Why do you get up in the morning?
Not in the motivational-poster sense. Not to manifest a beachside cocktail or chase someone else’s idea of freedom. Just — why you, today?
You don’t need perfect planning. You don’t need the right tools, the right timing, or even the right mood. But you do need a reason. A strong one. A real one. Otherwise, the rest crumbles on contact.
Intention works like an anchor. It keeps the rest of your actions from drifting into noise. Even when the map is messy, the compass still points somewhere. That somewhere is your why.
A lot of people try to reverse it. They chase the how first — the method, the strategy, the 5-year plan. But the how is malleable. It bends, breaks, rebuilds. The why is the part you protect.
So, who are you trying to become?
Not an imagined self, lounging forever in reward. But someone with a direction. Someone who knows what step, today, makes you one inch closer. That’s the quiet work: noticing what matters, and moving towards it.
It doesn’t need to be grand. Sometimes it’s a phone call you don’t avoid. Sometimes it’s sitting down to think when you could scroll. Simple acts. But aligned ones.
Nietzsche said: He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. He wasn’t exaggerating. Viktor Frankl echoed the same — that everything can be taken from you except how you respond. That’s the final freedom. And it’s not small.
The path might get hard. It might demand more than you thought you had. You might lose people. Or whole parts of yourself. But that isn’t the signal to stop. That’s just the tax for choosing something meaningful.
And if the dawn doesn’t follow the dark?
You still walked your path. You still didn’t trade your why for comfort.
On the tomb of Malcolm McLaren in Highgate Cemetery, the words are etched: Better a spectacular failure than a benign success.
Seems right.