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APX-V-0025

“My child was just born and the weight of it feels like honor, not fear.”

APX · Pillar II — Apex APX-V · Protect Those Beneath You.

A life now depends on you completely, and instead of crushing you, the responsibility has clarified you. That is the prize, the best one life offers — work worth doing, done for someone immediately dependent on you. The sleepless nights ahead are not a tax on your freedom. They are the freedom: to spend your strength on something that can't yet spend any of its own.

Your Practice

  1. Hold the child and say plainly to yourself: 'This is the work worth doing.'
  2. Decide now what kind of shield you'll be, before exhaustion makes the choice for you.
  3. Build the boring infrastructure of provision — it is love in its least glamorous form.
  4. Protect your partner too. The strong shield the whole house, not only the smallest member of it.

The Architects

“Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing; and this is a prize open to every man.”

— Theodore Roosevelt, Address to the New York State Agricultural Association, Syracuse, NY, September 7, 1903

More under APX-V

APX-V-0001“Someone weaker than me is getting crushed and I'm just watching.”APX-V-0002“I'm finally using my strength to lift others up.”APX-V-0003“I'm mentoring someone and watching them grow.”APX-V-0004“I realized I've been protecting the wrong things.”APX-V-0005“I'm stepping into a leadership role for the first time.”APX-V-0006“A child or young person in my life is struggling and needs guidance.”
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