You see, in our modern society we see ourselves as more advanced, even more evolved. They saw challenges as their escape rather than depression as their end.Ĭato the Younger, mortal enemy of Julius Caesar, wanted to live with the values of his grandfather, a wise and good and frugal man, but in a time that was deemed as 12 times worse.
He used his depression to give him perspectives that others didn’t have. ( Read this: A Man’s Guide to Defeating Depression) Alas, the notion that God only burdens you with what you can handle is true if you deem it to be true, as Lincoln did. If you hit rock bottom, you’re depressed, the world feels not filled with color, but grey and bland and pointless, by all means talk to a doctor, seek help, but seek help from those that will challenge you, not those that will excuse you from life and ask nothing of you.Ībraham Lincoln was burdened with depression. It’s that pain that failure brings that will make you never want to feel that pain again, which will spur you on to work harder, to become more disciplined, or to seek out something that you are good at and apply the same work that the fella who won the race did, to what you are talented at. If you lose you need to be able to feel the pain of that loss, not awarded a participation medal. You only become special when you do something of real value, when you work harder than others and give more than others and improve the lives of others so they can then pay it forward and do the same. No matter what your preschool teacher said, you are not special. He needed someone to force him to read and to love reading and to open his mind to things none of his other peers even thought were possible because they were pitied rather than challenged. What Carson needed wasn’t someone to coddle him and excuse him from effort or discipline, he needed someone, and that someone turned out to be his mother, to ask more of him.
Yet he grew up as many who you do see as disadvantaged, a poor black kid in Baltimore.
You wouldn’t dare see Ben Carson as disadvantaged, as the former head of Brain Surgery at Johns Hopkins and now presidential hopeful has money and fame and has saved countless lives. Looking back, no one would ever see Theodore Roosevelt as disadvantaged, though the young fella was born weak and sickly and almost entirely set in his bed nursing one of his many ailments.
#YOU RE PERFECT JUST THE WAY YOU ARE FREE#
What he has accomplished cannot be accomplished by someone with a disadvantage, yet in excusing himself from the excuses that we can give to get a free pass, an out, he’s lived a wonderful life. You’ll meet people who pity you, who see you as someone who should be excused from the expectations that hang over the rest of us because you were born with a disadvantage.Īnd what’s incredibly and honestly hilarious about disadvantage is that it’s 100% subjective.Īs he is now, no one would call Stephen Hawking disadvantaged, yet his condition relegates him to a wheel chair and without words. You’ll have those who meet your cries with a “here here, you’re so hard done by,” or cries of their own. In this world you’ll have people pander to your complaints. It’s giving them something they haven’t earned, be it praise, money, a title, or even a compliment. No, what you need is something that comes from someone that doesn’t pity you. What you don’t need is a pat on the back saying you’re great when you’re lazy and entitled and a whiner. Within the well-intended call to claim or reclaim your self-esteem that seems to be gaining speed like fully-loaded locomotive in an attempt to make people feel better about who they are has left out one simple ingredient for true confidence: What you die with, that is, what you’ve given of yourself come time to die, this is what will dictate whether or not you are special, but more importantly, whether or not you have been valuable. What you are born with – gifts, talents, skills, interests – or what you are born into – wealth, poverty, affluence, influence, tribulation, ease – don’t matter. To be special would be to place ourselves above the masses, when it’s humility that will allow you to learn. To be perfect how we are would nullify the need for improvement, and improvement is necessary. No, you are not perfect just the way you are, nor are you special, though you are unique.
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