Reflections - The Rainmakers

The Rainmakers

To whom the firm is beholden

A rule of thumb of in professional services business is that billable resources, at the minimum, must produce 3x their cost to company. Their services are the sources of revenue for the firm. Let me explain giving an example of an advertising agency, and its client, a technology company, IBM.

As part of the contract of this firm with IBM (the account), the billable resources are: account management person who is the firms regular interface with the client responsible for taking client brief (understanding client communication requirement) and ensuring delivery of firm’s services, raising of estimates and invoices, and collection of dues.

The account management person is supported by creative teams of copy and art, data, computer artist, production person etc. Each one’s services are billable at a rate per hour.

There are also persons like the overall boss of the firm, the boss of the unit, who are billable if they are actively involved in the account. The back-office staff, like the accountant and other staff are not billable.

With that background, if a billable person, the account manager’s cost to the company is Rs 100 per hour and he works 200 days on the account for 8 hours a day (weekends, annual holidays, privilege and sick leave exempted), his cost to the company is Rs 100 per hour x 200 days x 8 hours i.e. Rs 1,60,000 per year. The cost per hour is calculated backwards from the cost to the company for the billable resource. 

The account manager needs to ensure he bills 3x to the company (IBM) i.e. Rs 1,60,000 x 3 = Rs 4,80,000 per annum for his services. Likewise, the other team members who will be on different rates per hour.

The idea of 3x is to cover the cost of the billable resources (1x), overheads of the company (1x), like rent, electricity, back-office staff, overall unit head costs etc., and toward a reasonable profit (1x) of ~30%. Profit essential to expand and reinvest in the business for offering better, wider, and deeper quality of service to the company. Healthy profits help in the growth of the firm and the client company.

In this model, billable resources are added when business grows and retrenched when business drops. The gestation period is an investment the firm makes which must be made up with sufficient revenue and profitability when the full team is in place.

Profitability comes from 100%+ utilization of the billable resource on the client account, with every hour billed, and dues collected within the credit period. Anything less in utilization percent or more in credit period, incurs interest costs and wipes out the profit potential.

When investment costs are not recovered due to stunted growth of the business, the business proposition becomes less attractive to the promoter or investor, cramping future investment in the business. If even operating costs are not recovered it only means shutters for the business.

The point of the long background is to highlight the importance of the ‘rainmaker’ who can bring in new business at a steady rate. The predictability of new business acquisition helps reduce the gestation period to operationalize an account by maintaining a bench strength.

More billable resources get added with expanding operations. Profitability is enhanced with better management of overhead costs (real estate, fixtures, furniture, power, facilities etc.) and back-office staff sharing, who are part of the headcount but are not billable. Efficient utilization of the non-billable staff adds to the bottom line. Often, back-office staff are outsourced to make the headcount revenue and profitability look good.  

Timely technology upgrades make the operations speedier and the output more accurate. When more of the new business comes from the existing customers, there is a reduction in new business development costs. The saving goes straight to the bottom line further improving profitability. If there are occasion for non-fee billing such as commission on production costs that also adds to the bottom line significantly since there is no resource cost attached to it.

What are the rainmakers like?

They are part Golden Retriever – to sniff out where new business exists; part Greyhound – possessing stamina to pursue their prey; part Bull Terrier – showing little patience and tolerance for competitors chasing the same business, forever thinking up ruses to scuttle their moves; part Great Danes – hardworking, pulling their weight, putting in long hours to pepper the prospect with useful information to stay top-of-mind in the prospect’s mind; part Border Collies – herding the team in the company to prepare presentations, propose innovations, and creative way of addressing the client’s problem to bag the business; part Dalmatian – having a certain presence through size, a booming voice, sharp intellect, or panache that the prospect finds difficult to erase the image of the ‘spotted’ breed from his mind even when the person has left his presence.

