakness, and excuses.
Chances are, I've been there myself and fixed it. If someone struggles with something and I've been through it, my compassion doesn't increase; it decreases. Struggling with social media addiction? Well, I've been there and broke free. I shared my experience; I knew exactly how such a person thinks and why it is difficult. Still, I overcame every obstacle, and those who fail don't try hard enough. It's as simple as that. I went from an 8-hour screen time, nothing to do, childhood trauma, no friends, and no support from anyone to a 15-minute screen time. Why isn’t everyone able to do it?
I specifically avoid getting pity. For years, people sensed something was wrong with me, which stemmed from my mental scars. Instead of talking about my traumas, I moved on and wrote about my healing process months later. Even my close grandmother didn’t know about my struggles until then. I believe that constantly opening up about wounds prevents them from healing—like trying to do pushups with a broken arm. Despite knowing that digging into wounds is wrong, I opened up to my friends about matters of my heart. Can you guess the cost of those sweet, encouraging words? Moving on was now ten times harder because I gained encouragement.
Be willing to pay the price. When I burned out after working for two and a half years straight, I didn't complain; I didn't want anyone's pity. I knew it was my fault. If I tried to avoid it, I should have never started pursuing business. I paid the price, ten days of nothing and a few handicapped weeks. When someone who does nothing else than sports damages his knees, he pays the price for his sports. But if this person complains, trying to get some pity, he is detached from reality. Always, you need to be willing to pay the price. If you don't agree to pay the price, don't do it. If you didn't expect to pay a price, learn. If you agreed to pay the price, paid it, and started to suffer, only then may you deserve sympathy.
Warmth is no virtue if you don't have control. Of course, war is evil, and everyone is anti-war, yet nothing changes if you complain about it. No matter how much you can relate to the civilians' misery, nothing changes; you may as well not care. In this context, empathy, in that sense, is mere virtue signaling. The first lesson of stoicism is not to think of things you can't change anyway. Only if you are willing to do something and know that what you do has an impact, may you feel pity, but then you must do something.
My life consists of pretty much failures only. I write, no one reads, I speak, no one listens, I create, and no one uses. Failed apps, flopping videos, and insignificant texts are all that there is. Next to objectively failing at almost everything I attempt, I have many flaws. But that's ok, because I try hard to compensate.
A large ego is objectively a flaw. Arrogant people are usually irrelevant, especially if they age. If they don't get humble, no one wants to spend time with them, and their ego daggers them from within. Furthermore, many egocentric people think that they can stop learning or even stop putting in the work because they are special, entitled, or 'misunderstood'. Consequently, their ego makes them unpleasant to be around and they fail at everything since they are too smart to try. Due to the nature of ego, many realize only too late the wrong path they were on. Hence, ego brings many problems for most and it's better to remove that flaw. - Yet, I have a very large ego, and somehow, I don't rot from within. How so? Well, it did cause a lot of pain to figure out how to use it. Now I understand, that I need to earn thinking highly of myself - that's called humility. I know, that if I want to feel like the alpha, which I want because of my ego, I need to do what it takes. Doing what it takes means accepting that one is a nobody and needs to put in the effort. In that sense, humility is the process of justifying ego. And that's true. The more my ego grows, the humbler and loving I get. The moments I move forward the most are when I'm the kindest. The only reason I'm developing myself is because of my ego. If I were a peasant, all loving, humble, and balanced, I wouldn't need to write a text where I transform myself. Neither would I need to get up in the middle of the night and neither would I need to go to the gym. Anything that doesn't have an ego is dead, the leaf blown by the wind, a snowflake falling in silence, or a river finding its way without resistance. Anything that strives does it because of ego, even if said ego is abstract. We went from ego making one unpleasant to be around to the only reason one should grow.
I believe that everyone can take their flaws or handicaps and turn them into greatness.
That’s the magic of compensation.
But then, I felt something.
I wanted to tell you a story, but I struggle to because that's more of an intuition. I saw how everyone has their place in the universe.
If someone grew up with lazy parents, was fed doughnuts, and was told he needed to rest otherwise, he would work himself to death. If he gets a gaming console for Christmas and has no discipline at all, he is set to become a loser. It would take herculean strength to overcome these obstacles. Here’s another example. Because school is boring, some children don’t want to sit down. Some teachers take them as a bad example, which reinforces their image. That then creates a negative ripple effect.
Everyone has their place in the universe; by a hair, that position can change.
I thought further. Usually, I don’t care about strangers. I keep my emotions in my inner circle. But then, I remembered something. However, there's a guy I have known since early childhood, and he has zero self-esteem, a complete curvy-back mentality. I haven't spoken to him in years, yet sometimes I see him. It appears he stagnates in life. He doesn’t have a hot blonde. I know that he didn't have it easy, and I think to myself: may God bless him. But still, the responsibility is his. I indeed feel nothing for the person that I don't know who wastes his life and shows weakness, more so if I've been through it myself, but man, … I understand that sometimes bad things happen not because - but just.
Normally I have an easy time ignoring things. As you may know, I create videos on self-improvement. Naturally, there are useless and mean comments. For some reason, it started to bother me. After it stayed in my mind for a while, it still bothered me.
I realized that that’s because I lacked love. Would I really if I had my hot blondes, a monument, and a sweet village house? I realized that love is indeed in the center. Power means letting things go your way. It can also mean - tiger. But power can also mean not caring about things. Thus, I learned that love is power.
Why try hard? For love, for nothing more, nothing less.
“I will do everything in my power to get what matters. I will dedicate every second of my life aligned with my purpose; I will go to monumental lengths for love.” – text #87