Only ‘Time’ Makes Someone the Best.
On my way to work, I was listening to some old songs,
and I noticed how the rappers in certain groups — the ones whose skills at debut were honestly painful to listen to —
eventually became irreplaceable figures in the scene. How are they still going strong after all these years?
Not just because they got lucky. The very act of ‘enduring time itself’
is what most brutally and most surely makes a person ‘unique’, what most surely ‘filters’ them out,
until they land in the top 0.1% — that’s how it seems to me.
In the end, isn’t it that they too just endured and endured, and now they’re flying?
(On YouTube, they’re shining purely on the strength of their own colors —)
and they all say the same thing:
“I just kept enduring, and one day…”
1. Time is the most reliable ‘filter’ — and the most reliable ‘barrier to entry’
In any field, the early days are crowded with countless competitors armed with talent and passion.
But once
1 year, 2 years, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7…
10, 11, 12…
20, 21 years go by —
most of them have dropped out, worn down by practical realities, slumps, lost interest, health, relationships, the need to make a living.
The ones who hold their ground to the very end aren’t simply ‘still around’ —
they are [survivors], masters who weathered countless crises, downturns, schemes, and obstructions.
The experience built up through endurance, the ability to handle a crisis, the eye for reading the market —
these, in themselves, become a powerful [barrier to entry] that no one dares to challenge.
2. The People Who Quietly Endured the Long Stretch
- [Ed Sheeran]‘s singing at 14 was, honestly, terrible. But at 16 he dropped out of school, moved to London, and in 2009 alone played 312 busking gigs — whatever came his way, he took. For about three years he slept rough, an unknown. He uses the metaphor of a ‘faucet’: when you first turn it on, dirty water pours out — only once it has all run through does clean water begin to flow.
- [James Dyson] spent about 15 years buried under crushing debt (renewing his overdraft countless times, living by counting coins), endured 5,127 failed prototypes, and was turned away at hundreds of doors.
=> Their journeys are a perfect demonstration of how ‘time’ carves the ordinary into the extraordinary — and both became irreplaceable artists in the top 0.1%.
=> They embody the insight I mentioned earlier: ‘Simply by enduring through time, you become unique and filtered.’
(Premise: those who have actually ‘started’ aren’t the kind of people who let the time they spend just sit idle.)
I don’t pretend to know every condition for reaching a goal and succeeding, but —
quiet waiting, ‘time’, has always been a common requirement.
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