Only if you learn

What does not kill me, makes me stronger - Nietzsche

I recently noticed that its not ‘you’ in the quote its ’me’. Nietzsche refers to himself, knowing he has the capacity to learn from his failings and change himself to be stronger. He knows that he can use the failures as the raw material to provide himself a strength which he never had before. He knows he has the humility to learn.

If we think that anything that affects us detrimentally, by its own happening, makes us stronger, we are wrong. We more often than not, don’t take it as a lesson to constructively build upon. We can ignore it, we can deny it, we can excuse ourselves behind the myriad factors that govern our lives but as long as we don’t actively seek to learn from it, the happening weakens us instead of making us stronger. We lose the opportunity that it generously provides through our lack of humility.

Transitions

Often we stop ourselves far from the limits of what is achievable. Our fear of losing it all at the end of an effort keeps us from running altogether. Sometimes the fears are legitimate but often times not.

Each serious endeavor requires one to give it their all to achieve something that is accessible at the end of the tunnel. It is a risk and a gamble, but if we think about losing it even before we begin, we create invisible shackles to our minds and souls. It is in fact the fears that we have and the things that we've left behind that allow us for that extra push needed to achieve bigger things.

Like a fish that grows in a small bowl needs to put its life on the line, even if for a few moments, to reach a bigger bowl.

No profit is Loss

Of great importance is the monetary value that one decides upon for one’s work. Often we are blinded by our privilege in accepting low paying projects. While the project itself generates great value - monetarily or in creating presence for the client, it seldom meaningfully adds to anything more than spare change in our pockets.

We might be tempted to do these projects for the prestige they bring, a passion that aligns to ours or worst of all, speculated future work. As our real world needs are taken care off by a stability that we have worked over for years (or simply have been handed down in inheritance) we might think it harmless to pick up a no profit no loss gig.

But for this action that we mindlessly do, there is a very real cost. The cost is not paid by us but by the people belonging to the lower social and economic stratas of our field. The ones who are talented but constantly exploited and underpaid because of our actions. The ones who can more than serve the value requirement of the client but are forced to accept lower and lower fees as we childishly mess around with the value - demand - cost trinity of the economics of our fields.

By accepting such projects, we use our privilege foolishly to add gallons of value into an already large pool and throttle the meagre flow of the one’s dying of thirst. We shove them out of our fields before they can blossom and then wonder why there is a dearth of talent in our community.