The Agalma

Watch someone scroll through Instagram at 2am, adjusting the angle in their reflection. That's prayer. Watch someone check their portfolio three times before breakfast. That's worship. The question isn't whether you have an altar - it's what's on it.

Everyone worships something. You don't choose whether to worship - only what. And what you worship determines how you suffer.

"In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship."

— David Foster Wallace, This Is Water

Your default setting - the thing your days organize around, the metric by which you measure whether today mattered - that's your altar. Few consciously choose it. It's inherited from culture, from parents, from the path of least resistance.

• Worship beauty, and you'll die a death by a thousand cuts. Checking your reflection in every storefront window, every phone screen, every car door. Adjusting the angle. Finding the light. Every birthday a defeat, every photo a disappointment.
• Worship intelligence, and you'll spend your life in the gap between what you know and what you think you should know. Every conversation becomes a test you're failing. Every silence, proof you're not enough.
• Worship power, and you'll never stop feeling powerless. Someone's always stronger, always higher, always holding cards you'll never see. The vulnerability doesn't go away - it multiplies.
• Worship money, and the treadmill speeds up with every milestone. The number that would have been enough five years ago is laughable now. The finish line was never there.

These are outside-in strategies. Trying to shine by accumulating external validation. Trying to become worthy by building the perfect facade. The outside never touches the inside. You can collect achievements like trophies and still feel hollow. You can optimize your image until it's perfect and still not know who you are.

Two Types of Suffering

You will suffer either way. The question is which type.

Misalignment suffering comes from external worship. You can do everything right and still lose because outcomes are only partially tied to effort. Genetics, markets, timing, luck - all outside your control. You're running on a treadmill where effort doesn't reliably produce results.

Each form of external worship follows the same pattern: you can maintain your appearance perfectly and still age. Study constantly and still feel ignorant. Accumulate power and feel more vulnerable. Double your wealth and move the goalpost. You chase proxies that never satisfy, optimize metrics that don't touch the core. Win every external game and wake up empty anyway.

Meaningful fatigue comes from internal alignment. The suffering comes from the difficulty of the work itself, not from chasing outcomes you can't control. Did you show up today? Did you do the work? Did you serve the thing that matters?

These are questions you can answer.

You're tired because you built something that matters. Spent because you gave everything to something worth giving to. The exhaustion has meaning.

Both paths involve suffering. But misalignment suffering compounds - more success creates more anxiety about losing it. Meaningful fatigue compounds differently - more work creates more capacity, more clarity about what matters.

Find something internal worth suffering for.

The Ancient Answer

The ancient Greeks had a word for something precious hidden inside something ordinary: agalma (ἄγαλμα). Originally, it meant a statue or votive offering - something that delights the gods. But over time, philosophers evolved it into something more interesting: the hidden treasure within a person that makes them worth knowing.

Greek statues were marble shells that once held something sacred. The word evolved from "that which pleases the gods" to "the thing of value hidden inside." Plato used it in the Symposium when Alcibiades compared Socrates to ugly Silenus figurines that, when cracked open, revealed golden treasures inside.

Consider the French illustrator Gustave Doré (1832-1883). He created over 10,000 illustrations in his lifetime - not what the art establishment valued. They wanted oil paintings, gallery exhibitions, critical prestige. Doré chose illustration: commercial, lowbrow, mere craft. He faced contempt his entire career. Paris never gave him the recognition he wanted.

But his agalma wasn't prestige. It was visualizing the divine at scale. When you picture hell or heaven, angels or demons, you're seeing Doré's vision. He shaped how millions understand sacred narratives. The world needed to see these stories brought to life, and he was willing to sacrifice everything the art world valued to make it happen.

We'll return to Doré throughout - he's the clearest example of someone who found their agalma and honored it completely.

The Inside-Out Discovery

Outside-in strategies chase external proof of worth: accumulate beauty, intelligence, power, money to feel valuable. Inside-out reverses this: discover what matters through committed action and attention to internal signal. Outside-in asks "What will make others think I'm valuable?" Inside-out asks "What work feels true regardless of who's watching?"

The agalma is revealed through committed action, not contemplation. You can't think your way to it. You can't take a personality test and find it. You have to do things - lots of things - and pay attention. What keeps calling you back? What would you do even when it stops being fun? What remains when the external rewards disappear?

People ask: "Do I discover my agalma or create it?"

The agalma isn't purely discovered OR purely created - it's revealed through committed action. It's latent, like an image on undeveloped film. You have to create the conditions (committed action over time) for it to reveal itself. The doing is what makes it visible.