They work on triple insights: insight of the customer/client – what are his hot buttons when pressed gets a positive reaction; insight of customer’s customer – what will make the customer’s offering the preferred 'buy' of the end customer; and insights of the market – what are the dynamics that plays to the customer’s strength, and more importantly, the weakness that can be eliminated by engaging the firm and its resources.

The bottom line in this case is the focus of the rainmaker on his own and his client / customer’s personal needs and wants, aspiration and fears, success and hindrances in pursuit of their respective missions.

It must be win-win – not just in acquisition of the new business – but repeat business for the firm which saves on new business development costs. The latter is often not the concern of the rainmaker though the success of the business overall does add to the rainmaker’s bonus, apart from what is personally attributed to him, when the account is acquired and the potential business size in dollars is added up.

Want to be rainmaker? Don’t pray for rain. Pray from the rain.

Rainmaker operates from the belief that he already has the client’s business. A reviewer of Ernest Holmes’ book Science of Mind, explains the phenomena of praying ‘from’ rather than praying ‘for’.  

“Because our perceptions determine the nature and quality of our experience, we cannot experience what we do not perceive.  So, we do our Spiritual Mind Treatment from the consciousness that we already have what we want – we just need to realize it.

“It’s kind of like that phenomena when a person goes to the bank for a loan saying they lack money, the bank will turn them down, but turn around and throw all sorts of credit cards at another person who doesn’t ask, because that person has all the money they need.

“That contrast of praying ‘for’ something and praying ‘from’ the thing itself is Ernest Holmes’ distinction between having faith in God and having the faith of God. We must begin to pray from prosperity, pray from health, pray from right relationships, and pray from perfect creativity.

“This is the great mystery of life. We must be clear on the ultimate truth that we are living the life of God, as God.”

     Rainmaker, the business is already yours. Go get it.

Reflections - Jobs in Perpetuity

Jobs in Perpetuity

Service-based the better

What is it about electricians and plumbers that keeps them perpetually in demand? Theirs is the QWERTY keyboard phenomena.

It is speculated that the keyboard of a mechanical typewriter was designed with jumbled up letters to hamper speed typing. When the typewriter keys are struck in quick succession the strikers lock on hitting the carriage. They had to be pried back to each time it happened to continue with the typing.

With the development of the electronic typewriter, the QWERTY keyboard should have become irrelevant. If not then, at least when keyboards for computers were developed. The QWERTY keyboard continues to rein.  

The manner in which electricity and water is delivered to our homes has defied progress except in the cosmetics of the fittings. Once the electrical and plumbing craft is learnt it does not require additional certifications for electricians and plumbers to continue to offer their services. The same with masons and other professions which requires the use of hands and some brains not to be electrocuted, drowned or turned to stone.

One could say the same about finance managers, chartered accountants, advocates, insurance agents and medical professionals once certified can go about their work without additional certifications. To continue to offer their services they must stay current with their trade practices keeping up with additions, deletions, revisions, and precedents in their field.

The building blocks of these disciplines remain the same with practically no changes in the foundational understanding and core content, which of course is key to the first level of certification to even offer their services. There is no skill obsolescence or job loss in these fields. Slackness is fatal and true of any profession.

Technology plays a minimal role in the practitioner’s life except making content access and manipulation easier to doing it manually. Technology is not disruptive and mass layoffs are unheard of in these fields. 

Those with financial commitments requiring regular payouts must consider such professions. That should be obvious to all of us. But we don’t quite think in these terms when taking up our first job.

When do mass layoffs happen?

1.   In an economic downturn, when you are part of the resource recruited to service growing demand: cab drivers, customer service personnel, sales and marketing staff, HR professionals, delivery agents, construction and factory workers

2.   In technology and technology-led companies committed to automation to replace repetitive tasks done hitherto by human labor

In both cases, in good times, jobs appear plenty, but in bad times, they disappear just as fast. Hence, the ability to save and make smart investments is critical when employed in mass layoff prone industries.

