Nobody Asked Me If I Wanted To

365 Days of BlakHat — October 24, 2026

You know, one of the more irritating discoveries about being an adult is that nobody seems particularly interested in whether you feel like doing something.

The bills arrive whether you’re in the mood to pay them. People get sick at inconvenient times. Relationships demand conversations you’d rather avoid. And occasionally life presents you with a situation so thoroughly unpleasant that you’d happily pay somebody else just to make it disappear.

Unfortunately, some things can’t be delegated.

And there’s something about being forced into a situation that brings out the rebellious teenager in even the most respectable grown man.

We dig in our heels.

We complain.

We spend an extraordinary amount of energy explaining why we shouldn’t have to do the very thing we’re eventually going to have to do anyway.

It’s almost impressive.

The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius had an interesting problem. He was arguably the most powerful man in the world, yet he spent much of his life dealing with wars, disease, political intrigue, and people he couldn’t stand.

Imagine that. Emperor of Rome, and still unable to arrange a day in which everyone simply left him alone.

In his private writings, he reminded himself that the obstacle in front of him was often the very place where his character would be tested.

Now, that sounds rather noble when you’re reading it two thousand years later.

It’s considerably less inspiring when you’re sitting in your car outside a building you desperately don’t want to enter.

And here’s where things get interesting.

Sometimes we’re not actually afraid of what we have to do.

We’re angry that we have to do it.

There’s a difference.

We resent the interruption. We resent the unfairness. We resent whoever put us in this position. And sometimes we resent the fact that nobody is coming to rescue us from it.

So we sit there, having an argument with circumstances that aren’t listening.

But eventually the car door has to open.

And perhaps that’s where courage really lives.

Not in some grand heroic gesture, but in that thoroughly ordinary moment when a person says, “Well, this is going to be unpleasant,” and gets out of the car anyway.

Of course, not every demand deserves our obedience. Sometimes the courageous thing is to refuse, to challenge, or to walk away.

But when something genuinely must be faced, postponing it rarely makes us any freer.

It just gives the thing we dread another day of our lives.

And there’s a peculiar satisfaction in finally doing what we’ve been avoiding.

Not necessarily because it turns out well.

Sometimes it doesn’t.

But because, for a little while at least, we stop being held hostage by our own reluctance.

And that alone can be worth getting out of the car for.