Reaching Your Peak
Or Attempting to Become a (Modern) Renaissance Man
Impero was born, unbeknownst to me, when I was 21 years old.
I was sitting on a frosty bus on my way back from work near the city of Salzburg. I remember wearing the fingerless gloves I had purchased a few days after my arrival, because the heating was temporarily off at the office, and my Spanish hands were not even remotely ready to type during an average Austrian winter. You know which gloves I’m talking about, right? The ones that don’t really do anything.
At the time I had been thinking a lot about what I wanted to make of myself. The doubts that plague any young adult’s mind set camp in mine; that much wasn’t special. What I do think was special, in retrospect, was the reawakening of my stubborn and rather childish desire to “master everything” in life, and to do so out of my own volition.
For years, I had known that when things were forced on me, I quickly lost interest in them; but that whenever I engaged with them on my own terms, I felt hijacked by endless curiosity, eager to hold the world in my palms. So, after twenty-plus years of schooling, I could now sense more than ever that my education and growth were my responsibility—and I loved that.
As the bus weaved itself into the city, I felt inspired to discharge everything I felt I “had to get good at” on paper. I zipped open my backpack, took out a tiny notebook, snapped back its elastic band and began listing anything and everything that crossed my mind. I wish I still had that little notebook with me… it would have made me cringe so much. The brainstorm went something like this:
“I want to… sculpt a beautiful body; learn all about nutrition to ensure my loved ones and I enjoy great health; become fluent in at least five languages; master the piano; excel in the art of negotiation and persuasion; play poker proficiently; become a competent cook; learn how to change a tire; understand the history of philosophy; study the principles of sustainable living; immerse myself in the study of fine arts; master chess strategies; acquire skills in woodworking; become knowledgeable about different wine regions and their specialties; become a solid boxer;…”
The list kept going, and going, and going, until I was eventually somewhat satisfied with it. I say “somewhat” because the notebook was now a total mess: jammed with tiny and titanic goals alike, for practically all areas of life. There was no structure to it.
To remedy this, I pretended to run a “factor analysis” and boiled everything down to as few meaningful categories as possible. Soon enough, I was left with four. I then gave them all a catchy name and associated them with a particular value that was dear to me. The result was the so-called “PEAK Pillars”:
Prime [vitality]: Preparing my body for strife through proper training, nutrition, and rest; becoming the sculpture and the sculptor, the marble and the chisel.
Entice [charisma]: Becoming an empathetic and persuasive man capable of navigating any social context with ease, fostering authentic and meaningful connections with others.
Achieve [sovereignty]: Becoming my greatest ally by building character, discipline, and resilience; getting to know my deepest motivations and how to structure my life around them.
Know [wisdom]: Incorporating the timeless insights of great art, history, philosophy, literature, and the trades, to live a deeply aesthetic, educated, and resourceful life.
I loved this idea. Becoming capable, magnetic, tenacious, and cultured—this what the PEAK Pillars were all about: a cohesive latticework of physical, social, psychological, and intellectual self-overcoming. As some of you already know, it was also the fuel that pushed me to start Impero in the first place, roughly a couple of years after sitting on that bus, as a way of documenting my journey through it and hopefully helping others along the way. Looking back, I could have done a much better (i.e., more explicit) job at doing this.
Aspiring to become somewhat of a “Modern Renaissance Man” whilst following PEAK has brought me much personal growth, even if I have at times—or, let’s be honest, countless times—failed to live up to its standards. I know very well that fuzzy title cannot be earned by ticking self-development boxes, but I still find it worthy of aspiring to, because a Renaissance Men represent, in my eyes, one of the highest expression of humanity—the most universal of men—and a powerful antidote to the lassitude of the Last Man that now plagues modernity (and the hyper-specialized culture out of which he grew).
I have always looked up to naturally curious and eclectic men who had made something beautiful of themselves, who treated their lives like a beautiful mosaic in which every bit fit into an artistic whole. This includes men like Alberti, Da Vinci, Goethe, and Montaigne, but also others not typically associated with the Renaissance, like the great Odysseus, whom Homer referred to as a polytropos (meaning, a “man of many ways”). These uomini universale all have something in common: they embody the differentiation, complexity and self-artistry of higher men—of men who have learned to cultivate the highest expression of what is natural in them.
