So, this post is going to go way off topic from what we are used to seeing here. I have to admit, it really doesn't fall under a lot of the categories we talk about in here, but I really needed to type this up while it was fresh in my head. On the train home from work today, I sank deep into my own thoughts and sort of had an epiphany regarding everything TRP has been teaching me. I was really dying to share it with someone, and since TRP has helped me incredibly in the last couple of weeks, I thought here might be the best place to post it. If you want to know the TRP connection, scroll down to the bottom.

FYI, this post is about to get super long. So long it borderlines on becoming a manifesto. I had to cut it down to avoid the 15,000 character limit. And it is about to go super personal. Don't confuse it for a pity post, though. I feel perfectly fine and I am not looking for your sympathy. If you do not feel like reading a long story, then just press the back button now.

To begin, I love my job... most of the time. For those who didn't read my previous post, I work as an engineer as a major NYC bank (you've heard of it). There are some days that I walk out of work feeling like David conquering Goliath. My job makes me happy on those days. I'm proud of the work it's taken to get me where I am at, and excited for the opportunities that are going to come from it.

But then there are the days where I walk out of work and feel worthless. The types of days where I wonder why my employer even pays me. On those types of days I carry the stress of work home with me because I become convinced that if I just put in a little more effort into my projects, then everyone at work will like me, I'll feel much more accomplished, and I'll ultimately feel much more confident about my own self-worth.

You can imagine what day it felt like today.

While riding the train home today, I pondered how so many people could not only do my job, but do it day in and day out and never seem to feel exhausted. I have co-workers in my office that work longer hours than I do, accomplish much more in a day, and still have the drive to come in the next day and do it all over again. In my case, I consider it a success that I get home and still have the motivation to get to the gym.

I already know what makes those people go. They aren't more disciplined or smarter than I am. It's that they actually want to be there doing they're jobs (to a degree, I suppose. If most of them won the lottery, I'm sure they wouldn't think twice about quitting). They don't have to convince themselves to keep pushing forward - they were interested enough to just keep going. That, I find, has always been the major difference between successful people and the rest of us. Everyone from athletes and artists, to scientists and musicians. No one needed to give them a reason to keep going. They kept going because they were interested and couldn't stop doing what they were best at.

That's not what was occupying my mind, though. I had known for a long time that passion was the true secret to success. What was bothering me was that I was realizing I had passion like that in my life before, and I had given it up without even realizing it. Why had I given that up in favor of what I have now? That, my friend, is the point of this post.

Let me tell you a story. When I was in middle school, I used to program games with a old tool called GameMaker (still around and thriving, actually!) where I would spend hours making my own games. The games were quite amateur, being only 12 at the time, but I really got a kick out of showing them off to my friends.

But I think what shocked me most when I remember those times is that I could spend an entire evening making those games. And if I got stuck at making one game, I just started another project without caring if I finished the first. These days I feel like I need to force myself to simply watch television or sit through a movie, and back then you didn't even have to convince me to do what was essentially real work. And for hours on end as well. It was rewarding enough for me to do on my own.

But then what happened? In short, the "real world" started to sink in - people started telling me I needed to focus on my career, focus on getting into a good college, and to stop wasting my time and look for a part time job so I could support my own hobbies. So the choice was either schoolwork, or working on games. I chose schoolwork, and decided that I would keep on coding, but only for my programming homework (I decided to take some programming classes). Making games fell from my priority list.

This was right around sophomore year, and to this day I consider it the most miserable year of my existence. I dropped making games and started attending Mock Trial club and volunteering in the kitchen at the hospital, two activities I despised until the very end. I didn't do these things because I wanted to, but because people told me it would help me get in to college. I spent the year stressed beyond belief and exhausted beyond measure. I felt like I couldn't keep up with the demands placed on me. But I kept going, thinking that if I was struggling in high school, that things would only get easier as I progressed. I was on the fast-track to success.

Why did I make myself so miserable for the price of success? I think the primary reason was lack of self-esteem, no doubt about it. I was a nobody in middle school. I had very few friends to speak of. And because I was afraid of becoming even more of a nobody, I wanted to do whatever it took to not be that anymore. So I listened to people when they told me that going to a good college and getting a good job would make me important. That was also part of the problem - that everyone around me believed the same thing as well. My parents, my teachers, the other students. The students that didn't conform to this thought process were labeled as rebels and losers, so I went in the opposite direction - I went hyper-overachiever.

To put it simply, I was just doing what I was told. I was very good at it too. I'm intelligent and a hard worker. Anything I do, I do a thousand times harder than anyone. I push my intelligence and talent into doing something right, even if I never really wanted to in the first place.

Frankly, I think most of us were led to believe that if we did what we were told, we would find happiness. First our parents told us this, then our teachers told us this, then our professors, and then finally our bosses. This is not a phenomenon that is limited to just myself, or even men in particular. The world is filled with people who were promised happiness if they did what they were told. Take the Occupy Wall Street movement for example. Here were thousands of young students who did exactly what they were told and were promised their dream jobs. Instead, they found unemployment and $100k bills for the worthless degrees they took up.

In my opinion, their reaction was very predictable. Their frustration at life blistered into rage, and they railed against the system they felt had defrauded them. But since there was no real perpetrator except the society that raised them, they simply directed their anger towards those at the top of the social ladder - namely, the leaders and CEOs of some of today's wealthiest companies. Society raised them with an expectation of reward if they did what was asked of them. They felt entitled to good jobs. Jobs that they were neither qualified for, nor deserved.

