#60: Prophets, courage, and challenging the status quo.
What would the best version of you do?
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“I think we sound like evangelists.”
My patently un-evangelical English friend Paul said. “I think what people fail to realize is how beautiful it is on the other side.”
He didn’t mean on the other side of this mortal coil. He meant on the other side of excruciating, gut-wrenching transformations. You know, the kind that life hands us. All of us.
“I do sometimes see myself as an evangelist.” I responded. “Or something even more gnarly and in-your-face, like a prophet or a revolutionary. All I need is a beret and a goatee and I can do my best Che Guevara. I’m the Che Guevara of loss!”
Let me say for the record that I’m not a communist, I don’t plan to become a martyr by getting shot by the Bolivian army, and I seriously doubt my mug will ever end up on a T-shirt. (Please dear lord, save me from this fate!)
But I’m all in for a role as a countercultural symbol of rebellion. Rebellion against the social norms, the taboos, and the false stories that imprison our expression and experience of loss.
“The thing about being a revolutionary or a prophet,” I continued, “is that not everyone wants to hear it. People throw rocks at prophets.”
“People throw rocks at prophets…” Paul repeated, mostly to himself, deep in thought. He nodded. “Indeed they do.”
Rock throwers don’t necessarily hate prophets.
They hate how prophets make them feel.
Indignant. Pissed off. Called out. Challenged.
If we could make these prophets, these revolutionaries, just shut the hell up, we could go on with our lives as they are. Heads down, binging on Netflix, scrolling on social media, day after day after freaking day. No harm, no foul.
But annoyingly, without our permission, prophets want more for us. They don’t want us to settle for the status quo, they want us to fight for more. Even if we have to give up the safety of our comfort zone to do it.
Paul’s rebellion is becoming teetotal amidst a British cultural norm where drinking is part of the fabric and ‘fun’ of life. Every time he shows up with a club soda with lime, being present and engaged in the moment rather than wearing a lampshade and being the life of the party, others take this as a silent rebuke on their own lifestyle. They don’t want to be faced with the truth of their choice, now that Paul has made a different one.
This can make Paul very, very lonely. But he’d rather be lonely than oblivious, following his own inner compass — what makes him feel alive — rather than following the pack.
When Paul and I reconnected after almost two years, it blew my mind that he was using almost identical language to describe his personal revolution.
He said it was like “living in HD” — absurdly close to my favorite phrase “vibrant living”.
Few people would compare giving up drinking to losing a loved one, and yet… We both lost a way of living that we thought we couldn’t live without. We both went through dark nights of the soul. We both weren’t sure if we would make it to the other side. And now, we both want to shout our revelations from the rooftops.
It’s fascinating to me that as a culture, maybe as a species in general, we do everything we can to make our lives smooth and predictable. We barricade ourselves into our comfort zones, settling for what we know, what is expected of us, what others before us have done — even if we don’t really like what promises to fill our lives for the next 10, 20, 50 years.
As if the hell we know is better than the heaven we don’t.
I can’t speak for Paul, but my personal revolution was not intentional. I got shoved out of complacency by Mike’s death. It’s ghastly to admit, but I often wonder if I would have found this electric way of living if Mike was still around.
As kids, we took leaps.
Off tree branches, roofs, swings. Because we longed to loose our bodies from their human constraints and fly through the air. We didn’t worry about sticking the landing. We’d leave that up to fate.
As we matured, we were told, “think before you speak, look before you leap, measure twice, cut once, etc, etc.” We learned well. Maybe too well. All we care about as adults is the landing. So unless we are forced to, we don’t take flight at all. We forgot that the leap, the uncertainty, even the fear are part of what makes living such a grand adventure in the first place. Feeling alive is nothing less than the agency to try and maybe fail… but the tenacity to at least try.
I don't want to be sitting around waiting for fate to happen to me. I want to happen to fate; I want to happen to destiny.
I want to use the little control I have on this planet to not build a box around my life, but to expand in the ways that exhilarate me, challenge me, fill my heart with passion and purpose.
Yes, it’s terrifying to be a revolutionary — to care this much about a way of living that puts me at odds with the status quo — but let’s be real. It’s terrifying to be alive at all. Take driving down a highway, flying in the sky — we’ve just desensitized ourselves to those fears. We’ve learned from experience that more often than not we’ll be just fine. And because of it we get to travel the world!
But there isn’t just the outer universe to explore. There’s the one within us as well.
The inner expanse holds mysteries like:
what we are truly capable of
what really matters to us
what we can do that no one else can do
how we may actually be able to change the world
I wouldn’t say I’m courageous. I would say I’m terrified of dying without making the difference I know I’m capable of.
To the prophet within me, and to the prophet within you,
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Although it's comforting to know you are not a communist, I would absolutely wear a Luminist t-shirt.
Remembering to live in the moment, to the fullest is the most difficult thing, but hopefully the most rewarding. Merry Christmas to you and yours.