Get The Song Out
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to the grave with the song still in them.” - Henry David Thoreau
The implication of Thoreau’s remark is that most of us are going to live a mediocre life and die without ever pursuing the thing that would make us feel alive.
This sense of a quiet desperation is all around us. We’re doing the things we’re supposed to do. It looks good on the outside, but on the inside, we’re lacking.
Secretly, we long to do something completely different. But it’s so far out of the norm or away from what we’re currently doing that we’re afraid to begin.
“… and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
The longer we wait, the closer the grave gets and the harder the song gets to write.
The “song” is your calling, your Life’s Task, your unlived life. It’s what you know you really want to do, but don’t.
Between you and your song stands the Resistance.
Battling The Resistance
“It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write.” – Steven Pressfield
The Resistance is the friction you feel between where you are and taking the first step towards where you want to be.
What you need to know about the Resistance:
The Resistance tells you you’ll do it tomorrow.
The Resistance tells you that your diet starts Monday.
The Resistance tells you that everyone’s watching and you’re going to look like a fool.
The Resistance tells you to take a day off.
Understand: Wherever you’re feeling the Resistance is the direction you should be moving in. It’s your guiding light.
“The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel towards pursuing it” – The War of Art
In my own life, I most feel the Resistance when it comes to writing.
I think of me vs. The Resistance as a boxing match that starts every morning. The Resistance is standing between me and sitting down to write.
The first test is when my alarm goes off, that’s the ringing of the bell. The Resistance wants me to hit snooze, to quit before the days begun. When I get out of bed, I think of that as taking the first step towards the Resistance, he knows he’s got a fight on his hands.
Then I meditate. The Resistance stands between me and actually sitting down to do it, every day. It tells me I’m hungry and that I should eat first. It reminds me that I did it yesterday, what’s the big deal if I don’t today. Once I sit down to begin, that’s a solid punch to the Resistance’s gut. He’s hurt.
Next is a combination of journaling and morning pages, this is my warmup for the real writing. The resistance pushes me to skip it, every day. These are hard hits and the Resistance is stumbling.
I start to write and at this point, I’m pummeling the Resistance. But he doesn’t quit, he tries to convince me to stop after a few lines are written. He tells me this has all been said before, he asks me who I am to write this.
Eventually he stops, but he uses the rest of the day to get ready for tomorrow.
The Resistance will do whatever it takes to numb your ambitions. It can come in the form of booze, sex or Netflix. It will push you towards comfort.
If you’ve ever quit a diet or an attempt at a better version of yourself, then you know that there isn’t actually any relief when you quit. It feels good for a few seconds, but deep inside you hate it. You’re not glad you stopped. In this moment, you’re making the mistake of wishing it was easier instead of making yourself harder. This is when you double down, this is how you separate yourself. You’ve heard the cliché, “if it was easy, everyone would do it.” This is that pivotal moment when most realize it’s not easy and decide not to do it.
You have to battle the Resistance every day. And in fighting this battle, you’ll slowly start to make progress. We want to do more than just start on this unlived life, we want to find success in it. We want it to replace the life we’re currently living. We want to move from dreaming about this venture, to mastering it.
Mastery comes from consistently delaying gratification and short-term pleasures. Every time you sit down to write, every cold morning you walk into the gym, remind yourself: This is moving me closer to who I want to be. I am building the life I long for.
The Grave Is Coming
“… and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
Some will flirt with their calling, most will ignore it, few will go for it.
Most will tell themselves a story. They’ll convince themselves how unrealistic or unfair their unlived life really is. That it’s not really realistic to work for themselves, that it’s basically impossible to make a living writing books.
It’s better to be on the pursuit of your calling and making mistakes, missing the mark, not producing the best that’s ever been produced than sitting on your ass. The alternative is not doing anything. It’s waiting for the perfect time that’s never going to come.
“How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?” Epictetus, the stoic philosopher and teacher asked his students.
“If you are careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are making no progress, but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary,” he continued.
The Resistance comes for you ruthlessly. It will make you feel like you’re not good enough, it will make you doubt yourself. It will make you hate your hard work 30 second after you hit publish.
Do it anyways.
The lack of energy you feel, the dissatisfaction you’re experiencing, comes from not pursuing your calling. If you want relief, you have to go for it.
Epictetus and Thoreau were lamenting the same urgent message: you are at risk of dying without ever getting started.
The grave is coming, get the song out.