You Can’t Waste Anything

It’s cute that you’re trying. So hard sometimes. To waste time. To waste money. To waste space.

Unfortunately, I must tell you the game is rigged: You can’t waste anything.

Not a single second of yours on this earth is spent in vain. Every dollar you hand out goes exactly where it needs to go. And whatever space you occupy — physically, mentally, emotionally — is not an inch more than you ought to take.

You may not understand the purpose of being stood up in the rain, of losing $1,200 on a put option, or of vegetating around your house with covid for the third time, but trust me, it’s there. For the longest while, those setbacks might feel like waste, but more often than not, sooner or later, you’ll see both rhyme and reason. In fact, you might invent them — and that’s exactly as it should be. You are telling your own story, not just to us but also to yourself, and in that story, every piece will eventually find its place.

And for the events you can never make sense of? The happenings that escape your mind’s logical powers until the very end? Those, too, are right where they belong. Karma can’t explain everything. Where’s the fun in that? After all, what good is a main character who knows everything? We must see the hero struggle, fail, and fall. How else can we root for them to get back up? And even when that champion is the unlikely person we glance at in the mirror, hero dynamics still apply. Sometimes, we must go on despite things not making sense — and in its own, twisted way, that too makes sense.

It’s one of life’s great paradoxes: When you understand the meaning of your suffering, you are always right, and when you don’t, you are always just too early.

You can’t waste anything. You’ll forever exist at the right time in the right place, and your life will be eternally on track. It’s a story that extends beyond the canvas you can see, but it’s as polished of a tale as it gets. Trust in the process, and keep turning the pages.

Grab a copy of Nik’s book, 2-Minute Pep Talks.

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This post was previously published on Niklas Göke’s blog

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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:

White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism

Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box

The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer

What We Talk About When We Talk About Men

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