- Herdzik's Hivemind
- Posts
- if you’re going to try
If you’re going to try, go all the way
7 years ago, I stumbled upon a video that changed everything.
I was on my phone in my parents' home, looking for things to watch.
YouTube got boring, but I kept on digging. I was hungry because I had just finished reading my first self-dev book.
I wanted to ride the high of self-improvement.
I stumbled upon a video from Mateusz M.
It was this clip that I listened to in the morning before I went to Uni.
This video convinced me that I was on the right path.
It helped me through tough times and doubts.
Part of it is a poem by Charles Bukowski.
if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
otherwise, don’t even start.
if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
this could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.
go all the way.
it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.
it could mean freezing on a
park bench.
it could mean jail,
it could mean derision,
mockery,
isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your
endurance, of
how much you really want to
do it.
and you’ll do it
despite rejection and the worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.
if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like
that.
you will be alone with the gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.
do it, do it, do it.
do it.
all the way
all the way.
you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter, its
the only good fight
there is.
For me, this poem is about dedication. About surrender to the goal at hand.
It’s about making a decision and sticking to it.
It’s about knowing the thing we want to do, and giving our all doing it.
In the terms of Mark Manson or Derek Sivers, it is either a fuck yes, or a hell no type of thing.
My friend Konstantinos reminded me of it recently.
Shoutout to Not Nice by Dr. Aziz Gazipura.
Even though there are five levels of commitment, only the highest one (the fuck yeah) should be considered.
Because it helps us decide if it is even worth pursuing.
However, let us take a step back.
If I love ice cream, it is almost certain I'm going to say fuck yes to every opportunity to eat ice cream.
This changes if I have a goal that dictates my choices.
If I want to build a healthy body, I know I must say hell no to ice cream most of the time.
That's because I said fuck yes to a healthy body, and that the goal is doing my course correction for me.
As Jerzy Gregorek once said: Hard choices, easy life.
It's much easier to decide if we know where we are going.
And when we know that, it's also easier to go all the way.
We will stumble; we will fail.
Sometimes we will mistake a hell no for a fuck yes, or a fuck yes for a hell no.
But by giving our all, we will correct our mistakes, learn from them, and be better for the future.
And we might even ride life straight to perfect laughter.
Love you,
Piotr