Though I still have an endless hike ahead myself, I’m happy to say over these years I have grown from a frail ~70kg to a solid 90 whilst training weighed calisthenics; I have learned more about health, stress, and nutrition than I ever thought possible; I have maintained healthy relationships with my family, to whom I owe everything; I have met many women, and am currently building a life with the best one; I have devoured the texts of prophets, modern and ancient; I have learned to cook well for myself, brew extremely pedantic coffee, play the piano, and maintain fluency in four languages whilst learning another two.
I don’t intend to brag about any of this. I sincerely think it’s nothing, in the grand scheme of things, and know for a fact many younger people in these circles dwarf my “wins,” both earned and innate. If you count yourself among them, know that I look up to you, and hope to learn a lot from you. What I want is to convey to you this idea: that life can be so much more than many of us take it to be, if only we keep aiming upwards, in perpetual struggle towards our peak. To expand on the previous examples:
I’m strong—but I could be way stronger, and I’m merely a beginner in the art of boxing; I’ve learned a ton about health and bioenergetics—but my knowledge pales in comparison to that of many of my friends; I am very close to my family—but I must see them more often, and hold deeper conversations with them; I love my girlfriend—but I have yet to give her everything I want to; I have read Homer, Nietzsche, Thucydides and the like—but I must still learn to see entire worlds in their every line.
You get the idea.
Over time, I think I have also learned (and continue to learn) lessons not about the particular actualizations of this childish desire, but about the desire itself and how it can be channeled best. If I could talk to my 21-year-old self today, I would tell him there are a few caveats to making something like PEAK work for you, rather than the other way around:
First, let the pillars help you discover your true interests in every domain. I cannot emphasize this enough. Initially, you will err by aiming to improve in areas you’re not genuinely passionate about, possibly due to excess vanity. Big mistake. This is why the average person never ends up sticking to their workouts or reading any books: they just don’t care about them. Don’t be the average person. Instead, learn to nurture your nature. Prioritize finding inspiring fields and characters that exhort you into action. Know that letting the biographies of great men pull you and give you a glimpse of what awaits on the other side is often more effective at providing you the right mindset than having to push yourself to tick so-called atomic habits.
Tangentially, don’t fall prey to what Nietzsche called learned pedantry: learning for the sake of learning. There is a fine line between wanting to know it all and wanting to be a know-it-all. Your purpose isn’t to feed your inner Redditor by identifying with your intellect and memorizing all sorts of useless facts and logical fallacies. When in doubt, ground yourself in the physical (i.e., the unequivocal), and seek, above all, what the Greeks called phronesis: a sort of Napoleonic or Alexandrian intelligence that empowers and inspires. You’ll know it when you see it, in others and in yourself.
Then, realize to truly self-improve you must learn to overcome self-improvement as a subject. The development of better and better tools, of higher and higher abilities; the attainment of more power and all that comes with it; the meaningful overcoming of resistance; the cultivation of your highest nature, of which external achievements are just proxies—those are the goals, and they should become second nature in the right circumstances. Remember the men out there who actually deserve the title of Renaissance Man have never cared about “self-improvement.” Because of this, you’ll meet people who’ll repeat the famous words of Tyler Durden: that “self-improvement is just masturbation.” There is some truth to this, but mainly because the average person’s conception of it is different than yours. In today’s civilizational zoo, overcoming yourself will grant you some meaning and keep you sane, especially if you conceive of it as strife: as a war against all that is ugly and weak within yourself. Just know to go beyond it.
Finally, become worthy of worthy friendships. Seeking greatness, honor, etc. is hard enough in and of itself—practically impossible in the wrong company and context. Even mighty Odysseus couldn’t help but weep helplessly at the shoreline of Calypso. Over the years you will meet a few friends who will make you feel small: that is a good thing! Get over yourself, become worthy of them, help them, care for them, learn from them. True friends are harder to come across than you now realize: cherish them like the treasure they are—and keep them on their toes.
I have a lot more to say about this topic, but that will be it for now. It’s the first time I write “personal” content more explicitly, so I’d love to know what your thoughts are on it, too. If you see yourself reflected in my words, then I invite you to follow along the Impero journey. We have a lot of work ahead of us.
Upwards,
Yago