I remembered what drew me to systems. I used to think it was not a good motive but now I realize;
It's symphony. In a database, all the components need to work together at extremely high speed and in exactly the right way; the kernel, the RAM, the network sockets, the buffers, the consensus algorithm, the scheduler, the parser, the compiler... It's like an orchestra, or a death metal band
There's a certain beauty to the unseen demons that show up at high speeds; high concurrency and high throughput is like the scream of the wind in your ears when you push your bike past 100.
And sometimes the most unlikely shit works; think of the Cannons, in Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture. No orchestra was supposed to have Cannons, but it works!