The 5x20s investment rule is a good practice to adopt as a cushion to sail through extended layoff situations: 20% in long-term appreciating assets like house or land, 20% in depreciating assets with operational costs such as car or bike, 20% in household expenses, 20% in child education and extracurricular expenses, and 20% in liquid assets such as securities, insurance or gold.

Which then are the sectors that are not affected by the effects of demand deceleration – other than government and sectors dominated by the public sector, like the railways?

Health, education, entertainment, insurance, brokerage, and social welfare industry. What is common to these six industries in ensuring job stability?

They all address a human need that cannot be wished away. To be treated for ill-health; to achieve professional success; to be distracted from the rigor or humdrum of life; to be covered for unexpected expenses; to be introduced to a choice of buyers and sellers; to be cared for when incapable of fending for themselves.  

The level of skill also follows a pattern from highly knowledge-based skill (health), to some qualification (education), to creative skills (entertainment), to selling skill (insurance), to ear-to-the-ground and walking-the-streets skills (broker), and empathetic and non-discriminatory skills (social welfare).

These skills and industries provide a ‘no-layoff’ guarantee when they are run efficiently and ethically, relatively speaking. To be part of this industry requires a deliberate focus and effort. It pays off well in maintaining income continuity.

To avoid skill obsolescence and maintain a steady source of income, it is imperative to develop unique and highly priced skills. The ability to write cogently, speak persuasively, listen attentively, work collaboratively. And, the ability to project confidence, dependability, reliability, adaptability, creativity, originality, honesty, and humility.

These are innate or cultivated (fake it until you make it) personality-driven traits, providing the individual a uniqueness, to be capitalized strategically and thoughtfully to accomplish personal mission and cherished aspirations. They shield one from the threat of skill obsolescence and job loss.  

Often ignored when holding forth on such issues is emotional intelligence (EQ) and maturity required of the person which is one clear antidote to skill obsolescence and job loss. And, one other factor, when the pace of change is overwhelming, put succinctly by Alvin Toffler, author of the best seller, Future Shock:

“The illiterate of the 21^st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

To unlearn what has been learned and practiced for a time is the modern challenge. Imagine re-learning to type on a keyboard with the QWERTY replaced with FGHJKL as the opening set of alphabets. Would you want to even try to give it a shot to see if you can? Those who want to stay relevant and useful will.

Carol Dweck, a Stanford Professor of Psychology, calls those who will try to relearn the FGHJKL keyboard, as having a ‘Growth Mindset’. Most will not and are forced to ride into the sunset. This is nothing new. Charles Darwin warned us about it in the 19^th Century.

“It is not the strongest of the species who survive, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change”

In conclusion: Choose wisely the profession you pursue and the industry you join. Some are highly ‘layoff’ prone while others offer a safe harbor of income continuity.

Don’t be part of a resource pool that is driven by demand and don’t be part of a technology or technology-led company where routine tasks are automated unless you have some unique skills or a personality trait that keeps you evergreen.

A place to be is where your services will always be in demand because it fulfills a human need that machines cannot do as it involves empathy, resourcefulness and persistency.

Reflections - Prayerful Response to Provocation

Recent events in the US prompted this article, ‘Prayerful Response to Provocation’ with the hope that some will respond in a way which diffuses tension and peace will be restored.

Prayerful Response to Provocation

Defanging malice and hatred

Politicians who govern us come to power because their message was more persuasive and their tactics more effective than that of the opposition. That’s fair and acceptable. What is reprehensible, however, is when contesting takes on an abusive tenor both in the traditional forms of communication – speeches at rallies – but ominously also in other forms of mass communication – the traditional media and on social media.

The political discourse has indeed become increasingly acrimonious and no holds barred, amplified every news night on our television sets. Such levels of verbal assault on our senses does not augur well for the country which is largely made of peace-loving people going about their daily task with a live-and-let-live attitude.

In this political slugfest the issues to do with economic well-being and social harmony is barely getting any attention – in fact, the accusations and insinuations is fraying the very fabric of the nation to a point of it being torn.

