Jordan B. Peterson

‘No tree can grow to Heaven,’ adds the ever-terrifying Carl Gustav Jung, psychoanalyst extraordinaire, ‘unless its roots reach down to Hell.’ Such a statement should give everyone who encounters it pause. There was no possibility for movement upward, in that great psychiatrist’s deeply considered opinion, without a corresponding move down. It is for this reason that enlightenment is so rare.

A superhero who can do anything turns out to be no hero at all. He’s nothing specific, so he’s nothing. He has nothing to strive against, so he can’t be admirable. Being of any reasonable sort appears to require limitation. Perhaps this is because Being requires Becoming, as well as mere static existence—and to become is to become something more, or at least something different. That is only possible for something limited.

Aim small. You don’t want to shoulder too much to begin with, given your limited talents, tendency to deceive, burden of resentment, and ability to shirk responsibility. Thus, you set the following goal: by the end of the day, I want things to be a tiny bit better than they were this morning. Then you ask yourself, ‘What could I do, that I would do, that would accomplish that, and what small thing would I like as a reward?’

Taking the easy way out or telling the truth—those are not merely two different choices. They are different pathways through life. They are utterly different ways of being.

To straddle that fundamental duality is to be balanced: to have one foot firmly planted in order and security, and the other in chaos, possibility, growth and adventure. When life suddenly reveals itself as intense, gripping and meaningful; when time passes and you’re so engrossed in what you’re doing you don’t notice—it is there and then that you are located precisely at the border of order and chaos.

Confront the chaos of Being. Take aim against a sea of troubles. Specify your destination, and chart your course. Admit to what you want. Tell those around you who you are. Narrow, and gaze attentively, and move forward, forthrightly.

It is for this reason that every good example is a fateful challenge, and every hero a judge. Michelangelo’s great perfect marble David cries out to its observer: ‘You could be more than you are.’ When you dare aspire upward, you reveal the inadequacy of the present and the promise of the future.

Heat and pressure transform the base matter of common coal into the crystalline perfection and rare value of the diamond. The same can be said of a person.

It is that combination of Truth, Courage, and Love comprising the Ideal, whose active incarnation in each individual does in fact take the potential of the future and make the best of it.

Why would you possibly assume that something as complex as maintaining a marriage could be managed without commitment, practice, and effort?

Without clear, well-defined, and non-contradictory goals, the sense of positive engagement that makes life worthwhile is very difficult to obtain. Clear goals limit and simplify the world, as well, reducing uncertainty, anxiety, shame, and the self-devouring physiological forces unleashed by stress.

Learn from the past. Or repeat its horrors, in imagination, endlessly.

Work as hard as you possibly can on one thing and see what happens.

I have never met anyone who was satisfied when they knew they were not doing everything they should be doing.

Imagine who you could be, and then aim single-mindedly at that.

The hero is the individual at the peak, the victor, the champion, the wit, the eventually successful and deserving underdog, the speaker of the truth under perilous circumstances, and more.

That is the moral of both narratives: follow the rules until you are capable of being a shining exemplar of what they represent, but break them when those very rules now constitute the most dire impediment to the embodiment of their central virtues.