The lowest point of my life was the summer of 2019.
Waking up at 4AM every day to go to work as a janitor, and never getting more than five hours of sleep, dark bags permanently lined my eyes. My diet of cereal and frozen pizza grew my gut day after day, and peppered my face with acne. After enduring an injury and not being able to exercise, my body was atrophying and falling apart. Every day was pain.
And that was just the physical side of things. Mentally, I was getting pushed closer to the edge by a mental disorder that wouldn't get diagnosed for another six years. On top of that, my anger issues pushed away anyone that tried to get close to me.
Emotionally, I was a man on a deserted island—all alone. No one I could turn to for support. So I turned inward, numbing myself and the outside world, by escaping into the online world. I spent all my waking hours listening to podcasts while at work, and watching YouTube, porn, and playing video games while at home.
Needless to say, romance was not part of my life. I dreamed of having a girlfriend, but one look in the mirror and I was scared of what I saw: a penniless, tired, weak man, on the brink of physical, emotional, and spiritual collapse.
What rescued me from my abyss was reading the book 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson. The fourth rule is: “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.”
The author discusses how envy can block you from bettering yourself, poisoning your thoughts, by reminding you that there's always someone out there who is better than you at something. But that doesn’t matter, because you can always improve yourself, as long as you are willing to aim low enough:
Pay attention. Focus on your surroundings, physical and psychological. Notice something that bothers you, that concerns you, that will not let you be, which you could fix, that you would fix. You can find such somethings by asking yourself (as if you genuinely want to know) three questions: “What is it that is bothering me?” “Is this something I could fix?” and “Would I actually be willing to fix it?” If you find that the answer is “no”, to any or all of the questions, then look elsewhere. Aim lower. Search until you find something that bothers you, that you could fix, that you would fix, and then fix it. That might be enough for the day.
After reading that paragraph, I went to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror: pimples and acne scars all over my face.
“It’s something that bothers me,” I thought, “and it's something I could probably fix, but would I actually be willing to fix it? Ugh, but skin care is so feminine! And besides, I don't know the first thing about how to start.” The next paragraph in the book acknowledged my frustrations:
Maybe there is a stack of paper on your desk, and you have been avoiding it. You won’t even really look at it when you walk into your room. There are terrible things lurking there: tax forms, and bills and letters from people wanting things you aren’t sure you can deliver. Notice your fear, and have some sympathy for it. Maybe there are snakes in that pile of paper. Maybe you’ll get bitten. Maybe there are even hydras lurking there. You’ll cut off one head, and seven more will grow. How could you possibly cope with that?
“Exactly!” I thought, “If I delve into skin care, then I'll have to do all this research on the topic, which will probably force me to change my diet, and fix my sleeping patterns, and reconsider my job as a janitor, and then I'll have to take my career seriously and do research there, and…and…and…fuck!! It's too much! Too many hydras appear when I try to tackle one small fucking thing!”
Fortunately, the next paragraph provided an answer to my pleas:
You could ask yourself, “Is there anything at all that I might be willing to do about that pile of paper? Would I look, maybe, at one part of it? For twenty minutes?” Maybe the answer will be, “No!” But you might look for ten, or even five (and if not that, for one). Start there. You will soon find that the entire pile shrinks in significance, merely because you have looked at part of it. And you’ll find that the whole thing is made of parts. What if you allowed yourself a glass of wine with dinner, or curled up on the sofa and read, or watched a stupid movie, as a reward?
Ask yourself what you would require to be motivated to undertake the job, honestly, and listen to the answer. Don’t tell yourself, “I shouldn’t need to do that to motivate myself.” What do you know about yourself? You are, on the one hand, the most complex thing in the entire universe, and on the other, someone who can’t even set the clock on your microwave. Don’t over-estimate your self-knowledge.
I contemplated this for a long, long time. Combative and self-defeating thoughts percolated on the edges of my subconscious, trying to keep me stuck in my old ways. But I kept returning to this idea: keep aiming lower until there's something small enough that I would be willing to fix (even if doing so makes me feel pathetic).
I stared at my acne-riddled face in the mirror. Self-pitying and contemptuous eyes stared back at me.
Grimacing, I pulled my phone out and googled “Basic skin care routine.” Two things came up: face wash and lotion. I shook my head, feeling embarrassed from my pathetic lack of knowledge, and drove to the general store.