Digital conversations span the spectrum of evoking emotions of helplessness at one end and vehemence at the other – neither of which is good to achieve the collective productivity of a nation.  

To ‘let things be’ of old is losing its popular appeal as people take sides in a highly divided polity, promoting and justifying a point of view through circulation of newspaper reports and videos as corroborative evidence of calumny.

The debilitating impact on personal productivity and on relationships when circulating contentious messages is blissfully ignored when seized of an overpowering, untameable urge to transmit the condemnable content.

Why are we doing this to one another – when larger issues of the business or community that we are part of should be commanding our attention? Assailing each other to express our political affiliations has become more important than economic imperatives that can ensure us all a better standard of living.

How do we arrest the growing division among people because of the positions they have adopted that does not encourage softening of stances or a desire to forge a level of understanding that promises peace and goodwill?   

The answer is prayer. Seeking the fruits of this meditative action to achieve peace in our minds toward those who hold vengeful thoughts.   

To get into a state of prayer it is essential to calm our mind. We need to create a distance between the offender and our mind; to pray with burden without feeling burdened.  

The very act of prayer is a submission to the emotion of love for ourselves – to become calm within ourselves – and love for the other – the offender’s situation, influences, motivations, hurts, fears, animosities that prompted the action.

It is good to ask if inadvertently we are responsible for triggering the offence in the first place. Or do we just happen to be the unfortunate and hapless target of someone’s desire to vent their feelings for perceived wrongs done, just for being the person we are or the community we belong to.

The state of prayer also insulates us from feeling hurt, and accordingly, deflates our motivation to react - unsettling the offender with an unexpected response: no response.  

A natural reaction to a provocation is to hit back with equal force. However, when the provocateur does not get a response to repeated provocations, it is most infuriating; it sweeps the carpet of self-justification from under, making futile the built-up arsenal of conjured up reprisals in expectation of a response.  

Non-response is the first step. The prayer for redemption of the offender is the next step. In the process what we achieve is the defanging of the venom from the attacker’s sac to hopefully leave it docile to return to more productive occupation. And, us to ours. And, the nation to peace and prosperity which would be the reasonable desire of any self-respecting, ‘good citizen’.

This reflection would be incomplete without the quote from Theodore Roosevelt, 26^th US President on being a good citizen. "The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his own weight; that he shall not be a mere passenger, but shall do his share in the work that each generation of us finds ready to hand; and, furthermore, that in doing his work he shall show, not only the capacity for sturdy self-help, but also self-respecting regard for the rights of others.”

Reflections - Never waste a good crisis

Never waste a good crisis

To catapult to the top

Dreams experienced in ‘deep sleep’ can be educative if we reflect on it. If the same theme repeats itself it is a bullhorn to act.  

There are primarily two kinds of dreams: one, that startles you awake; and the other from which you don’t want to awake too soon. In either case it is our subconscious playing out our aspirations and our fears which when heeded and interpreted correctly can be transformative.

Some years back there was one such dream having frequent reruns in my ‘deep sleep’. It related to not meeting monthly and quarterly business targets. I am sure many are afflicted with this kind of a dream. In my dream I have been falling short, gravely, and growing increasingly fearful of the call from the boss to explain myself.

The dream was a flashback to the recession of 2008-2011 triggered by the sub-prime housing crisis in the US and the global financial meltdown that followed with the collapse of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008 – a date imprinted in my memory.

We are in some form of recession with Covid-19 indefinite lockdown – governmental or self-imposed – which will have a bearing on meeting the weekly, monthly and quarterly target in our respective businesses.

How should we arm ourselves to face the potential, imminent and real recessionary effect on the economy and on our business?

1.   Crisis mindset: Winston Churchill has been quoted as saying, “Never waste a good crisis”. We need to internalize the spirit of this statement and act differently from the business-as-usual approach. Our attitude should be, ‘Here is a great opportunity to think deeper, harder, smarter to create opportunities for the business, and for whatever scaled down opportunities that exist, have strategies in place to get a disproportionate share.

