*Typing*

Today, you'd be hard-pressed to find the same Tacoma with 100,000 miles on it for less than $15,000.

It's not the same truck. It's a far worse truck. It's older. It's more run-down. It's racked with miles. Yet, it's more expensive than it was two decades ago.

The reason an ancient Toyota Tacoma can still fetch a pretty penny is because it has stood the test of time. It has proven itself not over one year or two years or three years. But, over decades.

You need to look at your career in the same light.

Attempting to value the work you're creating over a week, month or even year long period isn't enough time.

To fully comprehend the value of your work, you need a decade, if not decades, to measure the full impact.

Time tells all. Let it.

During the night long meditation that transcended Siddhartha into Buddha, the demon god Mara unleashed a sea of arrows atop of him. Siddhartha met the arrows with an open and tender heart, transforming each into a flower blossom that drifted as lightly as a feather to his feet.

Airplanes do dangerous shit the higher they fly. Several ballsy U.S. Air Force pilots discovered this in the 1950s. There was a secret project underway testing the limits of aerodynamics at high-altitudes. A fighter pilot would fly his jet towards the sun until the plane would skid like a stone thrown across the face of a lake. The atmosphere would then throw it into a violent spin, sending it plummeting towards Earth like a fallen angel. Each time, the pilot would panic in a desperate attempt to regain control of the plane, intensifying the calamity and, finally, crashing into the Earth.

One day, a pilot by the name of Chuck Yeager was knocked unconscious when the plane began to gyrate. When Yeager finally came to, the plane had reentered Earth's denser atmosphere and slowed its whirling. Yeager was able to then steady the plane and land it gently on the runway.

The standard practice for regaining control of a rogue plane at high-altitude became "sit still and do nothing". When our lives feel out of control, our natural reaction is to regain control. Many times, this makes matters worse. Instead, we should pause. We should breathe. We should do absolutely nothing. Until, the answer becomes obvious.

In every conflict I've encountered, I've found three truths:

1. My truth
2. Their truth
3. The truth

Compassion is holding space for my truth.

Empathy is holding space for their truth.

Wisdom is seeing and accepting the truth.

You are going to hurt people. The only way to avoid hurting people is to become a hermit; to banish yourself from society. But, even this would hurt people. Your absence would hurt the people who love you. Friendships and relationships are like china shops. Despite your very best intentions––despite how gentle and kind and delicate you try to be––if you walk around a china shop long enough, you're inevitably going to break something.

When you do break something––or someone, rather––what's important is that you apologize. An apology is the same as accidentally knocking a tea kettle off a shelf, watching it shatter and then offering to purchase it from the shop owner. You're not under the false impression your offer will make new the tea kettle you've broken. It won't. Apologies can't work magic.

An apology is simply an acknowledgement of someone else's hurt. The reason it's so difficult to apologize is because it hurts to acknowledge that you've hurt someone else. It's far less painful to ignore that you've hurt someone. Furthermore, deep down you're scared of what acknowledging that you've hurt someone might say about you: "Am I the kind of person that hurts people?"

You are––we all are––but you are also the kind of person that apologizes when you hurt people.