Having a good life in a good world, cooking something good with good ingredients, being good to those who are good to you first, being an entrepreneur when your parents are entrepreneurs and gave you a useful perception of money - these are the easy things. They simply require competence and not to fuck up the good that's already there.

What is hard is taking crap and making it better. Take childhood abuse and become a person who is able to have regular attachments. Take shit ingredients and cook something that's not so bad. Take people who want to be adversaries and turn them into allies. Grow up in scarcity and achieve abundance. This is what impresses me, and what requires strength.

The fact that trash is pervasive, everywhere you look: trash people, trash beliefs, trash ideas, trash tv shows, trash behavior - can be seen as an opportunity. It is the context, the background that properly directs a viewer's attention to the rarity of anything that's got a bit of beauty or value in it.

You can never make life look like the second image. But you can make it look like the first one.

This was written by my friend, Arthur Arcturus, originally as a series of facebook posts. I have his permission to repost here, and there are more chapters which I will post 1 a day.

Foundations of Strength 1 - Index