The Action-First Paradox

You can't know what you're looking for until you find it, but you can't find it without committed action. This feels impossible. "How do I commit when I don't know what I'm committing to?"

You don't commit to the thing. You commit to the process of discovery.

Start with a constraint: Pick one direction - doesn't matter which, as long as it genuinely pulls you forward - and commit to ninety days of consistent output. Not to find your agalma (you won't, not yet), but to generate signal. Build something, ship something, finish something. The constraint isn't the goal; it's the instrument for revealing the pattern.

What "paying attention" means: After each piece of work, ask three questions:

• Would I do this again even if no one paid me?
• Notice whether this drained you in the right way (meaningful fatigue) or the wrong way (hollow exhaustion).
• When you think about next steps, which part of this work keeps calling you back?

Track your answers - a text file, a journal, whatever you'll actually use. The pattern emerges from repetition, not revelation. You're not looking for a lightning bolt moment - you're looking for the thread that persists across multiple attempts.

After ninety days, review the body of work. Not individual pieces, but the collection. What patterns emerge? Which felt like novelty (exciting because new) versus signal (still meaningful after excitement faded)? Pick the strongest signal and run another cycle.

Distinguish signal from novelty: Novelty feels like excitement. Signal feels like recognition. Novelty fades when the newness wears off. Signal remains when the work gets hard, when the external rewards disappear, when you've done it enough times that it should be boring but somehow isn't.

Doré didn't wake up at fifteen knowing his treasure was "visualizing the divine at scale." He started by drawing everything. Landscapes, portraits, caricatures, street scenes. He took commissions he didn't want. He drew for newspapers, magazines, books. Commercial work the art establishment despised.

But somewhere in those decades, a pattern emerged. The work that kept calling him back wasn't the prestigious portraits or the commercial caricatures. It was the sacred narratives. The biblical scenes. The mythological epics. The work where he could render light breaking through darkness, the moment of divine revelation, the geometry of heaven and hell.

He didn't plan this. He discovered it by doing thousands of illustrations and paying attention to which ones felt different. Which work would he have done even if it paid nothing? Which images haunted him when he wasn't drawing? Which projects drained him in the right way - the meaningful fatigue versus hollow exhaustion?

The pattern reveals itself through repetition and attention. Do the work. Notice what keeps mattering. Follow that thread; do more of it. The pattern becomes clearer. Eventually, you can articulate it - not because you figured it out through contemplation, but because you built enough examples to see the shape.

The common mistake: trying to discover your agalma through introspection. Looking in the wrong places: achievements, status, what other people think you should want. But the agalma reveals itself through what you do when the applause stops.

The agalma isn't your title or your follower count. It's what you'd build in the dark.

Contribution at Scale: Gustave Doré

The French illustrator Gustave Doré (1832-1883) created more than 10,000 illustrations over his career - not by grinding alone in a studio, but by building workshops of engravers who could replicate his art while he focused on unique contributions.

Doré would create the master drawing in pen and ink, then hand it off to skilled engravers who meticulously transferred the image onto copper plates, reproducing every line and shadow. While they worked on production, he moved to the next vision. This system let him maintain artistic control while achieving scale impossible for a solo artist. Most "serious artists" of his era saw this as selling out. Doré saw it as the only way to reach everyone who needed to see the work.

He didn't just make art. He shaped how millions of people visualize the divine. His illustrations for Paradise Lost, Dante's Divine Comedy, and the Bible became the definitive imagery for angels, demons, and spiritual revelation in Western culture. When you picture hell or heaven, you're seeing Doré's vision.

Doré could have chased what the art world valued in his time: oil paintings, gallery exhibitions, critical prestige. That was the path to being called a "serious artist." Instead, he chose illustration - considered commercial, lowbrow, mere craft. He faced contempt from the establishment his entire life. Paris never gave him the recognition he wanted. But he kept drawing, kept building his workshops, kept disseminating his vision of the divine at a scale no "serious artist" could touch.

His agalma wasn't perfection - it was prolific contribution. He understood that the work mattered more than his ego, that reaching millions mattered more than impressing critics. Disseminating truth at scale required systems, not just individual craft. His particular treasure existed because the world needed to see these stories brought to life, and he was willing to sacrifice prestige to make it happen.

The Creation of Light (1866) - Gustave Doré

The Fall of Lucifer (1866) - Gustave Doré, Paradise Lost

When You Find It

Finding your agalma is the easy part. The hard part is testing whether you've found it, or whether you've confused passion with purpose.

The Anonymity Test

Would you do this work if no one would ever know you did it? If you couldn't sign your name, if there was no credit, no recognition, no proof it was yours - would you still build it?