Once back home, I washed my face for the first time. Staring at my wet and shiny face in the mirror, a voice in my head asked in the quietest way possible, “What next?”
Intense and overwhelming thoughts flooded my brain: “You are pathetic for even trying!” and “You've got too many problems—you're hopeless!” A poisonous swirl of feelings gnawed at my resolve. Panicking, I returned to the book for guidance on what I should do next:
Let the tasks for the day announce themselves for your contemplation. Maybe you can do this in the morning, as you sit on the edge of your bed. Maybe you can try, the night before, when you are preparing to sleep. Ask yourself for a voluntary contribution. If you ask nicely, and listen carefully, and don’t try any treachery, you might be offered one. Do this every day, for a while. Then do it for the rest of your life. Soon you will find yourself in a different situation. Now you will be asking yourself, habitually, “What could I do, that I would do, to make life a little better?”
“Okay,” I reassured myself, “just keep aiming low, and reward myself with every effort I make, no matter how small.”
I sat on my bed and thought deeply. “What’s the next easiest thing I could do to ameliorate my suffering?” I looked over at my pillow, which my acne-marked face laid upon every night. I went and changed the pillowcase. After that I stopped. I had done enough for one night. I didn't want to overwhelm myself by doing too much.
As the days went on, my thoughts and feelings tormented me, proclaiming that I was a loser and that I should stop trying. Like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill, I struggled mightily, but didn’t stop. I continued to aim low, and remained begrudgingly patient with my miniscule progress.
At an embarrassingly slow rate, little by little, my life changed. Over the months, then years, things started getting better.
With every pathetic enemy I defeated (e.g., washing my face daily; going to bed at a reasonable hour; learning to cook for myself), I slowly built momentum. I eventually ran out of low-level tasks, and developed the confidence to confront mid-sized tasks (e.g., learning how to socialize; graduating college; affording and moving into my first apartment).
Over the years, my ethos became: If I don't know what to do in life right now, I might as well do something good for myself.
And I've created a good life by following this, until…
…until something new happened that shook me to my core…
…I fell in love for the first time…
“The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust
After falling in love, I looked back on my years-long self-improvement journey like I was Odysseus going to war in Troy—seeking glory and fame by proving myself. I don't regret that time I spent, but I do see it with new eyes: that I've been playing the game of life for a long time by myself. Alone.
My eagerness to achieve came not from a place of love, but from a place of spite. I had to show the world that it can hurt me all that it wants, and that I can take it. I will stand, alone, against anything it throws at me. The final two lines of this poem used to deeply resonate with me:
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
My whole life I’ve felt alone. The pain was unbearable, so I subconsciously suppressed that terrible feeling, and replaced it with self-improvement—all fueled by a quiet rage and contempt for the world.
But then something different happened. Someone dared to love me.
I didn't believe it at first. I couldn't. How could anyone love a wretch like me? Even with all my improvements, at my core, I felt unlovable.
It was as if I had a small, hurt, betrayed, sulking child hidden in the castle walls of my heart, ordering me to develop myself further, to build my castle walls a little bit higher.
But then, a quiet knocking came at my castle door, accompanied by a tiny voice that said, “I love you.”
The child, sitting deep within the castle walls, quit his sulking for a moment, thinking that his ears deceived him. But then came the knocking again, and the voice, muffled from behind the castle door, repeated, “I love you.”
This time the child heard it, but he did not believe it, “Lies! I've heard that before, and it wasn't true. Go away!”
The child’s cries reverberated across the walls, clashing against the deafening silence that normally suffocates the castle. Then, once more, “I love you.”
“But how can you?!” the child wailed, “Look at me, I'm pathetic and small and… and… nobody could ever love a person like me!”
Once more, but louder, “I love you.”
Sitting on the ground with his head between his knees, tears streaming down the child's face, he looked up in disbelief, “…really?”
“Yes, really. I love you. Will you let me in?”
Sitting on the ground, the child couldn’t even remember where the castle door was. Hesitating, he stood up slowly, with his head down and arms crossed, and shuffled towards the sound of the voice, which kept repeating, “I love you,” to help guide him.
Upon reaching the castle door, the child hesitated once more, then asked, “…do you really mean it?”
The voice on the other side, now quieter, said, “Yes. And I'll show you. Will you let me in?”
