May You Live in Interesting Times

A curse or what ?

May You Live in Interesting Times...goes the ancient curse.

They call it a curse. Ancient Chinese, supposedly. Attributed to people who never said it. Some historian thinks Kennedy popularized it in 1966. Others trace it to a British diplomat in the 1930s. Or it might have been conjured whole-cloth by someone who understood that the best phrases sound ancient.

The etymology is a rabbit hole, messy and probably unsolvable, and frankly, who cares where it came from? Because honestly, that’s not the point.

The point is what it actually means when you strip away the pretty language:

Let me translate it without the poetry, without the fortune cookie mysticism: May chaos find you. May your life refuse to be simple. May safety and certainty remain forever just out of reach. May your life resist domestication. May you always have an equal mix of excitement and peril.

Sounds really terrible. Like something you’d wish on your worst enemy.

And yet.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if this curse might be the greatest gift someone could wish upon you. I’m saying it to you from a place closer to love.

May you live in interesting times, Reader.

Believe me, I know. It sounds like I'm romanticizing struggle. Like I'm trying to gaslight you into loving your problems. I haven't developed a taste for suffering. I'm not some masochist maniac who thrives on pain. I'm not writing this from some dark corner where I've confused cruelty with wisdom.

And I'm definitely not churning out toxic positivity, like someone who's never actually been through anything hard telling you that "everything happens for a reason."

The curse is somewhat a riddle. And like all good riddles, the answer is hidden in plain sight.

The meaning of this supposed curse cannot be found at first glance. Only on the second, third, and deeper glances can things start to make sense. It's one of those ideas that reveals itself slowly. You can't see it all at once. You have to sit with it. Turn it over. Let it marinate.

So I’m asking you to look at this phrase the way you’d look at one of those optical illusions, where you stare long enough till a hidden picture emerges from what looked like random dots.

So stick with me.

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May You Not Live In Uninteresting Times

Imagine every girl you’ve ever wanted just... says yes. No chase. No three-hour waits between texts wondering if “ok” means she’s mad or just busy. No “does she like me?” spiral, No analyzing her texting patterns. No butterflies.

You swipe right, she says yes. You ask her out, she shows up. You lean in, she kisses you back.

Sounds perfect, right?

Except six months in, you are bored out of your f*cking mind, you're sitting across from this "perfect" girl and you realize you feel nothing.

Because you didn't earn her. You didn't win her over. You didn't break through her walls or make her laugh when she was having a shit day or slowly convince her you were worth the risk.

Because it’s not actually her you wanted, it’s the pursuit. The uncertainty. The moment your phone lights up and your heart does that stupid jump. The small victory of making her laugh. The earned intimacy of finally breaking through her walls.

OR

Every game you play has god mode turned on from the start - infinite health, unlimited money, all weapons unlocked. No dying, no grinding, no learning enemy patterns. You just walk through winning everything. The first hour might feel cool, but soon? Completely boring.

it’s why we think we like cracked games but after a while we get so bored of the assurance of winning that we end up deleting it. There’s no pursuit and reward cycle , no dopamine hit. No "YES! FINALLY!" moment. Just reward, reward, reward, reward until your brain goes numb.

your brain isn't stupid, it knows when something's been earned versus handed to you.

---

Here’s what uninteresting times actually looks like:

You wake up. Your job is fine but not great, you tell yourself : At least you’re not getting fired. Your relationship is stable but not passionate, again you tell yourself : At least you’re not fighting. Your bank account is okay you are not rich, but also not broke.

Everything is... fine.

And “fine” is the most dangerous word in the English language.

Because “fine” doesn’t require you to grow. Or try. Or risk. Or become anything more than you already are.

You’re a plant in a pot that’s exactly the right size. You’re not dying, but you’re also not growing. Just maintained. Watered on schedule. Surviving, not thriving.

And the cruelest part? You can’t even complain. Because on paper, you’ve got it good. So you just exist in this weird purgatory where you’re comfortable enough not to change but miserable enough to know something’s wrong.

it’s why nobody cares about the trust fund kid’s story. Because there is no story, just a series of things that happened TO them, not things they made happen.

unlike the the kid who grew up in a single-room apartment, worked two jobs through uni, failed three times before their business took off, and finally made it out.

