The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

Keys to Human Nature
In the world today, we humans face a particular predicament: As soon
as our schooling ends, we suddenly find ourselves thrown into the
work world, where people can be ruthless and the competition is fierce.
Only a few years before, if we were lucky, our parents met many of our
needs and were there to guide us; in some cases, they were
overprotective. Now we find ourselves on our own, with little or no life
experience to rely upon. We have to make decisions and choices that
will affect our entire future.
In the not-so-distant past, people’s career and life choices were
somewhat limited. They would settle into the particular jobs or roles
available to them and stay there for decades. Certain older figures—
mentors, family members, religious leaders—could offer some
direction if needed. But such stability and help is hard to find today, as
the world changes ever more quickly. Everyone is caught up in the
harsh struggle to make it; people have never been so preoccupied with
their own needs and agendas. The advice of our parents might be
totally antiquated in this new order. Facing this unprecedented state of
affairs, we tend to react in one of two ways.
Some of us, excited by all the changes, actually embrace this new
order. We are young and full of energy. The smorgasbord of
opportunities offered by the digital world dazzles us. We can
experiment, try many different jobs, have many different relationships
and adventures. Commitments to a single career or person feel like
unnecessary restrictions on this freedom. Obeying orders and listening
to authority figures is old-fashioned. Better to explore, have fun, and
be open. A time will come when we will figure out what exactly to do

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with our lives. In the meantime, maintaining the freedom to do as we
wish and go where we please becomes our main motivation.
Some of us, however, react the opposite way: Frightened of the
chaos, we quickly opt for a career that is practical and lucrative,
hopefully related to some of our interests, but not necessarily. We
settle on an intimate relationship. We may even continue to cling to
our parents. What motivates us is to somehow establish the stability
that is so hard to find in this world.
Both paths, however, tend to lead to some problems further down
the road. In the first case, trying so many things out, we never really
develop solid skills in one particular area. We find it hard to focus on a
specific activity for too long because we are so used to flitting around
and distracting ourselves, which makes it doubly hard to learn new
skills if we want to. Because of this our career possibilities begin to
narrow. We become trapped into moving from one job to another. We
might now want a relationship that lasts, but we haven’t developed the
tolerance for compromise, and we cannot help but bristle at the
restrictions to our freedom that a lasting relationship will represent.
Although we might not like to admit it to ourselves, our freedom can
begin to wear on us.
In the second case, the career we committed to in our twenties
might begin to feel a bit lifeless in our thirties. We chose it for practical
purposes, and it has little connection to what actually interests us in
life. It begins to feel like just a job. Our minds disengage from the
work. And now that smorgasbord of opportunities in the modern world
begins to tempt us as we reach midlife. Perhaps we need some new,
exciting career or relationship or adventure.
In either case, we do what we can to manage our frustrations. But as
the years go by, we start to experience bouts of pain that we cannot
deny or repress. We are generally unaware of the source of our
discomfort—the lack of purpose and true direction in our lives.
This pain comes in several forms.
We feel increasingly bored. Not really engaged in our work, we turn
to various distractions to occupy our restless minds. But by the law of
diminishing returns, we need to continually find new and stronger
forms of diversion—the latest trend in entertainment, travel to an
exotic location, a new guru or cause to follow, hobbies that are taken

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up and abandoned quickly, addictions of all kinds. Only when we are
alone or in down moments do we actually experience the chronic
boredom that motivates many of our actions and eats away at us.
We feel increasingly insecure. We all have dreams and a sense of
our own potential. If we have wandered aimlessly through life or gone
astray, we begin to become aware of the discrepancy between our
dreams and reality. We have no solid accomplishments. We feel
envious of those who do. Our ego becomes brittle, placing us in a trap.
We are too fragile to take criticism. Learning requires an admission
that we don’t know things and need to improve, but we feel too
insecure to admit this, and so our ideas become set and our skills
stagnate. We cover this up with an air of certainty and strong opinions,
or moral superiority, but the underlying insecurity cannot be shaken.
We often feel anxious and stressed but are never quite certain as to
why. Life involves inevitable obstacles and difficulties, but we have
spent much of our time trying to avoid anything painful. Perhaps we
didn’t take on responsibilities that would open us to failure. We
steered clear of tough choices and stressful situations. But then they
crop up in the present—we are forced to finish something by a
deadline, or we suddenly become ambitious and want to realize a
dream of ours. We have not learned in the past how to handle such
situations, and the anxiety and stress overwhelm us. Our avoidance
leads to a low-grade, continual anxiety.
And finally, we feel depressed. All of us want to believe that there is
some purpose and meaning to our life, that we are connected to
something larger than ourselves. We want to feel some weight and
significance to what we have done. Without that conviction, we
experience an emptiness and depression that we will ascribe to other
factors.