When did my heart harden? How did empathy slip away? Dr. Lindelson pondered these questions in the spacious office where she had practiced psychotherapy for forty years, since she completed he ... [+]
I choked.
The room wasn't even that cold, but my hands felt numb as I stared at the question paper. Pens were already scribbling around me like a starting gun had gone off in a race I hadn't even trained for properly. We were all given the same notes, the same lectures, the same twenty-four hours — yet somehow, they were sprinting while I was still tying my shoes. So I did what any sane or insane person would do, I got up and left...
The hallways were empty, fluorescent lights humming overhead. I wandered, listening to the echo of my footsteps, trying to make sense of what I had just done. Weeks of lectures, slides, notes, tutorials—all gone and then the truth hit me like a bucket of ice cold water: I hadn't wanted it enough.
I had wanted a degree. I had wanted success. I had wanted to be that person everyone envied, admired, or at least remembered. But wanting, I realized, is a slippery abstraction. You can admire the idea of achievement without ever grasping the substance of the effort required. My peers, though—they wanted it differently. They wanted it with the ferocity of someone who would sacrifice sleep, social life, perhaps even sanity, to see a dream realized. And it wasn't just ambition; it was obsession, and obsession, unlike ambition, cannot be postponed.
I noticed them in the library one evening, bent over their notes like monks in a temple. Highlighters flew in rhythm with their muttered calculations, pens dancing over pages with purpose. They weren't working—they were living. The struggle was nourishment; the work, the reward. Hours disappeared because they didn't matter. They had been all in since day one.
I slumped onto a bench, exhausted, frustrated and then I laughed because I realized the irony: going all in is not hard if the thing you're all in for is something you would never want to leave. My peers weren't disciplined; they were aligned. That is the paradox I failed to understand for two years: passion masks effort so completely that what seems like suffering to an outsider is merely living to the devotee.
I thought about my own pseudo-dedication: The Saturdays I "sacrificed," the late nights spent half-heartedly solving integrals. I measured my effort in minutes and hours rather than purpose. They measured it in obsession, in authenticity, in a devotion so fundamental that quitting was inconceivable.
I wasn't writing this to shame anyone for Netflix, Instagram, or video games. Some of the brightest minds I've met are addicted to distractions—they are human. I wrote this to make you think: the next time you make a decision, ask yourself, are you truly all in? Whether it's buying softer toilet paper or starting a vegan diet, is it something you can become one with? And above all, can it fulfil you in a way that makes the work feel less like punishment and more like life itself? That, I think, is the real meaning of going all in.
It's easy to romanticize the idea as a principle, a maxim for life. Many would sprinkle it across LinkedIn posts or frame it in neat self-help chapters but the truth of life is messier, rawer. Going all in isn't just discipline. It isn't something you can will into existence through habit alone. It is lived, breathed and embodied. You don't "decide" to go all in; you discover that you already have.
I stood, took a deep breath, and walked back towards the exam hall. The doors loomed ahead like the gates of a challenge I had avoided. I wasn't ready to re-enter that day. But I understood something crucial: the race wasn't against anyone else. It was against the half-hearted version of myself and when you're all in, that version disappears, leaving only the person willing to live fully in their pursuit. Some people call it going all in but I realised that day how much I needed to start going all out...
Well written😉