We were at the office til 3:30am. It's always incredible to see what a small number of motivated & stubborn people can accomplish. You also realize that everything is a fight. Nothing lives without breathing life into it. Every small detail was someone's fight. Asphalt is black because someone fought. The cursor is a slanted arrow because someone fought. The stop sign on your block exists because someone fought. Your relationship is healthy because you fight for it. What you don't fight for actively deteriorates. Maintenance is a facade. You can't fight for everything, so as important as picking what to fight for, you must actively decide what you'll let deteriorate. If you don't decide, everything deteriorates. Everything implicit explicitly deteriorates. This requires intensity. And your job as a leader is to preserve intensity, not buffer it. Don't protect people from high standards. There's an infinite supply of people who will implicitly deteriorate everything; don't be one of them. Create urgency for what matters.
The meaning of life is so clear to me: it's to set an insane objective and do it with a small number of people. Can be you and your team. Or deciding to marry 1 person. Us against the world. In doing so you toy with new realities and see a side of humanity that's only available at those extremes.