Before Anyone Said it Was Allowed
There are two ways to enter a room: — One, as the question. — Two, as the answer.
Most people — well-meaning, well-trained — are shaped into the latter. An answer. A solution looking for a prompt. They enter politely, with credentials in hand, already rehearsing their justifications. Already guessing what this room, these people, want from them.
That’s one life.
There’s another kind. The kind that walks in not needing the room to approve, because they’ve stopped pre-explaining their worth. Not to be mysterious. But because they’ve become fluent in the unsaid.
I have a client who loves categories. He says things like: creator or reactor. Light or shadow. Brave or compliant. But it’s not binary, not really. It’s just a matter of where your center of gravity lives.
But categories still try. They reach, they approximate, they flinch and recover. Reactors are fluent in the language of aftermath. They process life in post-mortem. The thing has already happened. The impact, already made. So now the report. The opinion. The analysis. Everything reduced to commentary.
Reactors rehearse grievances because they’ve never started from zero. Only aftermath.
And no — not because they’re lazy. Because starting from zero still smells like failure. Like being laughed at. Or not being chosen.
At some point, though, one becomes allergic to their own neediness. The voice in your head becomes so repetitive, so familiar, you start seeing it as weather. Not self.
And in that break, something else is permitted to surface. Not clarity. Not confidence. But possibility.
Not the possibility of success — but the kind that doesn’t need to be protected. The kind that doesn’t care if you look like a fool in the beginning.
We forget what it’s like to be that free. To sweat through something pointless on purpose. To speak before you’ve made it beautiful. To name it while your voice still shakes. Let them think it’s weird. You were being true.
Absurdity is not the opposite of wisdom. It’s what wisdom looks like before the algorithm rewards it. Before the comment section fills up. Before the cocoon cracks. Before the butterfly knows what to do with the air.
And so you begin — not out of clarity, but out of refusal. You refuse to keep seeking permission from scripts you didn’t write. You refuse to win the approval of those who built their empire out of consensus. You even refuse to answer the question, “What’s your plan now?”
You just do the next thing. Because you want to feel that fear again. Not to conquer it. But to live beyond it.
You are never more magnetic than when you’re unsearchable. When your moves don’t align with metrics. When your presence can’t be optimised for visibility.
Most people would rather orbit someone else’s certainty than stand in the half-light of their own becoming.
But not you. Not anymore. Your job was never to explain yourself. Only to live something unreasonable.
Until the day someone looks at your life — not your résumé, not your highlight reel — and says,
“I didn’t know it was allowed”.
You don’t need to share this on your social. Just leave the tab open. Someone you live with might read it. And if this pressed a button and you’re still staring — reach out. Doesn’t have to go anywhere. Most good things don’t.