We are 96% ape.
If that astonishes you, here’s something that won’t: we are a 100% one another.
Not to burst your I-am-the-chosen-one bubble or anything, but you are the most mainstream thing on earth.
Humanity’s progress has been determined by how discontent it has been with itself. Because we all have a deep-rooted desire for freedom. As man cluelessly started revolutions and killed millions, he was hoping things would be different. And, inevitably, he too.
But every time man has the freedom to be whatever he wants, he chooses to be someone else. And then, having nothing else to do, he wants to be free from being someone else, so he starts a new revolution.
Ad humanism ad nauseam ad infinitum.
Here’s the thing about being free. However unique and free you (think you) are, you depend on someone else to acknowledge that. That’s when you actually start believing you are free. It’s why you are, incurably, the 100%.
The rounding errors remain unrecognized. Because they have found real freedom. Most of us believe being free needs courage, but what it needs — is contentment.
Our lives are ruled by social definitions of success, fame, happiness and all the other shit we take too seriously. People drop out of society, become free spirits by giving the existing culture the finger and railing about how flawed and low it is. As eye-opening as this can be, it can make you blind to your own insecurities. Because, in these differences, you still seek approval. If no one pays attention to you, you quietly crawl back into the mainstream mayhem. Free spirit was just an excuse to get high.
People who are truly free don’t care about being so. It’s insignificant to them. It’s not that they succeed by being different. That’s a retrospect retelling and there are one too many embarrassing failures that are a direct consequence of being different.
What differentiates the free is that failure and success happen on their own terms. Success, to them, is their process, their contentment. Funnily, so is failure.
The fear trifecta is that we will become obvious, obsolete and obliterated. Like approximately 100% of the people that came before us. But that’s also the freedom trivium. You can’t attain freedom by fighting with yourself.
The first step to being free is becoming comfortable with who you are. You get there by transcending the need to be an anti-social pain in the arse. By being a ripple in the pond rather than the undercurrent in a sea of people.
With that freedom comes the scary prospect of knowing yourself. To be different is not fearlessness; it’s acceptance. You find that hard because your raison d’être has been seeking acceptance.
Your life’s become a commodity.
You were created to create, but you prefer to be made.
How can you be yourself when you have forgotten who you are?
Meditations 