Breaking your Chains

The courage to follow a lonely path

If you’re reading me, you’re special. My content can only resonate with those who still have the ability to believe in themselves, in their dreams. 
Or you would have clicked “unsubscribe” long ago.

You dream in a world where dreamers are disappearing. 
You dream of accomplishment, of achievement, of doing better, of giving your all, of trying harder, of more. 
Sometimes you feel isolated in your thoughts, as if the world doesn’t understand you.
Why do you dream? Why do you want more ? To escape the rules of this world. 
To create your own. For yourself. For those you love. 
Or simply because you’re made that way. 
Your software is wired like this. You have this need to prove to yourself that you’re capable. You need to succeed, to shine, to achieve, to fix…

The problem? Society programs individuals to stay in their place. Determinism and social conditioning prevent them from becoming what they were meant to be. Full of dreams, naive, they thought they only had to want to be able to. They never expected to encounter such resistance. Social classes are planets. The individuals inhabiting them are in orbit. To extricate yourself from yours and place yourself in a new one, you’ll need the strength to pierce two gravity fields.

When you want to break out of this conditioning, rise above your condition, escape the gravity of your condition, you’ll be alone. Your peers will try to keep you among them. Some who are where you want to be will do everything to prevent you from getting there.

This world loves order. It hates anomalies. It hates anything out of the ordinary. Cogs outside the system are a threat to the whole system. What if everyone did it? There’d be no order. So, gatekeepers gatekeep… on both sides. To keep order. Some want to stop you getting out. Others want to keep you out. If you want to get through these doors, you can't just knock gently. You’ll need to smash them.

This world will isolate you. Its way of making you fall in line. To make you think that you’re not normal and that it’s the others who are normal. You might say to yourself that he’s right. If nobody understands you ? Nor your ambitions. Maybe they are right and you are wrong. But isn’t it the nature of anomalies to escape normality?

You’ll feel alone. No one to share your dreams with. 
Why ? Open your eyes, look around you. 
Can’t you see how many flames have been extinguished? Having accepted their trajectory. If you have one that still burns within you. 
The mistake would be to think that this is the case for everyone. 
The majority have given up, defeated by the game of life. 
They wait and suffer. Have made their peace with surrender.

You’ll try to do something ?
You’ll hear about risk, danger, failure… before you’ve even tried.

They forget that the knight who trying to save the princess knows that his life is at stake. He knows the dangerous trials ahead. He knows he’s going to risk a lot on the road, in the castle, on a trap, in the final battle… He knows the dragon could burn him, rip his body apart with a claw, devour him… Aware of the danger… . He needs strength, to be believed in, to be nurtured in their bravery. Not to be reminded how dangerous this quest is. But knights are brave, so they do what knights do: they defy the odds and go into battle. Even if thousands of knights have lost before them.

This e-mail is not a piece of advice, but an observation. Trying to extricate yourself from your social condition is a lonely road. Real solitude. The loneliness of being misunderstood by the world around you. That’s why you have to be strong. Mentally and physically. Ready to defy the laws of gravity itself.

Make peace with incomprehension. Don’t seek validation from your peers. Over 2,500 years ago, Plato warned us in his allegory of the cave. The human condition is timeless. Those inside the cave can’t understand that there’s a world out there to explore. And the one who dared to leave the cave won’t change a thing. When he returns, he tries to explain to them that there’s a world out there. They’re terrified and choose to stay in the cellar. Fear and lack of courage paralyze them. Worse, he’s now a danger to them.

Following your dreams, you’re that prisoner, breaking out of his cellar and trying to discover a new world.

If you have friends and family who sincerely support you in your adventures, you’re in luck: cherish them. 
And if you have no such friends or family. 
Keep your knightly courage in your heart. 
Don’t let anything or anyone extinguish your flame. 
Just because no one understands you doesn’t mean you’re wrong.

But get ready. Breaking your chains is a lonely journey. The road ahead is long. Sinuous. Train, gather your skills. You don’t want to be all those knights who failed. You want to be the only one who manages to slay the dragon.