I’m currently in Dubrovnik, on the coast of Croatia. Running here has been an education in itself. This entire place is built into the foot of a hill, so every route either climbs or drops, nothing flat, nowhere to switch off. Good way to find out fast whether you’re actually fit or just gym-fit.

That hill is the reason the city exists at all. Down the coast from here are the ruins of Epidaurum, a proper Roman colony, trading ships, a forum, thousands of people who woke up every day assuming their world would carry on the way it always had. It didn’t. Invasion came, the town was destroyed, and the survivors didn’t rebuild it where it stood. They ran up this coast and started again from nothing, at the foot of this hill. That new settlement became Dubrovnik. So the city I’m training in right now, walls and all, exists because a civilisation collapsed and the people left standing were capable enough to start over with nothing but themselves.

Not really a history lesson though. It’s the same conversation everyone’s having right now, just with different words.

Everyone Thinks They’re Living at the End of Something

Scroll for five minutes and someone’s telling you the world’s falling apart. Economy, politics, technology, whatever it is this week, there’s always a version of “this is different, this is the one that actually ends it.” Maybe it is. I’m not here to tell you it isn’t.

But this isn’t a new feeling. The Romans near the end felt it, not as history, as their actual daily reality. Plague, currency collapsing, borders that didn’t hold. The generation who went into 1914 thought they’d seen the war to end all wars, then did it again twenty years later, worse. People lived through the Cold War with a genuine, daily expectation that it could all end in an afternoon.

Some of them were right to be afraid. Rome’s fear was justified, the world they knew really did end. So this isn’t a “don’t worry, it always works out” piece. It doesn’t always work out. That’s exactly why what you do about it matters more than how scared you are.

Capable People Aren’t the Ones Who Predicted It Right

Here’s the part that actually matters. Go back through every one of those collapses and look at who came through them. It was never the people who called it correctly. Forecasting the end doesn’t save you, it just means you were anxious early.

The people who came through were the ones who stayed useful. Who could still work, still fight, still hold a house together, still lead the people depending on them, whichever way it went. Rome fell and individuals still needed to farm, build, protect their families, make decisions under pressure. None of that stopped being true because an empire ended. If anything it mattered more.

That’s what staying capable actually means. Not a training philosophy, not a look. Making sure that whatever happens around you, you’re someone who can still function, still carry weight, both literally and otherwise, and still be depended on.

Strong Enough to Move, Strong Enough to Lead

It has to be both. Physical capability that means something, the strength to move fast if you need to, protect the people next to you, carry something heavy without asking someone else to do it. That’s not optional, and no amount of intelligence or planning replaces it when it’s actually needed.

But the mental side carries just as much weight. Staying level when everyone else is panicking. Making a clear decision when the information’s incomplete. Being the person others look at and think, he’ll know what to do, not because you’ve got certainty nobody else has, but because you’ve built capability that holds up no matter the outcome.

That’s the actual bet you’re making. If the world holds together, and it usually does for longer than the anxiety suggests, you’re just a strong, capable person living a good life. If it doesn’t, you’re one of the few who can actually handle what’s in front of them. Not a hedge against doom. The only kind of preparation that pays off either way.

This Is Part One

Epidaurum’s gone. Dubrovnik is still here, built by people who had nothing left but their own capability. That’s the starting point. Knowing you need to be capable and actually being the most capable person in the room are two different things though.

Part two is about that, what it actually takes to be the one people rely on when it matters. Read it here: Be the most capable person in the room.