2.   Being honest: With ourselves and everyone else who forms some intersect with our business to identify what really are the critical issues that need to be addressed urgently. This means being deliberate about what areas of our business we will let die so that the ones to be kept alive get all the support. Generating a consensus around the decision would be the test of management’s leadership chops.  

3.   Being humble: The recessionary environment would call for humility in the top management to be able to say ‘I don’t know’. To reach out to those who may have the answers. It could be the peer group in the industry or cross-industry to understand how they are responding to the ‘crisis’. It could be inviting suggestions, without creating a panic, from the stakeholders how the business needs to run differently. The customer-facing staff or the team on the ground can provide insights into customer anxiety and customer demands of the business or potential defaults in payments to the company.  

4.   Being wise: Identify the signs and nature of the slow down. Which segments are most affected relative to the others? How are customers reallocating their spends and their budgets? On what budget items are they continuing to spend, on which they have cut back, and which items have been eliminated from their shopping list? If it is a large company, the sample set for this research could well be the staff of the company, though a customer segment would provide superior insights.

5.   Nose to the grindstone: Instead of the team spending time in the office strategizing, better to save on overheads and get them out in the field with a clear mandate to learn what is happening, provide an interpretation, and suggest strategies and tactics to create new opportunities for the business or better value add to existing opportunities; each one must play the role of a business head and an entrepreneur if he or she needs to retain his or her job.  

6.   Feeling challenged by the team: In an economically weak environment the management will be challenged by their employees to show the light and the way forward. If the management response is not convincing the brighter lot would start looking out to their industry peers who seem to be getting it right and hot-footing it there further weakening the company’s response. If the way forward proposed by management is clear than we can expect ‘reverse brain drain’ further strengthening the company to respond to the crisis.

7.   Working smart: Having role models to imitate is a good starting point for strategizing. For instance, role playing what would Aditya Puri, MD, HDFC Bank, do in these circumstances? To deliver EBIT of 25% y-o-y for 25 years there had to be:

                                         i.    A definitive management style (no magic)

                                       ii.    Deeply held business truths

                                      iii.    Tested processes and practices that deliver

                                      iv.    Time in the field with the team

                                       v.    Setting strategy together but responsibility with individual

                                      vi.    Holding the team feet to the fire to deliver on the numbers

                                    vii.    Close monitoring of what’s working what’s not

                                   viii.    Avoiding analysis-paralysis and consensual decision making

                                      ix.    Providing clear direction and decisions

                                       x.    Treating time as an irreplaceable asset of business

                                      xi.    Gumption to say no to what industry was doing and saying yes to what appeared to be a calculated winner for HDFC Bank based on its innate strength and vision for the business.

Any good crisis should bring out the best from those who like challenging themselves, to catapult to senior positions in the business, which in good times they would have had to wait their turn. 

Reflections - To Believe or Not to Believe

To Believe or Not to Believe

Meaning of life, pain and suffering

Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx and Charles Darwin are the great triumvirate of 19th-century thinkers whose ideas still have huge impact today. In this reflection we will focus on their belief in the existence of God and the thoughts on suffering of one of the thinkers. And, also about Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, a British explorer and his 28 men who spent 497 days in icy Antarctica after their ship was trapped in ice in Jan 1915.  

To Karl Marx religion was:

“the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.”

Marx was clearly an outlier among the triumvirate. He did not have good things to say about why people believed in God. His thinking paved the way for communism, which replaced God in people’s life.

The pitch was that communism would give the people all what God could give them. The leaders of the revolution made God of themselves going by the pictures of Marx, Lenin and Stalin that hang in communist parties’ offices in India.

Nietzsche and Darwin were more ambivalent about God. One was seeking what gives meaning to life and the other about the origin of life itself.

