Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life

by Jordan B. Peterson

It is possible to be content, or even happy, with one partner or another, or with one group of friends or another, or with one career or another. In some sense, the satisfaction that these arrangements bring could have been generated by different choices. They are also each deeply flawed: romantic partners can be fickle and complex, as can friends, and every career or job is characterized by frustration, disappointment, corruption, arbitrary hierarchy, internal politics, and sheer idiocy of decision making. We could conclude from that lack of specific or ideal value that nothing matters more than anything else—or to draw the even more hopeless allied conclusion that nothing therefore matters at all. But those who draw such conclusions, no matter how well armed they are with rationally coherent arguments, pay a high price. People suffer for it if they quit before completing an undergraduate degree or the study of a trade. And this means “quit,” not fail, although the two can be difficult to distinguish. Sometimes people fail because they just cannot manage the job, despite good intentions and necessary discipline. It takes a certain verbal capacity to operate effectively as a lawyer, and a certain degree of facility with mechanical objects, for example, to become a carpenter. Sometimes the match between person and choice is so poor that even commitment will not suffice to bring about the desired end. But very often failure is a consequence of insufficient single-mindedness,...