Week 13 of 54 — The Punishment
I'm writing to you the day after.
The day after the only thing that truly worked in 8 years. A project built piece by piece, that at a certain point gains value and closes. For years I called it 'the finish line', that thing after which I would finally sit down and say ok, I made it, now I can rest.
But when I got there, the morning after I woke up, like always, before everyone else, opened my laptop in a house where there was no one to wake, and worked. Like any other Tuesday.
(I know how that sounds. "There he is, the guy who can't enjoy anything, not even for a day." Yeah. Keep that in mind, because I'll come back to that idea shortly.)
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There's a lie they tell you as a child, with a smile, convinced they're protecting you.
They tell you that discipline is a punishment. A sentence you serve now for a reward that will come later. "Grit your teeth, the time to rest will come."
Years ago I read about an experiment that I've never been able to shake. They took children who loved to draw for hours and hours, purely for the joy of it. At a certain point they started giving a reward to some of them every time they began to draw — a certificate, a medal.
And after a while something strange happened. The children who were rewarded started drawing less. The ones who received nothing kept going like before, for the pleasure of it. The others didn't — the reward had switched something off. They had stopped drawing out of love, and were only drawing in relation to the prize.
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It took me thirty years to understand that I had been a victim of that exact same game. They had taught me to do everything for that goddamn medal.
Then I got there. And I understood, on that famous morning with the laptop open, that the reward didn't exist.
It was the closest thing to freedom I have ever felt.
Because if the reward doesn't exist, then there's no longer any point in doing things to obtain it. Only one thing remains to love — the effort itself. Not the finish line. The climbing, not the having arrived. That's the thing to embrace, the only one they can't switch off with false promises.
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I know what you're thinking. That it's a somewhat tragic way to live or to see things.
You're right. And I'll say it plainly, without sugarcoating it — I see this as a curse. Because when I look around, I see almost everyone living in a kind of tranquility, a bubble so large they can't feel how fragile it is. And I find myself thinking that I, on the other hand, haven't enjoyed a single day in years. Not once.
And that's not even the worst part. The worst part is the price you pay without noticing. I let go of people I loved, because staying meant stopping, and stopping is something I've never known how to do. I watched people cry over me without being able to cry myself — I haven't done it since I was a kid. I sat at dinner across from a woman, in silence, and felt that there was nothing inside, as if I had died in that silence. That's the real price. Not sleep, not money. The people. Yourself.
I wrote it one evening in Dublin, at dinner, alone, after closing an incredible month that ten years earlier I would have thought impossible:
▎ Nothing is ever enough.
— Dublin, July 14th, at a table for one, me.
For a long time I saw this as a flaw. Something broken inside me, something to fix.
Then, at a certain point, I stopped seeing it as a problem.
Because I understood that all this struggle, this never stopping, this never enjoying anything, is exactly the price for becoming who I truly want to be. For pulling out of my head, one by one, all the "no"s that had been sewn onto me as a child. For unlearning the story that someone from a town of a thousand people should keep their feet on the ground, be content, that certain dreams, unfortunately, must be put away in the famous drawer and forgotten.
So to become who I want to be, I have to unlearn all of this. And nobody tells you, but to get where they told you that you can't get, you have to be willing to suffer more than anyone else.
Because the key isn't talent. It isn't luck. It's suffering. It's the thing everyone tries to avoid, but it's precisely the one that opens the door you've been looking for.
I wrote it one ordinary night, in a hotel in some random city, and today I stand by it more than ever:
▎ If tomorrow everything falls apart, everything gets rebuilt. And that doesn't scare me.
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So no, I'm not writing to tell you I made it and that now I can do anything. I'm writing to you from the day after a finish line, with the usual laptop open, with more drive than before.
And I'll leave you with a simple but uncomfortable question.
Are you grinding for the reward you expect at the end, or have you understood that the reward isn't coming, that it's just smoke and mirrors, and that the only thing to learn to love is the effort itself?
Fifty-four attempts to become better. This is the thirteenth. Best, Stefano.
And even if this morning you felt like doing absolutely nothing, do it anyway, right now, with everything you've got. I'm trying too.
Fifty-four attempts to become better.
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