Business is brutal in the way it forces you to change. I think this is probably how trans people feel, because it changes everything in every aspect–finances, relationships, discipline, even how you see the world. It becomes a spiritual experience.
At first, I thought the hard part would be dealing with the sharks–competitors, people trying to bring you down–but there are no sharks. The real struggle is the inner work. That's the hardest part. There's no one outside to fight. If it were that simple, it would almost be easier. Instead, it's all a reflection of your inner world. In fact, I've probably done more inner work running a business than I would have if I had gone to the mountains like I originally planned. I even did LASIK partly because I thought I'd be living that ascetic path.
Materialism and spirituality feel like two sides of the same coin. That's the paradox of life–you think you're chasing one, but you run into the other. The things you're forced to give up (no more anime haha). This journey kills you and saves you at the same time. That's the nature of transformation. It's not gentle, it's forced. It changes you whether you want it or not.
That's why I have so much respect for trans people. Even changing your clothing or fashion can shock the ego and break you. I can't imagine doing the same with gender, name, and pronouns. It's one of the most high-stakes transformations a person can go through. No wonder suicide rates among trans are so high. But that's the price of living at the extreme. It's the price of committing to one's truth and passions fully, to go against the laid-out path of convention.
Whether it's Formula 1, rock climbing without a harness, fasting for spiritual enlightenment–it's all the extreme. Life and death blur into the same thing. The closer you are to death, the more alive you feel, the more concentrated life becomes. The safe middle is what should really be avoided. It's too easy to fall into autopilot and complacency, and when you do, you lose life energy.
In a strange way, the people who live at the edge–whether trans, spiritual seekers, or extreme athletes–they're not the ones we should pity. They're worried about us "normies." We're the ones wasting our lives, stuck in cycles of charge and discharge, base desires and primal instincts.
Kinda like a jellyfish. A jellyfish is just floating, pulsing, contracting, expanding–its whole existence is this endless loop of mechanical survival. It doesn't choose, it doesn't direct, it just drifts. And when I look at most people, myself included at times, I see the same thing. We live on autopilot, stuck in those primal cycles, never stepping out into the edge where transformation happens. That's the real tragedy.