The Obstacle is the Way summary

In the 1960s the then celebrated boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter was accused of a triple homicide. He was innocent. He’d done nothing wrong, let alone murder three people. Still, he was given three life sentences – and sent to prison.

During the Peloponnesian War, the general Pericles and his men were at sea when, suddenly, darkness fell like a curtain. A solar eclipse had caused day to turn to night. Pericles’s soldiers, confused, surprised, began to panic. But their leader, Pericles, remained calm.

Recognizing the power you have in every situation, defanging daunting situations by shifting your perspective, realizing that a problem is only a problem if you perceive it that way: this is the beginning. Next comes action.

Let’s take a moment and dissect Demosthenes’s process. He had a big goal: reclaim his stolen inheritance. But he didn’t immediately try to accomplish that goal. He didn’t take them to court as soon as he could. He followed a process: focusing all his energies on the small steps that would get him from point A to point Z. It seems obvious enough – but it’s all too common for people, when pursuing some huge goal, to try to skip the small steps, to jump from A to Z without taking care of B, C, D, and all the rest.

We’re about to move to the next section: Will. Before we do, though, a quick reminder: it’s not always going to work. You may flip an obstacle with ease, shifting your perspective, perceiving it in the most advantageous way possible, seizing your power. You may then take correct action: setting a goal, breaking it down into individual steps, executing each step with excellence and total focus. Still: it might not work.

Will is often confused with really, really wanting something. People think: If I want this thing really badly, then I’ve got it: will. But true will has more to do with acceptance than with force. It is our final refuge in the face of trying circumstances. It’s an internal power – the thing that enables us to do what we discussed in the last chapter: accept, with grace and humility, what we can’t change; be resilient enough, and flexible enough, to move on when we don’t get our way.

After fighting in Troy for ten long years, Odysseus, the protagonist of Homer’s epic poem, the Odyssey, finally sets sail for home. What happens then? Ten years of obstacles. On his ill-fated journey home, he is held prisoner, faces numerous temptations, loses all of his men, encounters dangerous whirlpools, and even fights off a cyclops and a six-headed monster. Eventually, though, after 20 years of war and hardship, he does get home, reunited at last with his wife and son.

It may sound morbid – but we’re all going to die. Not today, you might think – and that may be true. But each day that we don’t die, death draws nearer.