From night to sun, from labor to birth, from worm to butterfly. We’ll suffer and we’ll thrive.
Life has this exciting thing that repeatedly teaches us: “you have to go through this before you achieve that” “This” is often something unpleasant and then “that” is often something pleasant. Why does it has to be like that?
We don’t know, but we guess. You see, nature has its own ways and its own ways are way too perfect for us to know, but slightly revealed so we can guess.
I guess nature’s way of operating upon us is by giving us “this” and then giving us “that”, by giving us something often unpleasant and then something often pleasant. Some people seem to be given only or mostly “this” and other people seem to be given only or mostly “that.” Why does it has to be like that?
We don’t know, but you see, I guess what really matters is to listening to the exciting voice of nature telling you when it starts operating upon you in its perfect but slightly revealed ways: “You had to be given this that you have before you achieve that what you want.” What else in life but reminding ourselves that before the sun comes the night? It expands our breaking point by giving us faith that we’ll achieve “that”, which we want to achieve.
Not only that, but as nature does perfect and absolutely fair calculations, it seems to reward us with pleasures given in the same amount of the previously given unpleasantness. You know what they say, “the depth of ones’ descent is the measure of ones’ ascent.”
To illustrate what I say, here are the examples of a few people who are very well known to you but whose struggle to success might not be. I dared to create a chart showing off the depth of their descent in life and compare it to the measure of their ascent The chart is partial, but you get the point. Everything that happened in the lives of those people mentioned above, came to bring them closer to the light, and it did work! Not because their brain is faster than others’, their minds are more suitable for life or they are stronger than you and me, but because their lives sucked! Even though, they kept focusing on one mantra: “After night comes the sun, after labor comes birth, after the worm comes a butterfly. I’ll suffer, I’ll thrive, I’ll rise.”
A COMPARATIVE SMALL BIO
The measure of one’s descent is the measure of one’s ascent.
Following, you have a sequence of very well know people by you. What you might not know about them are the struggled they had to go through to achieve the level of success they have.
STEVE JOBS, the descent:
Given up for adoption
Turbulent children and childhood
Often bullied at school, talked his foster parents into moving to another city and school
Forced to work the night shift of one of his jobs due to his pretty bad smell for not taking showers
Dropped college for not knowing what he wanted out of it and what to do with it
Abandoned his own child even after himself had been abandoned by his parents
Used to be more concerned about knowing the meaning of life than working on his own “real” life
Know by friends as someone over concerned with knowing the meaning of life and engaging in exquisite alternative life-styles as means to achieve that knowledge. Went as far as cultivating organic apples and surviving several days fasting only on it, going to India in search of enlightenment and experimenting drugs as means to knowing himself.
Started off Apple in a garage in complete illegality
Once a tough CEO with no respect for people’s feelings, several engineers refused to work with him
Betrayed by the man who Steve himself hired as Apple’s CEO, got fired from any managing position at the company and put to spend his “working hours” doing nothing in an abandoned building.
Publicly ashamed by his “failure” at Apple, he considered leaving the Valley and settling in the south of France
Tried to forget his passion for personal computing by engaging in “plan-B” endeavors as advocating Macintosh to French universities, biking around Tuscany, preaching benefits of personal computing at the Soviet Union, asking NASA if he could ride the Space Shuttle and thinking of running for the office of governor of California.
Created another personal computing company name NEXT, which happened to be a complete failure after years of struggle competing against Apple and Microsoft
Failure again knocked his door, this time Pixar’s doors. The movie company he invested in so badly failed and lost tons of millions of dollars before turning into something significant
STEVE, the ascent:
Called back by Apple as it’s CEO, he literary saved the company from a market death which was as imminent to happen as in about two to three months
Macbook, Macbook Pro, Mac Mini, iPhone, iPad, iPod, iTunes, Apple Music Store, Apple TV are products that dismiss any introduction and speak by it selves about Steves’ ability to materialize ideas that will probably live forever.
Without knowing a line of code but mastering the art of bringing priceless ideas to life, he invented personal computing the it is from scratch and managed to be the very first person to succeed and make the experience of personal computing possible.
