No One Is Coming To Save You

A year ago I came across a quote online: "No one is coming to save you."

I did not get it. So I searched for it, and found a Reddit thread where someone was confused in exactly the same way. His objection was a good one: does this mean I can't ask for help? Can't join an accountability group? Can't lean on anyone?

For a long time I read the sentence the way most did. I heard it as a warning: the fight in the street, the enemy at the gate, the moment when you look around for help and find the street empty. Stand alone. Nobody is coming...

I don't think that's it.

After a few years of my own mistakes, a reading that finally made sense to me: When they say no one is coming to save you, they are not saying "How no one is coming to save you from your enemies." What they are actually saying is "How no one is coming to save you from YOURSELF."

Think about who actually knows what you are capable of. Not your friends, they see the outline. Not your manager, they see the output. You are the only one with the full picture: your real potential, your real strengths, and the specific ways you talk yourself out of things.

Which means you are also the only witness when you let yourself down.

Nobody knows you hit snooze four times. Nobody knows you opened the editor and then opened a browser tab instead. Nobody knows that the skill you have been "meaning to learn" has been on the list for two years. There is no alarm for this. No one files a complaint. The betrayal is completely private, and that's exactly why it's so easy.

So the work is yours. You have to wake up on time. You have to get dressed, sit down at the desk, and do the hard, boring part. No one is going to close the tab for you or stop you from scrolling all evening. No one is going to decide what you make of yourself.

You may settle down. That option is right there and it might look reasonable. A couple of gigs a month, enough to cover the bills, done. Mediocrity is not painful, that's what makes it dangerous.

Five years is going to pass either way. That's the only genuinely fixed thing in this. There is a version of you at the other end who learned the thing, and a version who has a very reasonable explanation for why he did not, and both of them get there at exactly the same time.

Nobody chooses between them for you. Nobody is watching you. Nobody is stopping you.

Tomorrow morning your alarm goes off.

Nobody is coming...