I’ve been musing on the concept of trade-offs a ton recently.
Everything I used to believe about manifestation, in hindsight, is utter bullshit. There’s really one way to get the dream body, the dream career, the dream partner, the dream social life, dream romantic life, etc:
You need to sacrifice everything they are not.
“No sacrifice, no victory.”
There’s the Witwicky family’s motto from Transformers (2007). That’s one of many films from my childhood I’ve been rewatching lately, both to entertain myself and to see the same story with a new set of eyes, an adult’s ready to turn 28 years old in 3 months.
Like many things in these childhood favourite movies of mine, I understand it so much more clearly as an adult. “No sacrifice, no victory” was motivational word salad to me as a kid, just an arbitrary motto that’s there to be a motto.
But now that I’ve lived 27.75 years in this mortal life, had people and seasons come and go, seen undeniably what about my life is timeless vs merely seasonal, I’m starting to live by it.
There’s many questions I’ve had about my life that I’ve only been able to answer in hindsight.
And every answer I got to the seemingly unanswerable problems of my past added up to:
If I got what I wanted and achieved all my dreams, that’d make me Mary Sue, not a real-life human being with comparative advantages and disadvantages like anyone has.
There is no person on Earth who has every single one of the following:
- A developed inner world full of expertise on a wide variety of subjects
- A vibrant, abundant social life
- An amazing professional life
- A stellar romantic life
Mary Sue has all these. Real people don’t.
If you want stellar success in a certain domain of life, you need to sacrifice abundance in another.
The only domain of life that doesn’t demand another be sacrificed to be lived to the fullest is health and fitness. There is no loss in getting in shape and eating well, just allocation of time and energy.
Look, it may be a bitter pill for you to swallow, but it was a shot of fucking tequila for me. And I love tequila.
Every win in your life demands an equivalent loss.
Loss is inevitable.
We all have them. That’s life, and there is no human being on Earth whose life is all wins and all abundance.
But the good news is that with every loss, comes an associated gain.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and in many cases, you get to choose WHAT to lose.
Your need to be right all the time, or your relationship with someone. Nothing kills relationships quite like prioritizing winning the game of “I’m right, you’re wrong” over the other person’s happiness.
Social approval, or your self-respect.
Security or growth. You can’t have both at once.
Your youth, or your maturity.
Your pool of options in the dating world, or a committed relationship.
An epic social life, or a nourishing family life. To have one of these, you need to sacrifice the other.
Spending all day making a difference in the working world, then coming homing and barely making a difference in your family life, or spending all day making a difference in your household, and not impacting the working world at all.
Etcetera. You can’t have it all.
You can’t be both innovative and polarizing, and socially accepted everywhere you go.
You can’t be a powerful, life-changing presence to some (wo)men without also being a joke and an embarrassment to others.
You can’t have a life of both extreme novelty and of deep meaning.
You can’t have a sharp body and mind without paying your dues in training them.
You can’t have expertise in a field without experience, experimentation, and failure.
You can’t have both variety and depth, in career, in relationships, in how your day-to-day goes.
Everyone whose youth’s too easy, where they coast on social approval, good looks, and easy successes ends up having a midlife crisis.
Nobody “has it all”. For you to have a comparative advantage in one domain, this requires you to have an equivalent comparative disadvantage somewhere else.
Life’s gifts are unevenly distributed by design.
There’s no pro athlete with a genius IQ. You can’t be both physically and cerebrally talented. You need to sacrifice one for the other. These can’t coexist in one person’s DNA.
There’s no white-collar businessman writing top-tier fiction.
There’s no genius scientist who’s an excellent musician.
There’s no top-tier novelist with the gift of immense strength.
The notion that you can become great at anything you want if you just put the time and practice in is one of the most common falsehoods people believe.
Instead, just accept what worlds God made you to be a loser in, and which ones you’re destined to be a winner in.
In lieu of copy/pasting a thread full of examples of that into this article, just read it here.
Making Peace With Ageing Part II: The One Where I Actually Like Getting Older
I went out to the bars last Saturday night. Had a fun time pregaming at home, vibing to some music. Then I took an Uber there, stood in front of my first stop of the night, aaaaaaaand…
“Yeah, I’m not going in there,” I thought. The place was dead and barely anyone was in, so tipsy me strutted down the downtown main street past all the college boys and college girls celebrating the start of a new school year…
In complete apathy.
The guys I would get bro-ey and chatty with when I was 23, the me of 4 years later was completely disinterested in chatting them up.
The girls 23-year-old me would lust hard for, chat up, and play with, I was completely disinterested in them. I didn’t check out a single one. No personal life TMI here, since these aren’t stories I’m ready to tell publicly, but girl stuff’s been going well for me in 2025 😉 Far better than it possibly could with some random college girl I have no common ground with anymore.
I made it to my planned final destination of the night, ordered one lousy beer, drank it as fast as I could, then bolted out of the bar and Ubered back home for some more drinks and I don’t remember wtf I did to entertain myself.
I used to love nights out like this.
