The trying hard and the striving is part of who I am. I don’t have to feel bad or make apologies for it. I am as I am made. It is mysterious and terrible why I am made this way. There are all manner of powerfully positive and negative characters out there, from saints to serial killers, each playing their part. Each, fearsomely made.
Direction
We cannot answer why some children are born into families where they will be abused by violent alcoholics. We cannot account for how some children will be fortunate enough to connect with powerful mentors early on, who will shape their lives for the better. It all does seem rather arbitrary.
But we do know that a person’s early upbringing is like launching a small ship from a dock: its direction is determined, and it will simply glide and cruise in that direction for quite some while. Of course, the ship may come under its own power and opt to change direction, but for the earliest part of life, it glides along its set course, knowing no better, knowing no other option. At points in history there have been families that never moved out of a 20 mile radius for 400 years even. Each of those generations continuing to glide along a previously chosen path.
The path of the glide may be wonderful, and prosocial. Made to serve a community, a profession, or the development of technology. Or it may be something else entirely.
Temujin, (later to be known as Ghengis Khan) saw his father Yesügei murdered at 9, poisoned by a rival. Temujin’s family was cast out, unsupported by their own tribe. He and his family lived in extreme poverty for many years, while he was taught a fierce sense of determination, and resourcefulness. While a teen, he was kidnapped and made a slave before later escaping, and in one instance, killed his own half-brother in a dispute over food. All this, long before his rise to power.
David Goggins, a modern figure and former Navy SEAL, grew up in a violent abusive household. After being beaten and forced to work in his father’s business, his mother escaped with the family into a new life of poverty, racial abuse, bullying, isolation, and discrimination. In his later life, he developed a central theme of “callusing the mind”. Enduring hardship, pain, and discomfort, we can train our minds to become resilient and unbreakable. His approach to life is about embracing suffering as a way to grow stronger, rather than avoiding it.
Karma
In simple terms: actions have consequences, and intent matters. We might say that Temujin and David Goggins were fearsomely made, because people with those backgrounds were not going to be kind gentle adults. Their ships were launched off of the dock in a very particular way. You can imagine a steel glint in their eyes: the world was never going to defeat them, it was the other way around.
This isn’t told to lionize their actions. And there is no place for fate in this analysis: Temujin and David Goggins made choices. They could have given up, but they did not: they doubled down. It was as though they were born in a forge, and chose to up the heat to come out even harder than their circumstances would produce.
But once both made a certain way and combined with choice & direction on their part, they were fearsomely made.
An Odious Thought Experiment
What should you make of the world if you are such a person?
‘I am the punishment of God…If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.’ — Ghengis Khan
What if Ghengis was right? What if he understood his place, his karma if you will, and was acting it out? He knew that for various political reasons he had been set upon some unfortunate territory, but if he previously knew that he was the instrument of destruction of so many others, might it not be tempting to ask why him?
What if he was just a man who understood exactly who he was, in all its enormity and was willing to act it out?
Temujin and David Goggins are big public examples many people can recognize. Not everyone becomes a celebrity or has that level of impact, but in the micro, there are many people fearsomely made just as these two men were. They will be some of the most hard-driving, hard-working people that you know. They may be kind and they may be ruthless, but they’re never lazy. In the modern age, we tend to laugh it off, say something like, “Oh, he’s just Type A” and think nothing more of it.
It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way
It’s terribly sad to realize what a tyrant Temujin and David Goggins are, likely to themselves. It’s terribly sad to realize also that they need to be that way. That they were made that way. It is foolish, and dismissive to simply expect they should have done something radically different. People have to do what they’re compelled to do with their best available information and if you’re a little kid who is abused or enslaved, the choices are stark and ugly. They are true survivors.
But there’s also the more gentle thought that past a certain age, those men weren’t in that position anymore, and even if you are fearsomely made, it is possible to let go, and be another way.
Fear
The reason the fearsomely made won’t change, is because of fear. David Goggins would tell you that going easy is being a little bitch about things. There is zero chance Temujin would drop his guard for even a second. What would you expect? A kiss on the cheek? Temujin would expect to be enslaved again and he had good reason to as well.
I’m broken, looking up to see the enemy
And I have swallowed the poison you feed me
But I survive on the poisons you feed me
And leavin’ guilt fed, hatred fed, weakness fed
And it makes me feel ugly
Those are the sound of a person just surviving. Such people don’t look at these things as fear. They’re so tough, so mind-callused, willing to confront anything, they would never label their behavior as fear. But it still is: it’s the fear that things will always be the way they were in the past. That they cannot change, that the world will not change.
No Advice
We all do our best. It would be easy for me at this point of the piece to go into some kind of homily about how people should overcome their fear, but it is important to have a deep respect for the particulars of each individual’s situation. We cannot “Monday Morning Quarterback” other people’s lives and say what they should have done. My intent with this is simply to draw out and label the issues as I see them, and lay the choices out starkly.
If You Always Do What You’ve Always Done, You’ll Always Get What You’ve Always Got
— Henry Ford