That story gives you goosebumps. That shit inspires the hood every single time.

it’s Why grass to grace story never fades because the journey actually means something.

we instinctively understand that value comes from struggle.

Nature understands this too.
Diamond isn’t valuable because it scores 10/10 on the Mohs hardness scale. Plenty of hard materials out there. Diamond is valuable because it’s rare. And it’s rare because it takes billions of years of intense heat and crushing pressure deep in the Earth’s crust to form.

The struggle IS the value.

You could take a pill and wake up with a six-pack tomorrow. Abs visible, definition perfect. But you know what you wouldn’t have?

The discipline that comes from showing up to the gym on days you don’t feel like it. The mental toughness from pushing through that last set. The self-respect that comes from proving to yourself that you can commit to something hard. The confidence that radiates from someone who’s built themselves, not bought themselves.

Your brain is designed to notice change, not state.

Psychologists call it hedonic adaptation. You know it as “getting used to shit.”

This means constant comfort is neurologically identical to slow death.

Because if nothing changes, nothing matters. Your brain stops paying attention. Stops releasing dopamine. Stops caring.

You need the valleys to appreciate the peaks. You need the hunger to enjoy the meal. You need the cold to appreciate the warmth.

Without contrast, everything becomes the same shade of beige.

---

So here’s what I’m betting:

You’re sane like me. Which means deep down, you don’t want a comfortable life that nobody remembers, you want a story that gives people goosebumps when you tell it.

And if that’s true, then you’ll understand that this “curse” is actually a dare.

A challenge.

An invitation to a life that might hurt but will never bore you. That might break you but will never let you become small, safe, and forgettable.

So...

May you live in interesting times.

May you be stripped of false certainties and forced to discover what you’re actually made of.

May you face enough resistance to build real strength.

May you struggle enough to earn a story worth telling.

Not because I want you to suffer—I don’t.

But because I want you to live. Really live. In the full, terrifying, exhilarating sense of the word.

The kind of life where you look back and think: “Holy shit. I actually did that.”

And if that’s a curse?

Then may we all be so cursed.

---

The World Is On Fire

May you live in interesting times…

Well, it’s been interesting.

Technology is advancing faster than ever. AI is taking jobs quicker than it’s creating them. Suicide rates just hit a decade-high. We barely made it out of a pandemic that killed millions. Wars erupting in corners of the world we forgot existed. Students are having existential crises in lecture halls, wondering if their degree will be worth the paper it’s printed on by graduation. The cost of “making it” has never been steeper, and the definition of “making it” has never been blurrier.

The world is objectively on fire.

But In spite of all this there’s this stubborn glimmer of hope. This blip of possibility.

That maybe, just maybe, buried in every adversity is a seed of equivalent advantage.

That through struggle, we don’t just survive, we become better, stronger, wiser.

That we get the chance to practice virtue. To learn. To give meaning to suffering

Now, I can already feel my own disillusionment creeping in.

Because how f*cking glib does that sound to someone with a stage 4 cancer diagnosis? To someone who just buried their child? To someone in the grips of crippling addiction? To someone who lost a parent, or got bombed, or watched their livelihood evaporate overnight?

I know how hollow these words can sound when you’re in the pit.

But no matter how cynical i get , i solemnly believe that

All things have been given to us for a purpose including the humiliations, the disasters, the unfair bullshit we didn’t ask for, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

Our experiences become the fuel for what we create. The crucible of experience that informs and instructs everything we do after.

It doesn’t matter how awful it was. How bad. How unfair. How expensive.

We have the greatest job in the world: we can take what happens to us, even heartbreak, even loss, and turn it into material.

In this way, nothing is ever truly wasted. Nothing is totally, irredeemably bad.

There’s always something to extract. A lesson. A perspective shift. A strength you didn’t know you had that you can now use productively.

There’s good in every bad, no matter how bad.

Nietzsche had a term for this: Amor fati.

Love of fate. Not tolerating your fate. Not accepting it begrudgingly.

Loving it, the good parts and the catastrophic parts, especially the catastrophic parts.

Because those are the parts that make you you.

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Every Adversity Brings With It A Seed Of Equivalent Advantage

No one has ever made the most of interesting times quite like Demosthenes. His life is the blueprint for this entire concept.

You think Barack Obama can speak? Oprah can move a room? Denzel can command a stage?

