On silent toils
On silent toils
Practice, the things we do in the dark, and exercising willpower
Practice, the things we do in the dark, and exercising willpower
Apr 22, 2024
The main lesson of ironman is a spiritual one. I can’t really put it into words. It’s a series of nano lessons with every stride, pedal and stroke. Literally, not figuratively.
There’s a voice that you develop inside your head that says things like: “one more push”, “we’re halfway there”, “let’s go for that session now while we have energy so we can rest later”. The voice never tells you something you don’t already know. It never has any insight. It doesn’t convince you of anything that you aren’t convinced of. It’s not the voice that tells you what you should do. It’s the voice of the bridge between knowing and doing. Perhaps, It’s the voice of willpower. It’s new to me.
We all have the voice but it doesn’t help. We know exactly what we should do but we can’t do it because knowing and doing are separate. The thing that connects them is there but it’s feeble. It wasn’t exercised so we lost it. Our lives don’t require this voice so it atrophies and dissolves. We lose our ability to control our destiny. We lose our agency over our own lives. We lose our humanity.
There’s no path to prosperity, happiness, meaning, without this voice. There’s no way around it. You don’t want to have a way around it.
The will is not trained by doing things. It’s not trained by doing hard things or a lot of things. It’s trained by doing things that you don’t have to do. It’s trained by doing things for no fucking reason. There’s no benefit. There’s no positive outcome. There’s nothing. You just pick a thing and you do it because you decided to do it. In fact, the only things we’re guaranteed are the opposite of positive. There’s pain, exhaustion, fear, and more pain. Theres’ sacrifice and darkness and more pain. You just do it because you said you’ll do it.
Now you have willpower.
What exercises the will is the silent toils of a large mission.
Sometimes, we enroll in these huge missions but we allow our greed and our self interest to take over. Self-interest becomes the guiding force and it displaces the need to exercise the will. You don’t need a lot of will to work 16 hours per day if you were paid a million dollars. The will is only required when you work 16 hours a day for no fucking reason except that you decided to do it.
There’s this expectation that there has to be a robust corpus of reasoning behind our decisions. I did this because of X, Y and Z. But those of us who do the necessary introspection know that none of those reasons are true. They are just stories affixed in hindsight. The wise don’t put a lot of stock in these famed “Why”. They focus more on doing the basics: You pick something noble, even at random, then you make it work. Perhaps it’s not the road to the most productive existence. But it seems to me that it is the road to the most human (as opposed to machine) existence: one of choice, commitment, follow through and perhaps spiritual ascent.
The main lesson of ironman is a spiritual one. I can’t really put it into words. It’s a series of nano lessons with every stride, pedal and stroke. Literally, not figuratively.
There’s a voice that you develop inside your head that says things like: “one more push”, “we’re halfway there”, “let’s go for that session now while we have energy so we can rest later”. The voice never tells you something you don’t already know. It never has any insight. It doesn’t convince you of anything that you aren’t convinced of. It’s not the voice that tells you what you should do. It’s the voice of the bridge between knowing and doing. Perhaps, It’s the voice of willpower. It’s new to me.
We all have the voice but it doesn’t help. We know exactly what we should do but we can’t do it because knowing and doing are separate. The thing that connects them is there but it’s feeble. It wasn’t exercised so we lost it. Our lives don’t require this voice so it atrophies and dissolves. We lose our ability to control our destiny. We lose our agency over our own lives. We lose our humanity.
There’s no path to prosperity, happiness, meaning, without this voice. There’s no way around it. You don’t want to have a way around it.
The will is not trained by doing things. It’s not trained by doing hard things or a lot of things. It’s trained by doing things that you don’t have to do. It’s trained by doing things for no fucking reason. There’s no benefit. There’s no positive outcome. There’s nothing. You just pick a thing and you do it because you decided to do it. In fact, the only things we’re guaranteed are the opposite of positive. There’s pain, exhaustion, fear, and more pain. Theres’ sacrifice and darkness and more pain. You just do it because you said you’ll do it.
Now you have willpower.
What exercises the will is the silent toils of a large mission.
Sometimes, we enroll in these huge missions but we allow our greed and our self interest to take over. Self-interest becomes the guiding force and it displaces the need to exercise the will. You don’t need a lot of will to work 16 hours per day if you were paid a million dollars. The will is only required when you work 16 hours a day for no fucking reason except that you decided to do it.
There’s this expectation that there has to be a robust corpus of reasoning behind our decisions. I did this because of X, Y and Z. But those of us who do the necessary introspection know that none of those reasons are true. They are just stories affixed in hindsight. The wise don’t put a lot of stock in these famed “Why”. They focus more on doing the basics: You pick something noble, even at random, then you make it work. Perhaps it’s not the road to the most productive existence. But it seems to me that it is the road to the most human (as opposed to machine) existence: one of choice, commitment, follow through and perhaps spiritual ascent.
