28. The Artwork That Changes The World

You’re nobody’s fool. You’re not about to go through life with blinders on. You’re paying attention to everything that is happening, to your life and to the world. You see all of the forces in play, all of the patterns.

Everything seems to be pushing you towards conformity. Bribing you to take the path of least resistance. Asking you to accept the world just as it is. Everyone tells you that if you just go along with the way they do things, then you’ll have a happy and pleasant life.

You’re skeptical of this, but it’s also more than just skepticism. You think it’s a lie. An unintentional one perhaps, but a lie nonetheless. You see the lives of others and you see all the strife and suffering they endure. And you won’t accept any of it.

You refuse to choose suffering for yourself. You know there must be some alternative, but you aren’t sure how to bring it into being. Even so, you want to try. You decide to try because you really can’t do otherwise. If you tried to live the usual life, you wouldn’t survive. You have to take another road.

But taking another road means going against what everyone is telling you. It means pushing back on the way things are. It means acting differently from what is expected of you. It means you’ll be seen as an outcast or a delinquent, as someone wholly unserious about life. You’ll lose some of the people around you and you might even find yourself completely abandoned.

When you arrive here, you will probably consider giving up. You’ll consider it, but you are far too stubborn to actually do it. You’ll double down and find new people, others like you, people out on the fringes, risking it all for the possibility of something different. Together you’ll create what is new and exciting, and it will be a signal to others that there is another way.

Will you succeed? There’s no question. You’ve already succeeded, just by existing as you are and living as you must.

You are the artwork that changes the world.