Nietzsche (Oct 1844 - Aug 1900) was philosophy’s supreme iconoclast; his sayings include “God is dead” and “Is man God’s mistake, or is God man’s mistake?”.

On belief in God, Nietzsche is also quoted as saying,

“Here the ways of men divide. If you wish to strive for peace of soul and happiness, then believe; if you wish to be a disciple of truth, then inquire.”

The death of God didn’t strike Nietzsche as an entirely good thing. Without a God, the basic belief system of Western Europe was in jeopardy, as he put it in Twilight of the Idols: 

“When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident… Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole.”

One of the commentators writing on Nietzsche said:

“He would not have been surprised by the events that plagued Europe in the 20th century. Communism, Nazism, Nationalism, and the other ideologies that made their way across the continent in the wake of World War I - sought to provide man with meaning and value, as a worker, as an Aryan, or some other greater deed; in a similar way as to how Christianity could provide meaning as a child of God, and give life on Earth value by relation to heaven. While he may have rejected those ideologies, he no doubt would have acknowledged the need for the meaning they provided.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882), who proposed the theory of evolution by means of natural selection heavily disputed the dogmatic prescriptions of the Christian church, but later in life he clarified his position as an agnostic in response to a letter from John Fordyce, an author of works on scepticism:

"In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. I think that generally (and more and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind."

This duality in Darwin’s faith in God and Christianity in light of his scientific work, which gave birth to the discipline of ‘biology’, plays out interestingly when two of contrasting beliefs love each other and who stayed committed to each other to the very end despite differing beliefs.

Before marriage, Charles Darwin had confessed everything to her. That he was in the process of rewriting the history of life. That, according to his convictions, all living things descended from a common ancestor. And that species were not to be attributed to God's endless creativity, but were the product of a blind, mechanical process that altered them over the course of millions of years. This alone was pure heresy. Darwin even nursed doubts about the very survival of human beings.

Darwin was going to marry Emma Wedgwood. He did not believe a single word of the biblical story of creation. "Reason tells me that honest and conscientious doubts cannot be a sin," wrote the deeply religious Emma Wedgwood to her betrothed in a cautioning letter in November 1838. "But I felt that it would be a painful rift between us." Charles was supposed to find his way back to the right faith by reading the Bible: "I implore you to read the parting words of our Saviour to his apostles, beginning at the end of the 13th chapter of the Gospel according to John," she wrote.

But for Charles Darwin there was no turning back. He definitely assured Emma in his reply that he would take her concern seriously. But in fact, he was experimenting at that time with all kinds of heretic theories. "Love of godhood is a result of intellectual organization, oh you materialist!" he confided to himself in revolutionary words in his secret notebook. And although his theories were not yet mature, he was completely aware of their explosive nature: By dissociating intellect and morality from god's power of creation, and attributing them instead to self-evolving forces, Darwin undermined the very foundations of a society shaped by the Anglican Church, with its hopes of eternal life and the omnipresent threat of punishment.

It was not until 1871 that Darwin commented on The Descent of Man, on the origins of our own species. Eleven years later, he died in his country home near London. Until the very end, his wife Emma, with whom he had been married happily for 43 years, had watched by his bedside. Darwin's ideas were to survive, his much-quoted prophecy, which was the only place in the On the Origin of Species to give any insight into his own view on whether the "ape question," was to become true. It is said there: "Light will fall on the origin of man and his history."

Having established how each of the greatest thinkers of the 19^th Century thought about belief in God there is an amazing parallel between how St Paul and Nietzsche thought about ‘suffering’.

Nietzsche has been pilloried unjustifiably at times because of his sister Elizabeth’s deeds. She was married to an anti-Semitic and believed in Hitler’s vision of the Aryan race, took possession of Nietzsche writings after his death. She archived his unfinished works and ‘faked’ it to serve her ideological purpose.

Nietzsche from childhood suffered from poor health, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger”, and his last eleven years was spent in isolation in a sanitorium or looked by his mother before her death due to mental breakdown, and later by his sister.