The failure: They say they don't care about credit, but watch their reaction when someone else gets recognition for similar work. The resentment reveals the truth. The work stops when the spotlight disappears.

Doré: He built engraving workshops where skilled craftsmen replicated his vision. Most of the illustrations reaching millions bore the marks of other hands. He cared more about dissemination than attribution.

The Impact Test

Is the world better because you did this? Not "does it make you feel good" or "are people impressed" - does your contribution serve something beyond yourself?

The failure: Confusing activity with contribution. Busy, working hard, but nothing changes. Or creating things that serve only ego - impressive at parties, meaningless in practice.

Doré: His illustrations became the definitive imagery for sacred narratives in Western culture. When people visualize Paradise Lost, Dante's Divine Comedy, or biblical scenes, they see his vision. He shaped how millions understand light and darkness, heaven and hell, the divine breaking through into human experience.

The Skill-Passion Alignment Test

Passion without skill is delusion - like tone-deaf reality show auditions where people are convinced they're meant to perform. Loving something doesn't mean it's your agalma. Your contribution must create value, not just express enthusiasm.

The failure: They love something but aren't good at it, and refuse to acknowledge the gap. Or they assume that because they enjoy it casually, they should build their life around it. Enjoyment under zero stakes tells you nothing.

Doré: Ten thousand illustrations of genuine technical and artistic merit. He wasn't just passionate about sacred narratives - he had the skill to render them at a level that changed culture. The passion drove the work, but the skill made it matter.

Once you've found it and tested it, the questions become different:

• Does this project serve the agalma, or does it serve your ego?
• Are you disseminating truth, or managing your image?
• Is this contribution creating value beyond yourself?

If you can't answer these cleanly, either you haven't found it yet, or you've found it and you're not honoring it. Both require the same response: return to the work.

What This Is Not (And Common Mistakes)

Not "follow your passion": Passion is a feeling. Feelings change. The person who's passionate about photography this year and woodworking next year and pottery the year after hasn't found their agalma - they're chasing novelty. The agalma reveals itself through what you keep returning to after the passion fades, when it's no longer new or exciting, when it's just work.

The related mistake: mistaking hobby for purpose. You enjoy something when there's no pressure, so you think it's your calling. But enjoyment under zero stakes tells you nothing. The test isn't whether you like it when it's easy - it's whether you still do it when it costs you, when nobody's watching.

Not "find your purpose": Purpose implies a predetermined destiny waiting to be discovered, like you're a lock and there's one key that fits. You're not a static object. You're a pattern that emerges through action. The agalma becomes visible when you commit to the work and pay attention to what persists.

The related mistake: confusing skill for calling. You're good at something, so you assume it's your agalma. Competence isn't contribution. Plenty of people are skilled at things that don't matter to them - work they're good at, work that pays well, work that impresses others. Being able to do something well doesn't mean you should dedicate your life to it.

Not "do what makes you happy": Happiness is the wrong metric. The agalma often makes you miserable. It costs you. It demands things you don't want to give. Doré was unhappy about the art world's contempt. But he kept drawing biblical scenes anyway because the work mattered more than his comfort. If you're only willing to do what makes you happy, you haven't found your agalma - you've found a hobby.

The related mistake: the prestige trap. You chase what looks impressive rather than what matters to you. This is external worship wearing the mask of internal purpose. You care more about how it sounds when you tell people than about doing the work.

Your agalma isn't what excites you in the moment. It's what you return to when the excitement fades. The agalma is what you serve even when it costs you. Even when it doesn't make you happy. Even when the passion has drained away and all that's left is the conviction that this work matters.

The Timeline Question

"How long should I try before I know?"

Wrong question. There's no fixed timeline. The agalma reveals itself through action and attention, not calendar time. Some people find the pattern in months. For others it takes decades. Doré drew commercially for years before the sacred narrative pattern became clear.

"What about paying rent?" The agalma doesn't demand you quit your job tomorrow. Doré did commercial work for decades while discovering his pattern. The day job isn't the enemy - it's the subsidy that lets you build enough examples to see the shape. The question isn't "Can I do this full-time?" It's "Am I doing it at all?" Two focused hours a week for a year generates fifty-two examples. That's enough to see the pattern.

What do you keep returning to after failures? When a project dies, what piece of it do you want to salvage? When you have free time and no obligations, what do you build? When everything's burning down, what's the one thing you protect?

The pattern emerges through repetition. You need enough examples to see the shape. One project tells you nothing. Ten projects start to show a pattern. Fifty projects make it undeniable.

Not found yet - You're doing varied work, paying attention, noticing what keeps mattering. You're building skills. You're following threads. The pattern hasn't crystallized but you're accumulating data.

