Why We Must Die- And Other Counter-Intuitive Truths for a Stronger Life
Introduction: The Danger of a Smooth Path What if the life you’ve been taught to pursue—one of perfect stability, free from pain and uncertainty—is not a sanctuary, but a gilded cage? What if the sterilized, frictionless world we strive for ensures our spiritual death long before our physical one? We invest immense effort in engineering a smooth path, believing that a placid existence is the ultimate prize. But what if these very efforts are making us fragile, brittle, and unprepared for the beautiful, terrible, and inevitable shocks of being alive? This is the truth at the heart of a powerful concept known as "Antifragility," coined by author and risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It suggests a radical reframing of our relationship with hardship. Antifragility proposes that certain systems—including our own lives, careers, and even societies—do not just withstand stress but actually require it to grow stronger. It presents a new lens through which to view disorder not as ...