The child, with stress coursing through his veins from being hurt before, opened the door.
On the other side stood a small girl. She smiled.
She said, “I see you!” And the boy ran into her arms, hugging her tightly, never wanting to let go.
Being deeply seen and heard, for the first time in my life, was a profoundly transformative experience.
It taught me that I didn't have to hide behind my castle walls anymore. It made me realize that while all my self-improvement was great, it was a journey that I took all alone, and that company makes travel better.
After that experience, Robin Williams' speech in the movie Good Will Hunting took on a whole new meaning for me:
If I asked you about women, you’d probably give me a syllabus of your personal favorites. You may even have been laid a few times. But you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy.
And if I asked you about love, you’d probably quote me a sonnet. But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone who could level you with her eyes. Feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you…who could rescue you from the depths of hell.
And you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be her angel, to have that love for her, to be there forever. Through anything. Through cancer. And you wouldn’t know about sleeping sitting up in a hospital room for two months holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes that the terms “visiting hours” don’t apply to you. You don’t know about real loss, because that only occurs when you love something more than you love yourself.
I found the courage to lower my castle walls, to love someone more than I loved myself, and I'm a better man for it. After that experience, my guiding ethos changed. I stopped going through life doing things solely for myself, by myself.
“The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust
Instead, I departed on a new voyage, and began living with a new guiding principle: If I don’t know what to do in life right now, what can I do to help my community and the people I love?
The lowest point of my life was the summer of 2019.
Waking up at 4AM every day to go to work as a janitor, and never getting more than five hours of sleep, dark bags permanently lined my eyes. My diet of cereal and frozen pizza grew my gut day after day, and peppered my face with acne. After enduring an injury and not being able to exercise, my body was atrophying and falling apart. Every day was pain.
And that was just the physical side of things. Mentally, I was getting pushed closer to the edge by a mental disorder that wouldn't get diagnosed for another six years. On top of that, my anger issues pushed away anyone that tried to get close to me.
Emotionally, I was a man on a deserted island—all alone. No one I could turn to for support. So I turned inward, numbing myself and the outside world, by escaping into the online world. I spent all my waking hours listening to podcasts while at work, and watching YouTube, porn, and playing video games while at home.
Needless to say, romance was not part of my life. I dreamed of having a girlfriend, but one look in the mirror and I was scared of what I saw: a penniless, tired, weak man, on the brink of physical, emotional, and spiritual collapse.
What rescued me from my abyss was reading the book 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson. The fourth rule is: “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.”
The author discusses how envy can block you from bettering yourself, poisoning your thoughts, by reminding you that there's always someone out there who is better than you at something. But that doesn’t matter, because you can always improve yourself, as long as you are willing to aim low enough:
After reading that paragraph, I went to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror: pimples and acne scars all over my face.
“It’s something that bothers me,” I thought, “and it's something I could probably fix, but would I actually be willing to fix it? Ugh, but skin care is so feminine! And besides, I don't know the first thing about how to start.” The next paragraph in the book acknowledged my frustrations:
“Exactly!” I thought, “If I delve into skin care, then I'll have to do all this research on the topic, which will probably force me to change my diet, and fix my sleeping patterns, and reconsider my job as a janitor, and then I'll have to take my career seriously and do research there, and…and…and…fuck!! It's too much! Too many hydras appear when I try to tackle one small fucking thing!”
Fortunately, the next paragraph provided an answer to my pleas:
I contemplated this for a long, long time. Combative and self-defeating thoughts percolated on the edges of my subconscious, trying to keep me stuck in my old ways. But I kept returning to this idea: keep aiming lower until there's something small enough that I would be willing to fix (even if doing so makes me feel pathetic).
I stared at my acne-riddled face in the mirror. Self-pitying and contemptuous eyes stared back at me.
Grimacing, I pulled my phone out and googled “Basic skin care routine.” Two things came up: face wash and lotion. I shook my head, feeling embarrassed from my pathetic lack of knowledge, and drove to the general store.
Once back home, I washed my face for the first time. Staring at my wet and shiny face in the mirror, a voice in my head asked in the quietest way possible, “What next?”
Intense and overwhelming thoughts flooded my brain: “You are pathetic for even trying!” and “You've got too many problems—you're hopeless!” A poisonous swirl of feelings gnawed at my resolve. Panicking, I returned to the book for guidance on what I should do next:
“Okay,” I reassured myself, “just keep aiming low, and reward myself with every effort I make, no matter how small.”
