Why Most People Never Become Who They Were Meant to Be
A meditation on suffering, identity, and the choice that quietly decides everything
Life hurts.
Not in a poetic way. Not in a Instagram-quote way. In the slow, grinding, inescapable way that comes with being human.
You will feel lonely, even in rooms full of people.
You will be betrayed, sometimes by people you trusted with your heart.
You will break hearts, including your own.
You will confront your inadequacies and your cowardice.
You will fail publicly and privately.
You will experience cruelty, injustice, and loss.
You will watch people you love die.
And one day, you will too.
This isn’t pessimism. It’s reality.
Ancient traditions gave this truth a name long before self-help tried to disinfect it. Dukkha. It translates into suffering… difficulty… dissatisfaction. The fundamental friction of existence.
Most people spend their lives trying not to feel this. They numb it. Distract from it. Spiritualize it. Blame others for it. Or convert it into resentment and superiority.
And that avoidance… that’s where most lives quietly collapse.
The Big Idea
A Next Level Human isn’t defined by how little pain they’ve experienced.
They’re defined by what they do with it.
Suffering is not optional. Meaning is.
The difference between people who evolve and people who stagnate isn’t intelligence, luck, or even opportunity. It’s whether pain becomes a contaminant… or a catalyst.
Every human carries deep pain. I know this without knowing your story because pain is the cost of consciousness.
What reveals who you are is how that pain shows up in your presence.
Does it make you bitter or better?
Fearful or discerning?
Entitled or accountable?
Threatened by others’ success or expanded by it?
That’s the split. And it happens quietly, long before anyone notices.
The Breakdown
Three Responses to Suffering
When pain enters a human system, it tends to do one of three things.
These aren’t moral categories. They’re coping strategies.
They aren’t fixed identities either. Most people move through all three at different times in their lives. What matters is where you land… and whether you stay there.
Some people export it…
They take what hurt them and pass it forward. Control, power, cruelty, narcissism, moral righteousness, superiority. Zero compassion. Projection of their hurts and fears onto others who had nothing to do with it. They turn their pain into problems for others.
When I see callousness and lack of compassion I see a hurt person who copes by hurting others. This is the villain state.
Some people wallow in it.
And to be clear, none of this makes someone weak or broken… it makes them human.
They whimper, they whine. They complain and blame. They build their identity around what was done. They make it who they are. They never move beyond it.. they never learn the lessons from it… they haunt themselves with it.
This is the victim state. The hurt person who continues to hurt themselves.
And then there are those who use it.
They study it. Extract meaning from it. Integrate it. They turn pain into wisdom, and wisdom into contribution.
This is the defining trait of a Next Level Human.
Not denial. Not transcendence. Alchemy.
This is the Victor
Not a conqueror. Not a winner in the cultural sense.
The Victor is the one who takes responsibility for meaning… without denying pain, inflating ego, or outsourcing agency.
The Villain, the Victim, and the Victor
Imagine all of your pain as a backpack filled with heavy bricks.
The truth about being human is this…
You never get to take this backpack off.
It is yours to carry.
You don’t get to opt out of it. You don’t get to set it down. You don’t get to pretend it isn’t there without consequences. What determines the kind of human you become is not whether you carry the backpack, but what you do with the bricks inside it.
This is where humans quietly separate.
The Base Level Human… The Villain
The base level human takes their bricks and hurls them at others.
They use them as weapons.
They throw them in arguments.
They smash people over the head with them through control, cruelty, manipulation, dominance, and blame.
What they never realize is that this does not dissolve their pain.
It amplifies it.
By carrying their backpack this way, they not only deepen their own suffering, they add to the suffering of the world. They become the very thing that twisted them in the first place.
This is what evil actually does.
Its primary goal is not to hurt you.
Its primary goal is to cause you to hurt others.
That’s how it spreads.
And if you study every villain story ever told, fictional or real, you’ll see the same pattern. Pain unexamined becomes pain exported.
The Culture-Level Human… The Victim
The victim doesn’t throw the bricks.
They cling to them.
The backpack becomes everything.
They become obsessed with it. Identified with it. Defined by it. It turns into their precious. Like Gollum clutching the ring, the pain permeates everything they think, feel, say, and do… until very little of their old self is left.
The story becomes the identity.
The caveat here is important… and tricky.
Healing often requires a period of victimhood.
To deny that stage is to deny reality. To rush it is to retraumatize. To demand someone “move on” is violence disguised as advice.
At first, the pain must be honored. Felt. Named. Understood.
But there comes a moment, and it cannot be forced, when the victim must choose to stop being one.
And that choice is brutal.
It is the most painful choice a human can make because it requires giving up the one thing that has been protecting them… their story.
If they don’t make that choice, the bricks don’t stay the same weight.
They get heavier.
The Next Level Human… The Victor
There is only one way to lighten the load.
You take the bricks out one by one…
You look at them directly…
And you extract the lesson each one holds.
Then, and this part matters, you pass those lessons on.
This is what a Next Level Human does.
They don’t deny their pain.
They don’t worship it.
They don’t weaponize it.
They metabolize it.
They become the hurt person who helps.
