Seen Wanting It

Do you actually want it? Or do you want to be seen as the man who wants it?

Sit with that one. It is not rhetorical.

Because there is a version of this where you never commit, never risk, never sacrifice a thing — and still get to walk around as a man with big ambitions. The wanting is the costume. And the costume is comfortable.

Commit, and the costume comes off. Now you either get it or you fail at it, in public, where everyone can see. Stay in the wanting, and you never have to find out which.

So you keep your options open. You call it strategy. It is avoidance with a resume.

It is easier to hold on to what could be than to trade it for what is. What could be is perfect. What could be never disappoints you. And every year you protect it, you pay for it — with the thing you said you wanted.

The men who got there did not do this. They did not weigh the infinite other possibilities. They picked one and rushed in with lethal focus, blind to everything else on purpose.

That is the cost. Not money. Not time. You. Who you are now, and the life you have arranged around it.

If you will not pay that, fine. But stop calling signaling.

"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one." — Marcus Aurelius