I sat on my bed and thought deeply. “What’s the next easiest thing I could do to ameliorate my suffering?” I looked over at my pillow, which my acne-marked face laid upon every night. I went and changed the pillowcase. After that I stopped. I had done enough for one night. I didn't want to overwhelm myself by doing too much.
As the days went on, my thoughts and feelings tormented me, proclaiming that I was a loser and that I should stop trying. Like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill, I struggled mightily, but didn’t stop. I continued to aim low, and remained begrudgingly patient with my miniscule progress.
At an embarrassingly slow rate, little by little, my life changed. Over the months, then years, things started getting better.
With every pathetic enemy I defeated (e.g., washing my face daily; going to bed at a reasonable hour; learning to cook for myself), I slowly built momentum. I eventually ran out of low-level tasks, and developed the confidence to confront mid-sized tasks (e.g., learning how to socialize; graduating college; affording and moving into my first apartment).
Over the years, my ethos became: If I don't know what to do in life right now, I might as well do something good for myself.
And I've created a good life by following this, until…
…until something new happened that shook me to my core…
…I fell in love for the first time…
After falling in love, I looked back on my years-long self-improvement journey like I was Odysseus going to war in Troy—seeking glory and fame by proving myself. I don't regret that time I spent, but I do see it with new eyes: that I've been playing the game of life for a long time by myself. Alone.
My eagerness to achieve came not from a place of love, but from a place of spite. I had to show the world that it can hurt me all that it wants, and that I can take it. I will stand, alone, against anything it throws at me. The final two lines of this poem used to deeply resonate with me:
My whole life I’ve felt alone. The pain was unbearable, so I subconsciously suppressed that terrible feeling, and replaced it with self-improvement—all fueled by a quiet rage and contempt for the world.
But then something different happened. Someone dared to love me.
I didn't believe it at first. I couldn't. How could anyone love a wretch like me? Even with all my improvements, at my core, I felt unlovable.
It was as if I had a small, hurt, betrayed, sulking child hidden in the castle walls of my heart, ordering me to develop myself further, to build my castle walls a little bit higher.
But then, a quiet knocking came at my castle door, accompanied by a tiny voice that said, “I love you.”
The child, sitting deep within the castle walls, quit his sulking for a moment, thinking that his ears deceived him. But then came the knocking again, and the voice, muffled from behind the castle door, repeated, “I love you.”
This time the child heard it, but he did not believe it, “Lies! I've heard that before, and it wasn't true. Go away!”
The child’s cries reverberated across the walls, clashing against the deafening silence that normally suffocates the castle. Then, once more, “I love you.”
“But how can you?!” the child wailed, “Look at me, I'm pathetic and small and… and… nobody could ever love a person like me!”
Once more, but louder, “I love you.”
Sitting on the ground with his head between his knees, tears streaming down the child's face, he looked up in disbelief, “…really?”
“Yes, really. I love you. Will you let me in?”
Sitting on the ground, the child couldn’t even remember where the castle door was. Hesitating, he stood up slowly, with his head down and arms crossed, and shuffled towards the sound of the voice, which kept repeating, “I love you,” to help guide him.
Upon reaching the castle door, the child hesitated once more, then asked, “…do you really mean it?”
The voice on the other side, now quieter, said, “Yes. And I'll show you. Will you let me in?”
The child, with stress coursing through his veins from being hurt before, opened the door.
On the other side stood a small girl. She smiled.
She said, “I see you!” And the boy ran into her arms, hugging her tightly, never wanting to let go.
Being deeply seen and heard, for the first time in my life, was a profoundly transformative experience.
It taught me that I didn't have to hide behind my castle walls anymore. It made me realize that while all my self-improvement was great, it was a journey that I took all alone, and that company makes travel better.
After that experience, Robin Williams' speech in the movie Good Will Hunting took on a whole new meaning for me:
I found the courage to lower my castle walls, to love someone more than I loved myself, and I'm a better man for it. After that experience, my guiding ethos changed. I stopped going through life doing things solely for myself, by myself.
Instead, I departed on a new voyage, and began living with a new guiding principle: If I don’t know what to do in life right now, what can I do to help my community and the people I love?