In order to trust someone, you must first learn to trust yourself. You can’t trust yourself until you have learned to listen to yourself. And you can’t listen to yourself until you can discern your voice from the world’s voice. This isn’t a riddle. It’s the cheat sheet to freedom. I prefer to say freedom over happiness because happiness is temporary at best. Happiness comes and goes. Freedom however, comes and goes at your command. It never goes away unless you choose to give it away and return to your chains. Once you have unlocked your mind, you are at liberty to come and go in and out of your cell as you like. Only when you have developed the skill to trust yourself can you experience a freedom that is not tethered to happiness.
The simplest way to discern your voice from the voice of the world is to test the spirits. Your internal voice will guide you in a direction you hadn’t thought of before. It’s creative, it’s new. What it suggests is oftentimes terrifying. It requires boldness of action. The voice of the world is the same tired song you hear on the radio everyday: conform, obey, and behave. The world’s voice will guide you in a direction of ease and familiarity. It’s more like a math formula or a set of clear, concise instructions to follow. When you turn off the radio, initially you will hear only silence. It’s the calm before the storm. Give it some time, be patient, it’s coming. And when it comes, stand the fuck by.
If I presented you with a bullet proof vest certified by a trusted manufacturer, and asked you if you believed it would stop a bullet, you might say yes. What if I asked you to put the vest on and let me shoot you? Do you trust the product enough to put your life on the line to test your belief in it? That’s trust: putting everything you have into something knowing that it could harm or kill you if you’re wrong about it.
When you shut out the world’s message of safety and conformity you will begin to hear a message of danger and adventure – a call to dream big. Nonconformity and individuality will begin to emerge from deep within you. There are billions of other people on the planet, but there’s only one you. The only way to trust the new message coming from inside of you is to test it. Once you’ve put that vest on, you will then learn what trusting yourself feels like. You’ll learn what freedom feels like. When you step off into uncharted waters, you have to be willing to risk it all to find a new world. There’s no going back on this journey. Come hell or high water, you’re going to see it through or fall off an edge trying.
That’s freedom. Fuck happiness.
LIFE LIKE JAKE