I just finished Netflix’s first season about Mehmet II. He’s famous for having conquered Constantinople and was the man who renamed it Istanbul. I remember learning about him in school, but the details were fuzzy, and it was enjoyable to watch something that I was somewhat familiar with, but not overly.

As I watched, I couldn’t help but think about the lessons to be learned. On the one hand you had the last of the Roman Emperors, Constantine the nth, who inherited all of the pomp of the Roman empire, but had nothing left but one last city. On the other hand, Mehmet ruled the Ottoman Empire, which while still small, could raise an army 10x that of Constantine.

Despite the mismatch, the Romans thought they had it in the bag. The Ottomans had attacked the city 23 times before, and each time the city’s walls, and it’s protected harbor, had prevented invasion. A long line of Ottoman sultans had dreamed of making Constantinople the jewel of their Empire, and had failed.

What made Mehmet II different?

I say it was faith. Mehmet II persisted because he had faith that he would be the one that would finally take Constantinople. His faith didn’t make sense. He wasn’t the first to try and would have been just one of many to fail. So why should he have faith? Because faith enables the miraculous. Faith in the possibility of success, if nothing else, is the prerequisite for success. If you do not believe you can succeed, you will not try to succeed. You will try to fail, or not try at all.

Not trying is worse than failure. Not trying means that you have closed off the possibility of any success. You have given up, not on life, because life will go on without you, but on yourself. On your own agency, your own ability to change the world around you. When you’ve lost that will, you are no longer living a meaningful life. You are simply passing time.

Too many of us are simply passing time. Maybe it’s due to age, or illness, or burnout from fighting the same seemingly endless battle. Whatever it is, it isn’t true. Until you draw your last breath, you are the author of your own story. What you make of it is your choice. In a world of such disparity, that’s hard to see sometimes. After all, I can’t simply will myself a billion-dollar yacht.

That’s the trap. The trap is the belief that things will bring you happiness. Nothing could be further from the truth. Things, beyond a certain point, do nothing to bring you happiness. Things fall apart (good book by that title) and, if you anchor your life with things, so too will your life. But of course, we all know that by now, don’t we?

We’re all enlightened. We know that it’s a trap. Yet we persist.