I had this training partner who used to drop me off at the nearest subway station after working out. Younger guy, smart, cultured, but snobbish and insecure. Nobody's perfect. We always shot the shit during our 10 minutes rides, talking about fighting, movies, music, things like that. One day I ask him:
''So, when are you going to get serious with a girl?''
''Not now,'' he said. ''I'm way too invested in myself to make anything serious happen.''
I laughed. It was a stupid statement he made, but I didn't laugh because of that. I didn't get why it was so funny at first, but a couple years later, I do. I understand that laugh was all perspective and maybe a little bit of maturity. The greatest truth I know is that I don't know many truths, but I do know that it's never about yourself.
I know because I've been there. I've been that 20 year old with dreams of becoming somebody and a terrible sense of self. I wanted people to love me and get out of the way of my destiny. There were people validating these thoughts. An entire industry based on telling people like me they were wolves. Lonely, misunderstood and results oriented predator. That we needed to ignore to distaction of ''normal people'' to achieve our goals.
You do have to be a little selfish to make things happen *, but here is the universal truth I learned: don't make it about yourself. The world is larger and infinitely more complex than you are and it will continue to turns whether you're closing your eyes or not. Self is something that gets in the way. Love and respect are byproducts of hard, selfless work and they shouldn't be a goal, an end in itself. Your goals should be to make things happen that other people than you could appreciate. If you died tomorrow, the world would go on without you, so try to contribute to other lives instead of yours. Then you get all the love and respect you'll ever need.
I'm not the most mature guy, but being around generous, hard working and successful people taught me that there are some things you just can't manufacture. That you need to concentrate on making the best of what you can control and the rest just happens. That kid who used to drive me to the subway station? He's committed to someone now. A very wise man put what I just took 5 paragraphs to explain in a couple of sentence and since I worship accuracy, here it is:
* You have to take time to do things on your own.