“Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ballpark. Aim for the company of immortals.” ― David Ogilvy
Your brain is designed to keep you safe. To help you survive. If you ate, if you have a place to sleep, if you feel safe, then your brain will trick you into thinking that’s all you can achieve.
You’ll be able to rationalize why you don’t have the kind of life you want, or why you are not who you want to be.
But there’s a big difference between living and surviving.
The truth is that it does not matter. Any of it.
You’ll either wear out or rust out. The choice is yours. It always was.
The worst that could happen is death, and we all die, and so…
I’d say it’s best to go out fighting.
To not go gentle into that good night.
Why lead a quiet and empty life?
Why survive and call it living?
You only have this one chance to do all that you’ll ever do.
Aim for the company of immortals.
Fight for your dreams.
We waste years and years, wishing, dreaming, hoping, becoming envious, bitter, remorseful. We waste years, and on our deathbeds we end up begging for moments.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
This really speaks to me.
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You only get one life. Go big. Thanks for inspiration.
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“You’ll either wear out or rust out”… I love it. I’ve not heard that phrase. You’ve captured so many nuggets of wisdom in this piece. A must-read, especially for those needing some inspiration.
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Thank you!
I think the first to use that phrase was Teddy Roosevelt. I imagine this car sitting in a garage, accumulating dust and rust over the years, as no one drives it. That’s what most people’s lives are like.
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Yes!
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Good stuff, as always. The line I’ve particularly related to this morning is, “There’s a big difference between living and surviving.” It seems to me that survival is a bottom line, an instinctive and base drive — it is the common banality of living things. To exist and continue to exist. But to live a life, a good one, full of meaning and purpose — this is what marks the human spirit at is most exuberant and wonderful. It’s what makes good art. And it’s also what makes your work inspiring, Christian. That Dylan Thomas line, “Do not go gentle into that good night” for me, means — do not succumb to base survival, to medicority, to merely survive rather than live.
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Thank you, Tylor.
I think that most time we merely want to survive, without being aware of it. We fall into all sort of bad habits, and we choose mental laziness, we choose to do nothing at all, when we could be striving for greatness.
And, yes, I think of that line by Dylan Thomas as a way to find motivation. The good night is coming for all of us, whether we want it to or not, and we should rage agains the dying of the light.
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Cheers to throwing off the rust! May we be so bold in our rattling that we shake even a little of the rust from those around us.
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I really like how you put it in this paragraph: “We waste years and years, wishing, dreaming, hoping, becoming envious, bitter, remorseful. We waste years, and on our deathbeds we end up begging for moments.” It’s a powerful contrast. Thanks for sharing!
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Thank you!
I believe we live like we’re going to live forever, and we only realize it is not true on our deathbeds. And that’s when we break down, when we finally realize how much time we lost on things that didn’t matter.
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