St Paul in Romans 5:3-5 tells us:

“Not only that, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.”

Nietzsche’s view on the necessity of suffering to have meaning in life, parallels Jesus’ passion and crucifixion.

Nietzsche claims that man is composed of two parts – a creative part and a part that is created – in other words, mind and body. According to him, the body is meant to suffer, and the mind is meant to fashion something beautiful out of the suffering of the body.

“In man creature and creator are united: in man there is material, fragment, excess, clay, dirt, nonsense, chaos; but there is also the creator, the sculptor, the hardness of the hammer, the divinity of the spectator, and the seventh day – do you understand this contrast? The body must be fashioned, bruised, forged, stretched, roasted, and refined – it is meant to suffer.”

Nietzsche sharply criticizes those people who wish to abolish suffering. According to him, suffering is the only thing that bestows value upon the world. Without pain and misery, life would be absurd and worthless.

To Nietzsche, suffering provides the only test by which a person’s worth can be determined. In other words, the person who can endure the greatest suffering is the greatest of men.

“To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities – I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not – that one endures.”

Finally, Nietzsche asserts that pain is sacred, and that mankind ought to revere pain as religious followers revere their gods. He explains that the ancient Greeks were the first and perhaps only people to realize this. “Every single element in the act of procreation, of pregnancy, and of birth aroused the highest and most solemn feelings. In the doctrine of the mysteries, pain is pronounced holy; the pangs of the woman giving birth hallow all pain; all becoming and growing – all that guarantees a future – involves pain.”

The notion of ‘pain’ and ‘meaning’ in life perhaps explains why some people take onerous risks that has every possibility in resulting in death.

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton was an Irish-born British explorer who was a principal figure of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

On August 1, 1914, the same day Germany declared war on Russia, Shackleton departed London on the ship Endurance for his third trip to the South Pole. By late fall, the crew had reached South Georgia, an island in the southern Atlantic. On December 5, the team departed the island, the last time Shackleton and his men would touch land for an astonishing 497 days.

In January 1915, the Endurance became trapped in ice, ultimately forcing Shackleton and his men to vacate the ship and set up camp on the floating ice. After the ship sank later that year, Shackleton embarked on an escape in April 1916, in which he and his men crowded into three small boats and made their way to Elephant Island, off the southern tip of Cape Horn.

Seven hard days on the water culminated in the team reaching their destination, but there was still little hope in getting rescued on the uninhabited island, which, because of its location, sat far outside normal shipping lanes.

Seeing that his men were on the precipice of disaster, Shackleton led a team of five others out on the water again. They boarded a 22-foot lifeboat and navigated their way toward South Georgia. Sixteen days after setting out, the crew reached the island, where Shackleton trekked to a whaling station to organize a rescue effort.

On August 25, 1916, Shackleton returned to Elephant Island to rescue the remaining crew members. Astonishingly, not a single member of his 28-men team died during the nearly two years they were stranded. "I have not lost one of those you gave me." (John 18:9)

In 1919, Shackleton published South, his detailed account of the journey and its miraculous ending. Shackleton, however, was not through with expeditions. In late 1921 he set off on a fourth mission to the South Pole. His goal was to circumnavigate the Antarctic. But on January 5, 1922, Shackleton suffered a heart attack on his ship and died. He was buried in South Georgia.

“Difficulties are just things to overcome, after all.” - Ernest Shackleton 

References:

Charles Darwin: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/charles-darwin-confessions/

NIETZSCHE: https://bigthink.com/scotty-hendricks/what-nietzsche-really-meant-by-god-is-dead

https://orwell1627.wordpress.com/2015/01/10/nietzsche-on-suffering-analysis/comment-page-1/

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/06/exploding-nietzsche-myths-need-dynamiting

https://philosophynow.org/issues/114/Nietzsche_and_the_Problem_of_Suffering

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton https://www.biography.com/explorer/ernest-shackleton