A Coward in Wolf’s Clothing

When Your Brain Bamboozles You

I recently had a sobering realisation about myself. 

For years I have been telling people that what fundamentally drives me is freedom, which, in and of itself, is a ridiculously broad term to use to properly express the feeling I was trying to capture.

To be more specific, I wanted to be free to decide whether or not to do anything with little to no consequences on my quality of life. For example, having enough passive income that the threat to my survival is minimal, and giving me the liberty of choosing what I want to dedicate 8 hours of my day to, as opposed to having to concede to working unstimulating jobs for the sake of financial security.

Staying on brand with this “need for freedom”, I began to renounce many things that otherwise bring me joy for the sake of being unburdened. Today, I live in a house about 30 min from the city, and spend most days working remotely, but have, for the most part, brought my extracurricular and hedonistic activities to a minimum for the sake of keeping my pennies where I can see them during this global economically-devastating time.

Now, seeing it written makes the realisation I am going to share seem ridiculously obvious, but, as is with all things, hindsight is 20-20 and I am only human after all (shoutout to Daft Punk).

Recently, while doom scrolling on instagram (as is customary with burned-out millennials), I came across a post that read “take responsibility for yourself and your life.” My first thought was “what the f*ck does that even mean?” until the villain of this story, my brain, made the connection - my so-called freedom was a brilliant rebranding of my cowardice.

Put plainly, my ego wouldn’t allow for me to openly admit I was a coward and instead of fighting to help me do the things that bring me joy, I went down the path of renouncing everything to minimise my responsibilities, joy-bringing or no. 

It then took the liberty of making it an easier pill to swallow by using the principle “you can’t fire me, I quit” and made it seem like what I was doing was liberating myself, where what I was doing in fact was starving myself.

Now, seeing this you’re probably saying “well that seems ridiculously childish, how could you possibly think that would work long-term?” and you’re right, I have no justification for it (human, remember?). What I can tell you is that the problem lies in my subconscious decision to renounce any responsibility.

Growing up, I was an example of a tale as old as time - one of those kids that adults would describe as “mature”, “wise,” and all the other socially-appropriate  words to offer for a creepily grown up child. This is common amongst eldest siblings (as I’m sure many of you can attest), and I was given the role of bonus-parent early on, along with the (mainly self-inflicted) pressures of taking premature responsibility for myself to make sure that I wasn’t an additional burden.

This went on until the claustrophobic feeling I had when faced with responsibilities became overwhelming at the beginning of my career and resulted in burn out, leading to me gradually making compromises in professional growth and choosing the easier roads at the expense of my earnings and quality of life.

We return to the present-day, where not only am I spending days unfulfilled, but I am also barely covering my expenses, and have brilliantly bamboozled myself with false promises of respite.

My aversion towards taking responsibility for my life has made me think about how easily we can reframe something in our minds to make it make sense. We constantly talk about things like the secret of manifesting, but, if anything, my own failure to launch via “manifesting” has shown me that the only thing that can come of wishful thinking is, in the least, stagnation and, at most, psychosis.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t aspire to achieve things in life, but you can’t think things into being, and you can reframe it in your mind as much as you like, but the fact of the matter is that if the root of the belief is built on falsities and therefore rotten, the fruit it bears will be as well.

So how do we remedy it? By being realistic and actually taking steps towards attempting to make things happen for us. The part where I slipped up was the responsibility that comes with the steps, choosing instead to plot, plan, manifest, etc. with little to no follow-through.

There’s an old joke I heard a while back, where a man prays to God every day, asking him to help him win the lottery. This goes on for years, until finally God answers him - “my son, I’ll help you, but you need to buy the damn lottery ticket first.”

It’s easy to hide behind “God” or some higher power that dishes out rewards and punishments, but ultimately that scapegoat serves nothing other than to fuel the belief that things are out of our control and results in our complacency about our own cowardice. This might be an acceptable fate to some, but I refuse to relinquish power over my life to a glorified imaginary friend.

Now, having realised that I’ve managed to twist my life into having neither freedom nor glory, I am left to ask myself “what now?”

Well for starters, I should have realised that, although I am an anti-capitalist at heart, the reality is that I need money to invest in myself, both on a personal and professional level. 

So, to start down a new path I need to figure two things out - start finding a way to invest in myself by either earning more money to open up opportunities for getting myself closer to a fulfilling life, and stop being a coward and actually take responsibility in figuring out what actually fulfils me (or at least attempt deploying some educated guesses).

Well, this entire long-winded post is one of these educated guesses. 

Consider this blog a sort of mental vomit of musings and reminisces (most likely stemming from books and anime, two things that bring me joy), and let it serve as my first act of courage. 

Welcome to the show.