19-year-old me’s idea of a fun time was going to the bar with a friend or 3 or 7 (and one courageous night when all my legal friends were out of town, by myself) and get rejected by girl after girl until I find one who’s willing to let me ride her (that girl never came along). Either that, or going to a house party and trying to figure out which of the cute girls there are single, taken, down for me, not down for me… (Very few of them were down for me)
23-year-old me had the most fun nights out of my life in Summer-Fall of 2021. I’d go to the bars by myself, sometimes with my camera getting people doing photoshoots with me, sometimes with no camera and just my pomp, chat up randoms, and create spontaneous fun times with them. I got some kisses with the ladies out of it too.
Now almost-28-year-old me can’t fucking stand doing such a thing.
That’s getting older.
That’s the ubiquitous human experience of “you can’t have it all”.
I’ve sacrificed the adventure and spontaneity of my youth, and gained something just as great in its place: forward movement in life. I had to sacrifice that, if I’m to grow up, be a good husband and father, know my true talents that’ll skyrocket me professionally, and grow as a man and as a person.
Now even when I marry the love of my life, I’ll never take her out to a bar for pub crawls like I used to do. I’ll have maybe 1-3 nights out a year MAX, and it’ll only be if a buddy invites me out.
I’ve had more fun recently just lounging at home watching Star Wars after a typical day out in the world than I’ve ever had at a bar, club, or house party.
That’s growing up.
The reason all this adventure and spontaneity is exciting and electrifying when you’re young, but loses the spark when you grow up is because it’s NEW. You’re experiencing life and its wide variety of people, places, and things for the very first time. The sheer abundance of new, exciting, unexplored things sparks your growth, experimentation, and youthful romanticism of what life could really be for you in the future.
Then you get enough novelty, and novelty starts to lose its appeal.
If nothing fun lasts, then what’s the point of it all?
Growing up means trading off the experimentation, novelty, and extreme highs and lows of youth for commitment, meaning, and longevity.
(I talk about exactly that in this article)
And honestly, I don’t miss it.
College friends who invited me to all their parties… As nothing more as just another body in the room, a “the more, the merrier” body in the group, in most cases. A few good buddies I talk to every day are way better than this.
Fleeting adventures that were exciting… Before they ended? A fulfilling, comfortable day-to-day is way more nourishing for my soul.
You get it.
Now let’s talk about all the shattered dreams of my early 20s.
Ask 22-year-old me what he wants out of life, and he’ll give you a long list:
- To be a self-made millionaire
- To be an inspiring social media celebrity
- To travel the world and experience a variety of new countries
- To sleep with a variety of new girls, get higher-quality ones than I’ve ever had before, and pick one to be wifey in the end
- Multiple successful careers: Kickboxing, dating/relationship coaching, being an author, maybe something to do with art…
- An abundant social life that far exceeds the one I had in college, full of dynamic, interesting people who value me as a pillar of our circle
And I’ll tell you, I wasn’t a shit-talker. I was putting in the damn work every day to make it all real. Back then, I’d obsessively watch Tate Confidential, aspiring to someday have my own glamorous, abundant baller lifestyle just like Andrew and Tristan’s.
In the end, I learnt the lesson that very few of our dreams are meant to become real in the end. I’ll spare you the lecture, but I’ve learnt through practice what is and isn’t realistic for me now.
Don’t get me wrong, those impossible goals I set were valuable in their own way. They got me off my ass taking action on something meaningful every damn day, living adventures and meaningful stories I couldn’t have gotten any other way. And even more so in the long term, as they taught me my true limitations in life and what my true talents really are and aren’t.
Now ask 27-year-old me what he wants:
- Wifey
- Kids eventually
- Chill nights in bonding with wifey
- The million-dollar career where I get to use my true talents to the fullest
- Everything I have right now. My health and fitness. My best buddies. All the little things that make up my day-to-day like cafes, walks, films, food, etcetera…
Aside from everything I have right now, there’s only 2 things I haven’t yet achieved with my life that I’d genuinely like to. I don’t have bullshit pipe-dreams about playing roles I’m not made for anymore.
I’ve accepted that I’ll never be Mary Sue.
I have a genius IQ and top-tier talent when it comes to authorship and art. If I’m to have these strengths, I need to be disadvantaged athletically.
I’m not made to be a social leader, but rather a man who’s solely the leader of himself and his future family.
If I travel to a new city or a new country, I’ll just be doing the same shit I’m already doing in my hometown, just in a different place. All my wild adventures filled with novelty are in the past. The fun in my life now comes solely from the timeless, day-to-day things that REALLY matter and bring longevity to the present.
If I was professionally successful at more than one thing, I’d have to dedicate more waking hours than I have in 24 every day to all of them.
I can’t have a long track record of past girlfriends and extreme devotion to my future wife. The reality of falling in love is that the more romances you have in your life, the less intense and passionate each one is going to be. You can’t have deep, soulmate-level devotion that lasts a lifetime (and in many cases, long before and after it) with more than one person.
I encourage you to ponder the same thing in your own life, dear reader.
Where do you have an irreplicable comparative advantage? And what’s the associated comparative disadvantage?
What about your life is meaningful because it’s fleeting and temporary, and what about your life is meaningful because it’s timeless, built to last for you, and easy to take for granted until you realize how nourishing it really is to you?
I won’t ramble on any longer.
Have a fucking day,
– Ben