Helping here doesn’t mean rescuing… it means offering what you’ve integrated, not what you’re still bleeding from.
And in doing so, something remarkable happens. They heal themselves and enrich the world at the same time.
This is the message of every great spiritual master who has ever walked the earth.
And yet, the Next Level Human remains rare.
Not because the path is hidden…
But because it requires the courage to carry pain without letting it turn you into a villain… or trap you as a victim.
The Cave of Humanity
Imagine walking alone through the woods and discovering a cave.
You step inside and realize it’s breathtaking. Massive stone ceilings layered with three distinct types of rock. Openings above allow sunlight to pour through, illuminating the space with almost surgical precision.
At the center sits a still pond.
Then you notice movement.
Small stones break loose from the ceiling and fall toward the water below. Each moves differently. Some drop fast and sharp. Others tumble unevenly. A few seem to float, catching the light before gently landing.
As they fall, the light refracts off their surfaces, producing flashes of color… greens, ambers, silvers. Fireflies mixed with shooting stars.
And the sound.
Splashes. Thuds. Hisses. Metallic pings echoing across stone walls.
What you don’t see is what happens after the stones sink.
Over time, those stones change the pond itself. Some poison it. Some muddy it. Some clarify and mineralize it. Some make it hostile to life. Others allow ecosystems to flourish.
Stand there for five minutes and you see beauty.
Return ten years later and you see consequence.
This is the cave of humanity.
And every human life begins as one of those falling stones.
Identity Formation… Before Choice Exists
The fall from the ceiling to the pond is not something you choose.
It’s childhood.
Your genetics.
Your parents’ nervous systems.
Their wounds.
Their love.
Their absence.
Your culture.
Your early betrayals.
Your safety… or lack of it.
During these years, you don’t decide who you are. You absorb meanings. You internalize stories. You build unconscious rules for survival.
[Inference] Developmental research suggests early identity formation unfolds gradually, with self-other differentiation emerging in early childhood and consolidating through adolescence.
By the time you “hit the water,” you are already marked.
Your suffering.
Your talents.
Your desires.
Your fears.
Your interpretations of reality.
This isn’t destiny. It’s conditioning.
And here’s the crucial distinction most people miss.
Your past explains you.
It does not excuse you.
The Five Ps of Purpose
Every human enters the pool of life carrying the same five raw materials:
People – who influenced, hurt, helped, shaped, or scarred you
Passions – what pulls your curiosity and energy
Powers – your talents, capacities, and natural strengths
Personality – how you perceive, interpret, and engage reality
Pain – the suffering that was uniquely yours to carry
These aren’t your purpose.
They’re the ingredients.
These are the bricks in the backpack.
The composition of your stone.
The elements that determine how your presence changes the water once you enter the pool of life.
And pain isn’t the flaw in the system.
Pain is the amplifier.
Why Personality Matters More Than You Think
Personality isn’t just temperament. It’s perception.
Do you experience life as something that happens to you…
or something you actively engage with?
Do you see setbacks as proof of inadequacy…
or as raw material for competence?
[Inference] Psychological research consistently associates adaptive meaning-making and resilience with improved long-term outcomes, though mechanisms vary and are still being studied.
Two people can experience identical trauma. One becomes corrosive. The other becomes clarifying.
The difference is not what happened.
It’s what it was allowed to mean.
Purpose Is Chosen, Not Found
Purpose isn’t hidden somewhere waiting for discovery.
That’s a comforting myth.
Purpose is constructed through ownership.
Think of the five Ps like a vehicle handed to you at the end of adolescence. You didn’t choose the model. You didn’t design the engine. But you are now responsible for how it’s driven, maintained, and where it goes.
No one else can choose that direction for you.
Not your parents.
Not your culture.
Not your trauma.
You choose what your pain will serve.
The Long Ripples
When your stone finally settles at the bottom of the pool, your life doesn’t stop influencing the water.
Ripples persist.
They move through other people’s nervous systems.
Through culture.
Through children you raise.
Through systems you reinforce or dismantle.
Will your presence purify the environment…
or quietly poison it?
That is not a philosophical question.
It’s a daily one.
Closing Thought
There has never been another human like you. There never will be again.
That uniqueness isn’t a trophy. It’s a responsibility.
Most people never become who they were meant to be because they spend their lives trying to avoid the very thing designed to shape them.
A Next Level Human doesn’t ask, Why did this happen to me?
They ask, What am I willing to become because of it?
That answer determines everything.
Next Level Human owns their agency first, and then aims it where it counts: starting with self, while consciously joining with others to shift the structures their pain lives inside.
True alchemy is personal responsibility plus strategic collective action—refusing both helplessness about systems and shame when your nervous system needs help to carry the load.
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PS: If you’re ready to break free of unconscious identity patterns and become the kind of person who naturally turns pain into purpose, explore my Next Level Human coaching program today. Spots are limited… don’t wait. 👉 http://www.nextlevelhuman.com/human-coaching
I appreciate how simply and clearly you explained the difference between how people handle pain. I’m a visual person so your brick and backpack and cave of humanity examples will stick with me. To alchemy! 💜
Truly a gift from a Victor. Thanks, Dr. Jade!