(I caught up! - 2 in one week - it won't happen again...)
I was into the Marvel universe through Endgame. Then (after 27 movies) it became too much. I watched some but they weren't doing it for me. But with Daredevil having a reboot and me hearing that it was good back in the day (2016-2018 if you're curious), I gave it a go.
As I work out, as I am up early with the dog (not as often as my wife), as I don't fall asleep at night (not an issue, just I don't subscribe to the 'no screens 3 hours before bed' rule), I have been catching up on the first 3 seasons and I am almost done. Yes, productivity has a stopping point when mid-binge.
But as I watch Matt Murdock with a blindfold over his face navigate the fire escapes of Hell's Kitchen (not Gordon Ramsey), I realized that he turned his blindness into an advantage. The obstacle became the way. His hearing and awareness are....wait for it....superhuman.
Without dedicating himself to overcoming this obstacle, Wilson Fisk would have never (REDACTED) to a crisp and the District Attorney wouldn't have (REDACTED) into a fiery (REDACTED). I just hope that Fisk's cronies don't get to this newsletter otherwise they would (REDACTED) and I would have no paying subscribers.
But overcoming obstacles isn't unique to Daredevil. Spiderman was bitten by a weird-ass spider. Superman's home world of Krypton was eviscerated and he was expelled across the galaxy. Batman's parents were gunned down in front of him. Iron Man was imprisoned by war lords. Captain America was scrawny but never gave up...I could go all day with this!
So why is Stoicism having a bit of a resurgence here 2,500 years after its founding? Because we have our challenges. Our heroes have their challenges. Whether fictional or real. We like rooting for folks to overcome their challenges. We root for our peers, friends, family members to overcome theirs.
We need to have the discipline to root for ourselves and take the appropriate action as we fight to overcome ours.
The closer we get to mastery, the less we care about specific results. The more collaborative and creative we are able to be, the less we will tolerate ego or insecurity. The more at peace we are, the more productive we can be. Only through stillness are the vexing problems solved. Only through reducing our aims are the most difficult targets within our reach.
— Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key
Everything that happens to you is a form of instruction if you pay attention.
— Robert Greene, Mastery
Entitlement plays out in one of two ways: I’m awesome and the rest of you all suck, so I deserve special treatment. I suck and the rest of you are all awesome, so I deserve special treatment. Opposite mindset on the outside, but the same selfish creamy core in the middle.
— Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
Rads Take
If you are good, then you shouldn't care about the results. The public results are an inherent comparison to others. A win means you got something that someone else didn't get. It is a comparison of you to someone else. And as the saying goes, "comparison is the thief of joy." If we put our stock in the results which are largely outside of our control and focus more on our training, effort, consistency, then a loss is not soul crushing. It is information that perhaps we can do more.
On Oprah, Holiday did say that the folks that took to his content early on are athletes. I've said before on this newsletter that the axioms are boring but hold true: one game at a time, keep the main thing the main thing, you're only as good as your last battle.
Excellence, or mastery as Holiday puts it (and Robert Greene wrote in his very long book Mastery), is the pursuit -- winning is not.
Oh, speaking of mastery, quote #2 pulls right from it. "Everything that happens to you" is the things external to us that we perceive and react to. Greene is saying that those things are not dictating your responses, but instead should inform your responses and your thoughts. Externalities are stimuli that, when trained properly, can serve to inform us on what to do from here. Do we recognize any patterns in the things happening around us that perhaps we learned before? If this is the first time, good - a new exposure. If this is not the first time, good - we are learning a pattern. Either way, we can improve just by observing the world. "Things are neither good nor bad, but our thinking makes them so." - Bill Shakespeare.
And finally, "entitled" is not a adjective anyone wants attached to their name. Entitled people do feel like they are the exception - whether for good or for bad as described in the quote. Based upon this quote, so much of entitlement is comparison to others which, as quote #1 addresses (or at least my analysis of quote #1 shows), ain't the best thing.
If we can avoid comparing ourselves to others, we don't think search for reasons why we are better or worse than them. We are focused on our own improvement and being the best versions of ourselves.
But how do we avoid comparison? By being present about what you really care about. If you care about vanity, then this probably isn't the newsletter for you. If you care about self-improvement and the greater good, then there is a logical path for you to reason through that comparison. But that is a path only you can determine with the existing life scenario at play.