Abby Wambach

So that feels like defeat and failure.

Yeah.

It just feels like, well, I guess I'm just a fucking consolation prize person now.

Like it just, it,

if that's the paradigm.

And it certainly was, and I couldn't see a way out of that paradigm.

And then I was

reading this Buddhist master called, um, who G U Kenneth.

And she was talking about her goals for her students and like the way she really pushes them and works with them.

And she said that her goal for her students, her ultimate goal was not to lighten their burden, but to make their burden so heavy.

that they put it down.

For me, it felt like, oh, it's not that the burden is so heavy and I need to keep holding it up.

That's not a show of the highest, best form of my life that I can keep holding it up.

It's like,

it's shifting the goalpost.

It's like, if you get to the place where you can put it down, that's actually the goal.

Like just even changing that framing was like, oh shit, is that the point?

Is the point not to keep piling, but is the point to have enough awareness to look and be like, do I want to keep holding all this shit up?

And do I want to spend my whole life struggling to hold this up?

And do I want to spend my whole life resentful and angry and bitter towards everyone whose arms look honestly a little more relaxed than mine?