OPRAH WINFREY, the descent:
Born from a single-time sex experience of a teenager housemaid with her boyfriend during their short-term relationship
Used to live in rural poverty with her grandmother and wore dresses made out of potato-chips sacks
Rejected three times by her mother. Once, very early in life, then at the age of 6 and then again at the age of 15
Born into a turbulent family, one of her sisters died from cocaine abuse and her brother from AIDS. Oprah only got to know she’s got a second sister as late in life as at 2010
Sexually molested from the age of 9 to the age of 14 by her cousin, her uncle and a family friend.
At the age of 14, after acknowledging her unplanned pregnancy she left home and gave birth to her son, who died shortly after birth
OPRAH, the ascent:
Joined a high school speech team to compete at a national dramatic interpretation contest and won the second place.
After winning an oratory contest and a miss black Tennessee contest, she started working in a radio station.
Managed to grown as big as the most popular talking-shows host regardless of the fact that hosting TV shows was a job completely dominated by white males
WALT DISNEY, the descent:
Forced to eating dog food to survive due to his extreme poverty
Fired from ones of his jobs for “lack of creativity”
His mildly successful character, Oswald the Rabbit was stolen from him by Universal Pictures, which also hired the cartoonists who had been working for him.
Had been told over and over Mickey Mouse would never work. One of the distributors went as far as saying it wouldn’t work because a giant mouse in the screen would terrify women.
The Three Pigs, one of his most famous cartoon was rejected several times before finally being accepted by a theater as part of its screening programs.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was sneak preview for students, who left halfway during the movie
Pinocchio ended up costing him a million dollars of debt
Tormented by the death of his mother and feeling partially responsible for it, he created several different Disney characters which didn’t have a mother or had a mother who died during the story
Suffered 7 breakdowns due to stress and depression before Disney turned into a successful business
WALT DISNEY, the ascent:
Managed to create a fantastic kingdom that would eventually change the way the whole planet consume stories.
SYLVESTER STALLONE, the descent:
He knew from early age that he wanted to work with movies, but ended up cleaning lions’ cages at the Central Park Zoo, ushered at a movie theater and even made an appearance in an adult film before being famous
When trying to achieve success as an actors, he was rejected several times due to his slurred speech. He was often told no one with a deformed mouth would ever make success as a movie star
Didn’t have the money enough to pay for food or for the heating on his aparment, for which his wife used to blame him for and request him to give up his acting career and “find a job.”
Had to sell his dog for 25 dollars in order to have something to eat
Trying hard to be an actor, he spent 3 days sleeping in front of the door of a film producer looking out for the attention of any filmmaker willing to give him a part. One of the filmmakers agreed to give him a small part in a movie as the victim of a group who beat him down
To warm up himself, he used to go often to the New York City Library and spend time reading under the warm environment. He ended up being inspired to be a writer and started writing movie scripts.
Immediately after watching a boxers’ fight on TV and seeing one of the fighters struggling hard to stand up after being harshly beating down, he spent the next 33 hours straight writing down a film script about a though fighter who struggle to make it a professional boxer, Rocky.
Trying to sell his script he went through many distributors and had been told the movie would never work because it was too predictable.
SYLVESTER STALLONE, the ascent:
He finally met two producers, Irwin winkler and Rober Chartoff who agreed to produce his movie and pay him 125.000 dollars for the script.
Regardless of being completely broke and not having enough money even for food, he rejects the 125.000 dollars offer. The reason was that the producers wanted a famous actors as the star of the movie, but Stallone wanted he himself playing that part.
Called back by the producers, who now offered him 225.000 dollars for the script with the condition of having a famous actor as the star, he again rejects the offer. Called back once more, he now had been offered 300.000 dollars for the script of the movie and yet, again, he rejects the offer. Convinced by Stallone’s conviction and determination, the producers finally offered him 35.000 dollars for the script with him being the star of the movie. They lowered significantly the price of the offer because to have him as the main star of the movie was too risky. He accepts the offer and starts filming it.
With the 35.000 dollars he made with his script in his bank account, he went to the pet shop where he previously sold his dog and stayed there for days until he found the man who bought it from him. The price he paid to have his dog again was 15.000 dollars plus a small part in the movie for the man who sold him back the dog.