They’re incredible. But Demosthenes could mobilize an entire nation to war with his voice alone. He was the voice of Athens, its greatest orator, the standard every speaker after him has been measured against for over two thousand years.

Now let me show you his starting stats.

Born: Sickly and frail.

Speech: So severely impaired people couldn’t understand him. Nickname: Batulus. “The Stammerer.”

Father: Dead at seven.

Inheritance: Stolen by the guardians who were supposed to protect him.

Everything was lined up against this kid.

This fatherless, frail child with a debilitating stutter had every reason to fold. Nobody would have judged him for walking away from the table.

Society already had.

But you know what he said?

Fuck that.

“It’s not my fault I was born a stutterer, but it’s still my problem.”

“It’s not my fault my father died when I was seven, but it’s still my problem.”

He wanted to win far more than he wanted to be right about whose fault it was.

Demosthenes’ fate would change when he heard a famous Greek orator named Callistratus speak. Right then and there, he decided he wanted to be an orator himself.

A fatherless stutterer with no formal education wanting to become a public speaker?

Think about the audacity of that decision for a second.

A fatherless kid who can barely string a sentence together deciding he wants to become a public speaker?

It’s like being afraid of heights and deciding to become a tightrope walker. Or being terrible at math and deciding to become a physicist. Or never having touched a basketball and declaring you’re going to the NBA.

Yet Demosthenes refused to give in.

He devised brutal training exercises.

He would fill his mouth with pebbles when speaking to force himself to enunciate clearly despite the impediment.

He would recite entire speeches while running uphill, screaming into the wind. He practiced delivering speeches in one breath until his weak voice erupted with booming, powerful clarity.

He literally built an underground dugout and locked himself inside to study. And to guarantee he wouldn’t leave when it got hard? Shaved half his head so he’d be too embarrassed to go outside.

Every time he emerged, it was to learn. Every conversation became practice. Every interaction became training. Every single moment became an opportunity to get better.

All of it aimed at one goal:

Sue his former guardians. Win back what they stole.

Day after day after day, Demosthenes practiced.

When he finally came of age, he filed the lawsuits. His enemies hired the best legal minds money could buy.

But Demosthenes had studied law like his life depended on it, because it did. He knew every loophole, every precedent, every angle.

He won.

By the time the dust settled, only a fraction of the inheritance remained. But who Demosthenes had become in the process of fighting for it was worth infinitely more than the money.

Every speech sharpened him. Every day strengthened his resolve.

He learned to see through bullies. To stare down fear. To weaponize the voice that was once his greatest liability.

In struggling against his fate, Demosthenes discovered his purpose: he would be the voice of Athens, its greatest speaker.

He succeeded precisely because of what he’d endured and how he’d responded to it.

All that rage, all that pain, all that injustice, he channeled it into his training, then into his speeches, fueling them with a fierceness that couldn’t be matched or resisted.

Someone once asked Demosthenes what the three most important traits of speech making were.

His answer: “Action, Action, Action!”

Not talent. Not circumstances. Not luck.

Action, the one thing that was always, completely, entirely within his control.

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Interesting times will always come. In fact, they’re constants in life. What matters most is how we react to them.

Can you turn shit into sugar? Can you turn pain and grief into drive? Can you turn suffering into motivation?

"In life, our first job is this: to divide and distinguish things into two categories—externals I cannot control, and the choices I make with regard to them, which I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices." - Epictetus

in life, what happens to you matters. Where you came from matters.

But what matters most is always going to be what you do with what happens and what you’ve been given.

How will you play the hand you’re dealt?

And look, I'm not saying you have to be some stoic robot who doesn't feel things. You can absolutely take a minute to say "Damn, this sucks."

Vent. Scream into a pillow. Cry. Punch a wall if you need to (maybe not actually, but you get the idea).

Just set a timer.

Because at some point, you have to wipe your face, stand up, and get back to work.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, not automatically, but if you choose to let it.

Is suffering good?

Hell no.

Would Demosthenes still be the legendary orator we know if he’d been born rich, healthy, and articulate? Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll never know.

But that’s not the point.

The point is that life will tell you “fuck you” at some point. That’s guaranteed.

The only thing that matters is whether you have the audacity to look life dead in the eye and say “no, fuck you“ right back.

Because Action is always within your power.

Always.

