The most terrifying thing to do is start over, especially when you have children, a spouse and other responsibilities. It’s not just hard for you, it’s hard for the people around you because they also have to adjust to a new life, often marked with deep cuts in lifestyle and possibilities.
But starting over is sometimes inevitable: it’s a means of adapting, or at times asserting one’s principles. And this is the most challenging part…
Maybe, hold that thought – I will come back to it.
The soft overcomes the hard
I was listening to Trevor Noah’s new podcast on Spotify. His recent episode was with Sam Altman, Time Magazine’s CEO of the year – the man behind Chat GPT.
Here’s the short version of what happened to him.
- 16 Nov: Sam receives a text to join a special board meeting.
- 17 Nov: The Board fires Sam as CEO of the company he founded.
- 18 Nov: OpenAI board members appoint a new CEO.
- 19 Nov: Sam considers launching a new startup, but Microsoft offers Sam a position to lead its AI division
- 20 Nov: 500 OpenAI employees sign a petition, demanding the board’s resignation
- 21 Nov: OpenAI releases a statement to rehire Sam
- 22 Nov: Sam returns as CEO
This is an extraordinary example of the soft overcoming the hard, or in this case, the employees overcoming their bosses.
In Taoist thought, value is found in the nothingness of things. A room cannot exist without the space between the walls. Music cannot exist without the silence. Hence, it is said the soft overcomes the hard.
“Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water,” Lao Tzu said, “Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it.”
This is almost the opposite of Western thought. The internet has no shortage of preachers of success. They tell us to find our purpose and strive towards something meaningful. And within the yolk of their counsel, we see no other way to exist except to measure (or even define) ourselves against accomplishment.
We must, as it were, harden our resolve and orientate ourselves in a certain direction. We are taught that if we do not give up, we will surely succeed. But who is to say that one’s chosen path will lead to the desired outcome? And what happens when we keep striving in the wrong direction, under the influence of the “never quit” doctrine?
At some point, one must confront the realisation that one is heading in the wrong direction and find the courage to change course.
Inside Out
Fridays are movie night at my house. This past Friday we watched Inside Out – I am only 9 years late to the party, I know. Nevertheless, the movie offers a stunning portrayal of Carl Jung’s model of the psyche. It is also a lesson, consistent with Taoist thought, that the things we often deem useless are often the most important to us.
Coming back to the theme of starting over: figuring out life all over again is a terrifying prospect. But where does the terror come from? Simply, it comes from the possibility of losing one’s position or status in society. Downgrading.
And what does a person in terror look like? They are hardened and often fixated on terror, which makes them lose their agility or even opportunities right under their noses. In other words, the terror of starting over can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading one into the abyss instead of being seen as wiping the slate clean to build a brave new world.
This was the point of the movie, Inside Out, and in my view, the point of confronting the terrifying prospect of starting over. It is realising that we must not define ourselves with what we have or what we do. We must, instead, strive to live according to timeless principles and values, rather than things and circumstances.
We must use starting over as an opportunity to re-discover and re-align ourselves with the best of what the world has to offer, even when it seems impossible.
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Let’s leave it here for today. As always, I would love to hear your views. Have you started over recently or in the past? How was your experience and how did you overcome the “what now” question?
Until next Sunday.
With Warmth
Vusi Sindane
P.S. I was working on a new course to help people achieve their goals. However, my research suggested that the reasons we put off our goals are psychological more than practical.
That’s when I put the breaks on the course. Helping people solve psychological issues is not just complicated, it is ultimately the individual who makes changes. This makes a course inappropriate for the topic of helping people achieve their goals.
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