I’m radically independent.
Not financially, because I live in my parents apartment and make ends meet with their pocket money. Let’s keep that in isolation for a second. I’m about to do the responsible thing and take a job to take care of myself and to clear parental spoon-feeding off my conscience. No, I’m radically independent in my vision for my life. I’ve let go of all assumptions about who I should be and what I should do. Should is shit. Put that on a plaque: should is shit. It doesn’t matter that I went to business school and acquired a degree with certain opportunities attached to it. It doesn’t matter what my parents or my friends see me as, or what society deems to be useful or appropriate. It doesn’t matter who I disappoint, nor surprise. It doesn’t matter if my actions aren’t immediately accepted, because they will draw me closer to the people and places where they will be. I’ve relieved myself of all external pressure to do what’s expected of me, and within that, I’ve experienced a supreme sensation of freedom. Accepting freedom is scary at first, because it makes you let go of all your mental anchors, both those that hold you back and those that provide stability. You then realize that to fare through all the hardships that life will throw at you, you need to be the anchor. And achieving that will seem like an insurmountable task. You might get dizzy and feel like puking, or you might actually puke, proceed to slip in it, roll around in it like a lubricated seal and start crying uncontrollably until both your tears and stomach acid have dried out, because it is so damn hard what you are about do. And although there are loved ones to provide you comfort and guidance, they can never assemble your anchor. You have to do that on your own.
When you gain a sense of radical independence, you start preparing yourself for a different kind of climb. You will throw that ladder you thought you might climb in a bin somewhere, maybe even burn it depending on your temper and propensity for playing with fire, and you will start scouting across the horizon. Somewhere in the distance, you spot these majestic, mysterious mountains sticking their heads out from above the thick clouds. You feel yourself being drawn towards an adventure, one which previously seemed like a sort of of naive suicide. But you have armed yourself with the necessary tools for extreme survival, to take on extreme adventures, with extreme faith that they can actually be accomplished. You don’t even care if they are not fully accomplished, but you believe they will. You’ve let go, and accepted what’s about to happen, and you have no idea what’s meeting you. That’s the most amazing thing about it.
The challenge, and reality check, that I’m facing, and here I will refer back to my opening comment about my finances, is that I underestimate or simply forget my basic responsibilities and needs. Finances, laundrying, responding to texts, eating food, having a beer with friends, and so on. Relax though, I do eat food for the most part. But those are things I need to work on and make compatible with what I would consider my life’s task, which consumes my thoughts from the moment I wake up, till the moment I snuck back in late at night. That can be a hard balance to achieve. But if I don’t, I’ll turn into a cheap version of Gandalf, and with all due respect to his wisdom, nobody’s then going to partner up and ride with me. Since it is so hard, you will find it necessary to make hard prioritizations on how that little time away from your obsession is spent. I’ve promised myself that once my lovechild, SAASTA, has been sufficiently conceived into the world, when it is alive and thriving, and spreading a bit of love in its own wicked way, I will need to make a withdrawal from my bubble. I will stay focused on my work, but I need to meet people and invite them in, and I will let that be a driving force for my inspiration moving forward. I may be extraordinarily talented at suppressing these needs in service of my purpose, but I am, like all other people in this world, a social being, and one who desires societal participation as much as the next person. I’m not here for the lonely ride. And so shouldn’t it be for those who feel like they need to be, to pursue what they want to be.
So here is what I’m telling myself, and what I want you to go ahead and tell yourself as well, with your own minor personal adjustments. If you have childlike dreams you want to pursue but feel frightened by, you need to tell yourself this. Look yourself in the mirror: I’m going out there climbing the Himalayan mountains, or whatever fantastical peaks exist in the realm of my imagination. It is treacherous, dangerous and lonely at first, but the journey is sublimely blissful. You either need to be a munk or hardcore motherfucker to do it like I do. And I’m both. Other travellers will come by as I move down my path. This is the journey I’m preparing myself for, no matter what I’m doing right now. I’m not going to leap in head first just yet, but I’ll start making the preparations necessary to one day do it. I’ll start to ask myself the tough questions, and test out the small, rebellious actions that, in reality, are no more than a show of respect to my curiosity. As I do that, my mind will slowly alter my perception of reality and what is possible. The day I sufficiently trust in this vision of reality that I have cranked up inside my head, no matter how scary it would seem to make real, is the day that I take the leap. Because if I don’t, I will be nothing but a mad person, who’s either mumbling grandiose hallucinations to himself, or silently hiding what he’s agreed with himself is possible, which would be excruciating torture to my soul and a denial of the world’s right to reap what I can sow with my gifts. So I put some method to my madness, make it happen, and show the world that I’m not so mad afterall. I’m just a kid with mad dreams.
