No matter how much wisdom you gain from the pages of your favorite author, if you haven’t experienced the visceral events that led to that wisdom yourself, then it’s just knowledge. Sure, you can leverage the hard-earned wisdom of others to help you, but understanding only happens when you earn that wisdom in the tumultuous arena of real life.
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired and success achieved. Helen Keller
Walter Isaacson on the link between suffering and greatness and those with happy childhoods:
“We grow up with fewer demons but we grow up with less drive. We end being Boswell and not Johnson. We end up being the observer and not the doer. Respect those who are in the arena…”
A few years ago, I learned that Jobs, Ellison, Musk and Bezos hav... See more