If All is Going Well, Stay Alert

6 min readAug 20, 2023

Wisdom of Being Vigilant when You Least Feel You Need It

Has it ever happened to you? All seems to be going well at work, in your private life, with your finances, with your interests, you are having a great time with your friends. Life is fantastic! What could possibly go wrong?

My father once told me a parable about a rabbi who was observing a man climb a tall tree. While everyone was shouting for the man to be careful, the rabbi stayed silent. The man reached the top of the tree and then started his descent. As he successfully approached the lower branches of the tree, the rabbi got animated and started yelling: “Be careful, be careful!” Someone told the rabbi: “You say that now? He has already climbed up and left the dangerous behind”. The rabbi responded: “That is precisely why he needs to be careful for when we think the dangerous is behind us is when we are at our most careless”.

It was one of those things that you hear and you think — that does make sense. When everything is going well, stay alert — my father would tell me. In life, everything going well is an anomaly. And anomalies don’t last long.

Everything is going great. Then all of a sudden, life throws something at you when you least expect it. Something serious happens. You discover a betrayal. You or your loved one is faced with a grave health problem. You lose your savings on a bad deal. Much worse things can happen. Citizens of Türkiye going to sleep in the city of Hatay on the night of 5 February 2023 did not expect a devastating earthquake to take place a few hours later. Citizens of Ukraine wrapping up their day did not expect a war to start at dawn on 24 February 2022.

Most of us don’t face a devastating earthquake or a war. But still, things will go wrong.

Your assessment of your situation may be wrong. Maybe not all is well in your life. Maybe you are missing something. Don’t get paranoid of course, but pay attention.

Or your assessment may be correct, and indeed, all is well. But if so, the sense of security you develop can make you reckless. You may be prone to taking more risks, unnecessary risks. Or your decision-making is dominated by your ego since you now think that you can get away with anything. You get careless. Sloppy.

Here is a famous example. Remember Will Smith and the Slap? That day was supposed to be the peak of Will Smith’s career. He was about to get the Oscar for Best Actor. And yet it became his most embarrassing day after he stormed the stage and slapped the comedian Chris Rock. Everyone had an opinion on what happened of course. But for me, the most interesting take was Denzel Washington’s. The actor, who is a two-time Academy Award winner, so is someone who knows how being at the peak feels, said: “When the devil ignores you, then you know you are doing something wrong. The devil goes, ‘Oh, no, leave him alone. He’s my favorite.’ Conversely, when the devil comes at you, maybe it is because you are trying to do something right. At your highest moment, be careful. That’s when the devil comes for you.”

Washington is a religious man, but if you replace the devil with fate, life, the universe, or whatever else works for you, the meaning does not change. Did Smith think he could get away with anything that day? If he did, he was wrong.

And that is the point.

We may be in great physical shape, workouts are going great. And when we think, here we are, at the point where we will “unlock a new level” so to speak, we get sick or injured. This usually happens because we overextend ourselves, because we fail to recover, or maybe because we overestimate what we can do. Because we get carried away.

Or maybe we are not pushing the envelope. But we are in our comfort zone, and everything seems great. But if you are not moving forward, it doesn’t mean you are staying in the same spot. It means you are slowly moving backward. I wrote about this a while back — there is an interesting word in the Russian language — ‘забронзоветь’. It means becoming bronze, as in taking the color of bronze. But it also means getting jaded. You stop progressing because you think you have “arrived”. That is why it is essential we periodically review our goals and set new objectives. Make sure we always learn something new.

Life is complex. Great stretches are amazing, but they don’t last. So stay alert. Stay vigilant. The pendulum can swing to the other side in a blink of an eye.

You cannot predict what and when might go wrong, but you can do your part in getting ready so you are in the best shape to respond if and when calamity strikes. Here are a few things you can do:

Introduce some adversity into your life — in modern life, this typically takes the form of exercising. I do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu — sparring with twenty-something-year-olds a few times a week does the trick. In jiu-jitsu, we try to get progressively more comfortable with discomfort. If you are on a first-name basis with hardship, then hardship does not shock your system anymore. You can do any other type of physical activity that stresses your body and your mind — enough for you to get stronger, and fitter — it does not have to be exercising (how about gardening?), anything that taxes you physically will do. Not too much so it destroys your health of course. Do something that makes you progressively stronger, someone who grows and gets better under pressure — anti-fragile using Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s term.
Try the Stoic exercise of Memento Mori — remember that you too will die. Sounds grim, I know, but accepting the inevitability of death has value in that it helps accept the transient nature of everything. Reminding us of our mortality can help inspire us into action, not waste time, and focus on what matters. If and when problems occur, you will be less likely to freak out but will focus on finding solutions and realize that people throughout history have dealt with the kind of adversity you are dealing with and far worse (earthquakes, wars, and the like).
Try the Stoic exercise of Gratitude — accept that the good things you have right now, you can lose in an instant and therefore, be grateful, and appreciate what you have. Marcus Aurelius wrote, “As you kiss your son good night, whisper to yourself, he may be dead in the morning”. Too much? Perhaps. But Marcus Aurelius experienced this very thing with his own children. He lost 9 children in his lifetime.
Address the fundamentals — sleep, get in shape, eat healthy, identify, and join a community that can help make you better. Don’t chase short-term gratification, choose activities that enhance the quality of your life. Learn, grow, and move forward, so you are in a better position to deal with adversity in the future.
Get your house in order—get your papers in order, write your will, resolve what needs resolving, save money, and do regular medical check-ups. We all know what are the things that need our attention. The things we keep postponing because right now, we don’t feel they are a priority. Think of the things you would regret if you had to leave right now — is there someone you need to make amends with? Something left unsaid?

Marcus Aurelius wrote: “An artful life requires being prepared to meet and withstand sudden and unexpected attacks”. He likened life to wrestling, a gritty form of struggle, and cautioned hopeless optimists. If you think of life as inherently hard, you will be in a better mental state to deal with the hardships life brings.

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If All is Going Well, Stay Alert

Written by Rational Badger