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Perspective Is All You Need, Perspective Is Everything

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so"-Shakespeare

I know this sounds generic and sounds like something a therapist would say but I have to say it anyway:

Perspective is everything. It’s all you need.

The way you interpret and see events matters more than the events themselves. Meaning is never objective, we decide what meaning we give to things.

In every situation in life, we always have the choice to see the cup as either half full or half empty. Same cup. Same water. Same height.

What happens to us? Out of our control.
The meaning we give to what happens to us? Always in our control.

In the art of turning shit to sugar, perspective matters most.

Thomas Edison knew this better than anyone.

December 1914. At age 67, the peak of his career, Edison had built his research laboratory from the ground up. Everything seemed to be going just fine. He’d just finished dinner that evening when a man came rushing to him:

“Mr. Edison, a fire has broken out at your research and production campus!”

Edison calmly made his way to the site. When he arrived, he saw green and yellow flames fueled by the strange chemicals in various buildings shooting up six and seven stories high, threatening to destroy the entire empire he’d spent his life building.

He quickly searched for his son among the hundreds of devastated onlookers and employees.

When he found him, Edison said with childlike excitement: “Go get your mother and all her friends. They’ll never see a fire like this again!”

What?!

“Don’t worry,” Edison said, calming his son. “It’s all right. We’ve just got rid of a lot of rubbish.”

It sounds made up. But it actually happened.

Edison wasn’t some radical optimist detached from reality. He was just clear-eyed about his options.

What other reaction could he have given?

Wailed and cried until he had a heart attack? Gotten angry? Quit and gone home?

What, exactly, would that have accomplished? You know the answer: nothing. Absolutely nothing.

So he didn’t waste time indulging himself.

Of course, there was more than just a little “rubbish” in those buildings. Years and years of priceless records, prototypes, and research were turned to ash.

But in that moment, Edison was reminded of the lines from Kipling's poem:

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken...

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!

Why not choose that perspective?

There’s literally no value in any other reaction.

Learning not to freak out about things you can’t control is step one. Indifference and acceptance are better than rage or despair.

But that’s just the beginning.

The real move, the advanced technique, is loving what happens.

Not tolerating it. Not accepting it.

Loving it.

The goal isn’t: “I’m okay with this.”

Not even: “I think this might be good.”

The goal is: “I’m grateful this happened exactly when and how it did.”

Because if it happened, it was meant to happen. And you’re meant to make something from it.

You don’t choose what happens to you. But you always choose how you feel about it.

And why on earth would you choose to feel anything but good?

We can choose to render a good account of ourselves regardless of circumstance. Why would you choose to handicap yourself by the situation?

If the event must occur, Amor fati—love of fate—is the only rational response.

You love it because it’s fuel. And you don’t just want fuel, you need it. You can’t build anything, go anywhere, or become anyone without it.

So you’re grateful for it.

The point is this: there is always some good in the bad, even if it’s only barely perceptible at first. The good is contained within the bad.

But the power to find it lies entirely in our perception.

---

We are always living in interesting times. Obstacles here and there. Challenges limiting us. Fear creeping into our minds.

But passing one obstacle simply says you're worthy of more.

The universe doesn’t back off when you’re struggling, it leans in harder when it sees you can take it.

This is actually good news because we get better with every attempt. Stronger with every round. More capable with every fight.

The move isn’t to never be shaken.

The move is to be shaken and keep moving. To feel overwhelmed and act anyway. To take whatever life throws at you and transform it into fuel.

we must never be rattled or frantic or resort to pessimism. Instead, we flip the obstacles that life throws at us, improving in spite of them, because of them.

What blocks the path eventually becomes the path.

What tries to stop you eventually teaches you how to move.

The power to turn shit to sugar lies entirely in our hands.

At every point in time , Life is constantly testing you. Constantly applying pressure. Constantly trying to see what you’re made of.

Life wants to cut you open like a knife.

Not to kill you. To reveal you.

When that blade cuts deep, when pressure and fear and tension slice through all your defenses, the world gets to see what’s truly inside.

So what will pour out when you’re cut open?

Iron?

Air?

Or bullshit?

The choice is yours. It’s always been yours.

May you live in interesting times.

The curse was a gift all along.
—Abimbola

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Hi Reader, I’m not a motivational speaker, not even close. I’m just obsessed with living an unconventional life and inspiring people to aim higher.

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