I was lucky. I was intelligent and I played the game well, and so I landed a promising career with a great salary. But why was I so close to falling into the same trap as the Occupiers? Why did I keep doing what I was told, despite mounting evidence that those who challenged the status quo - famous rock stars, brilliant scientists, and revolutionary painters - fared much better off when they deviated from the norm and explored new territory.

Today, I finally realized why. The true root of the problem was that despite all the pain my self-perpetuated misery put me in, it was still easier than making my own choice.

Back in 10th grade, when it came to choosing between games and choosing work, I didn't want to have to make a choice. I wanted the default. What I didn't realize back then was something that the existentialist philosopher Albert Camus had realized a century ago - that "even making no choice was still choice." But it was the cowardly choice, because it meant I didn't have to make it for myself. The default choice ended up being worse than actively making either choice, though, because it meant I had no control over my life. The downside to avoiding responsibility for my decision made for me was that I felt powerless over my life, and with powerlessness came misery and depression.

Of course, I'm radically simplifying that situation by saying there were only two choices. There were, of course, infinite choices for me at that stage in my life. I also wanted to pursue writing (something I continue to do as a side project to this day). The "making games" choice is really just a metaphor here for all of the passions and paths I could have pursued in life rather than the one I am now. My real point is that I didn't want to have to make my own choice, because then I knew I would have to suffer the consequences if I failed. That, of course, was the real reason I avoided choice. I was too afraid to own up to the consequences of failure.

When I think back to what I am most proud of during my academic career, its not the career it landed me, but the fact that I had my $45k school loans paid off within a year and a half of graduation. Why? Because it was something I was actively aiming for during college. I didn't just want to graduate, like so many others I knew. I wanted to graduate with as little debt as possible, something many people couldn't do (and didn't).

That's why I feel proudest about the achievements I made towards THOSE goals, rather than just graduating. I became an RA my sophomore year and got free food and housing for the rest of college. That I was proud of. I worked a paid internship every other semester to put towards tuition and to gain experience in my field. That I was proud of. I won a scholarship for being a writer for the paper, eventually becoming Editor-in-Cheif (woo, writing skills!). That I was proud of. I moved in illegally into my current roommate's apartment one summer when his room mates were gone so we could split a single person's rent. I felt especially clever about that.

My point is that the choices you make in life are incredibly hard, but they are what gives you real power in life. I can't help but quote Andrew Ryan from BioShock when he says "A man chooses, a slave obeys." I never really got that quote when I first heard it. Yes, of course a man has free choice. Yes, a slave is forced to obey. So what? But now I get it - a man that chooses his own destiny, no matter how hard that choice, is a "real man". A man that let's other choose his path for him is nothing but a slave.

That brings me to my next point...

Okay TruthAndVirture, what the FUCK does this have to do with TRP?

If there is anything that TRP has taught me these weeks, it's this: be your own man.

It is not about being the man people want you to be. It's especially not about being the man that women want you to be. Doing what somebody else thinks is best for you invariably makes you sacrifice your values in favor of what other people want. It makes you feel powerless and miserable. That powerlessness is so easily perceived by other people, but is so hard to identify outright on the surface. We know that its there, but we can't figure out what it is.

But when you are working towards something that you value, even if it is just you that values it, you make yourself happier and more confident. And when you work on yourself, the rewards that most people cherish - like attention, love, and success - come without any effort.

That is what I think TRP has been trying to teach us. That women are attracted to the men that follow their own desires, whether they be social, financial, romantic, or even sexual. People, not just women, are attracted to those that know what they want. The men that I see hanging around women all the time never seem to be bothered that they're not doing what everyone else is. Whatever they're doing, even if its something as silly as improv theater, they absolutely love doing that. And as a result, their confidence never seems to wane, even in the face of insurmountable obstacles.

And you know what? Women still want to be around them all the time. They see that confidence, desire, and focus to do what drives them. It's because they're exerting their will on the world and becoming the person they've always wanted to become.

But I think there's a deeper connection than that. I think it helps explain why we're all here and why our initial reaction to TRP is that we feel we've been lied to:

  • We were told that if we went to school, got good grades, took on a bunch of leadership positions, and did community service, we would go to a top tier school. And then if we did good at that top tier school, that we would graduate and then land a great, stable job. And that if we got a stable job, women would flock to us.
  • We were told that if we were nice and kind to the opposite sex, someone would just show up one day, love us for who we were, and then make us happy for the rest of our lives.
  • We were told that women never liked aggressive guys and that the sensitive guys always won in the end.

When we realize all these things turn out to be false, we become bitter and angry. Just like the Occupiers, we feel entitled to a reward because we did what we were told. And when we don't get that reward, we wonder what went wrong. And that, my friends, is why TRP exists.

I want to finish this post with another story about my friend named Nick. I recently came to realize that I admire Nick very much. Nick is around my age and does not work for anyone. Nick earns money by trading BitCoins on the Internet, a job that does not occupy a terrible amount of his time. In his ample amounts of free time, he goes hiking and mountain biking every day on some of the most beautiful mountains I have ever seen (which keeps him in terrific shape). He travels across the country often.

The first time I met him, he unabashedly took out his phone and showed me a nude of one of the best looking women I had ever seen in my entire life. "I fucked her last night", he told me proudly. Women are attracted to Nick because he does exactly what he wants, and doesn't care what other people think of him.

To me, Nick represents what we can all become - the self-made man that women love, feels alive, and above all, respects and loves himself.