Wrong place - You're repeating the same thing expecting different results. You're not paying attention to what energizes you versus what drains you. You're doing what you think you should want rather than watching what you want. You're optimizing for external validation instead of internal pull.

If you've been doing the same work for years and still asking "is this it?", either you're not paying attention to the signals, or you're in the wrong place. The agalma reveals itself to those who look. If you're paying attention and still don't see it, try something different.

Vision of the Empyrean (1866) - Gustave Doré, from Dante's Paradiso

The Obligation to Disseminate

Your agalma reveals truth - not abstract philosophical truth, but the specific truth that emerges when you align your unique capabilities with genuine contribution. When Doré discovered his agalma, he didn't just find what he was good at. He found a truth about how sacred narratives could reach people at scale. That truth wasn't his to hoard.

If you've found something true, you have a responsibility to disseminate it outward. Truth - real truth - doesn't belong to you. You're the vessel.

Plato understood this in the cave allegory: once you've climbed out and seen the sun, you have an obligation to those still in darkness. Not to drag them out against their will, but to make the path visible for those already searching. The hard part comes after the climbing. In Plato's version, the philosopher returns to the cave to free the prisoners. But they don't want to be freed. They mock him, call him crazy, threaten to kill him for disturbing their comfortable illusions.

You're not obligated to return to the cave and argue with the prisoners. You're not responsible for convincing people who are committed to their chains or dragging them kicking and screaming toward truth they're not ready to see. But the allegory contains another truth - some prisoners are already looking toward the light, already sensing something's wrong, already ready to climb. You are obligated to make the truth findable for them.

Dissemination isn't evangelism. It's leaving breadcrumbs for those already hungry. It's lighting a signal fire so those searching in the dark know they're not alone. Your particular treasure exists because someone else needs to see it - not everyone, but someone.

The Dissemination Spectrum

Hoarding - You keep the work private. Maybe you're waiting until it's perfect. Maybe you're afraid of judgment. Maybe you tell yourself it's "not ready yet." But years pass and it's still not ready. This fails the obligation. If you've found something true, keeping it locked away is a betrayal of those who need to find it.

Signaling - You share the work, but primarily for status. You care more about the act of sharing (look at me, look at what I made) than about whether it reaches the people who need it. You optimize for applause, not impact. You share on platforms where you get validation, not where the work is most findable. This fails the anonymity test. The sharing is about you, not about the work.

True dissemination - You make the work findable for those already searching. You sacrifice prestige for reach. You prioritize the work spreading over controlling how it spreads. You're willing to let others build on it, remix it, even take credit for it, if that means it reaches more people who need it. The work matters more than your ownership of it.

Doré operated in true dissemination mode. He could have chased gallery exhibitions and kept tight control over his original drawings. Instead, he built workshops of engravers who replicated his vision across thousands of books. He let publishers use his illustrations. He prioritized scale over attribution. The work reaching millions mattered more than artistic purity or personal credit.

The Sacrifice Test: What are you willing to give up to increase the work's reach? Working in a "lowbrow" medium if it reaches more people. Letting others replicate your work without your control. Prioritizing scale over perfection. The difference between a signal fire and a performance is what you're willing to sacrifice.

In the first circle of Purgatory, Dante and Virgil in front of Arachne, one of the figures representative of pride (Purgatory, canto 12). Dante's Divine Comedy, 1868.

Your agalma isn't just for you. It's a signal fire - light it and keep it burning. The dissemination isn't optional; it's the whole point. Truth hoarded becomes stagnant. Truth shared becomes a catalyst.

The Greeks understood something we've forgotten: the precious thing isn't always visible from the outside. Sometimes it's buried in the broken, the weird, the unexpected. Sometimes it's in you, waiting to be revealed through what you build.

What you worship will determine how you suffer. The agalma doesn't eliminate suffering - it transforms it. Hollow exhaustion becomes meaningful fatigue. Chasing validation you can't control becomes serving something that matters regardless of applause. The suffering aligns with your effort, not with external outcomes.

You don't get to choose whether to suffer. You only get to choose what makes it worth it.

Start now. Not with finding your agalma - you can't think your way there. Start with committed action in the direction that keeps calling you back. Do the work. Pay attention to what remains when external validation disappears. Notice what you protect when everything else burns. Watch what you return to after failure.

The pattern will reveal itself, but only if you're building. Only if you're paying attention. Only if you're willing to follow the thread even when it leads away from prestige, comfort, or approval.

The world has enough people keeping their lights hidden. Don't be one of them.

Overtime Bonus: Slavoj Žižek discussing the Agalma, and anti-metaphysical delights.