Walking the Middle Line
Walking the Middle Line
Success isn’t just about talent or effort. It’s about balance. You have to walk a narrow line between being proud of what you’ve done and never letting yourself get too comfortable. Between pushing harder and knowing when to pause long enough to breathe. It’s easy to fall to one side or the other. Either you tear yourself apart because you think you’re not doing enough, or you start patting yourself on the back until you stop moving forward. Both are traps.
There is always more to do. Another hill to climb. Another skill to sharpen. But if all you ever do is chase the next thing, you never arrive anywhere. And if you sit too long in the feeling of accomplishment, you start believing your own story. Most people have seen how that ends. Someone gets a small taste of success and spends the rest of their life reminding everyone about it. Success can blind you just as easily as failure if you let it.
The work is staying grounded. Being present without being defined by the moment. Not feeding your insecurities, but not drifting into arrogance either. Being honest about where you fall short and choosing to face it instead of avoiding it. And above all, remembering to be a decent human being. Not when it’s useful. Not when someone is watching. But because it’s the right way to live. That means learning how to forgive. Other people, and yourself.
Most of what I write comes from a small number of demanding disciplines. Craft. Farriery. Forging. Martial arts. These are places where balance is not an idea, it’s enforced. If you push too hard without control, you get injured. If you coast on confidence, the work exposes you. Reality gives honest feedback. It doesn’t care how you feel about yourself.
One of the most reliable ways I’ve found to stay balanced is through voluntary hardship. Choosing difficulty before life chooses it for you. When you push yourself harder than circumstances ever will, you become someone who can handle pressure without losing perspective. Discipline grows. Resilience follows. And humility stays close, because no matter how capable you become, there is always something you are neglecting.
Maybe it’s the miles you keep skipping. Maybe it’s the conversations you avoid. Maybe it’s a part of your work you don’t want to look at too closely because you know it’s weak. There is always a blind spot. The moment you stop searching for it, you start sliding backwards.
Gratitude gets spoken about a lot these days, and most of the time it rings hollow. Real gratitude isn’t a phrase or a posture. It’s something built slowly, through experience. If you’ve ever gone without shelter, without money, without basic comfort, you don’t need reminders to be thankful. You carry that understanding quietly.
The modern world moves fast and forgets easily. The things that matter most, gratitude, love, faith, integrity, get stripped of meaning and sold back as slogans. That doesn’t mean they’ve lost their value. It means they’ve been abandoned.
So the task is to reclaim them. Not loudly. Not performatively. But by living them. By doing the work every day without needing recognition. By letting your actions carry the weight instead of your words.
The world will always pull you in a hundred directions. The answer isn’t to chase them all. It’s to plant your feet, keep your head clear, and move forward steadily. Not for attention. Not for status. But because hard work and honest living still count, whether anyone is watching or not.
