Everything that you are is an assembly of genetics, experiences, social influences, and dumb luck. Your uniqueness is an unfathomably large collection of unlinked factors, blended up together and deposited into your meat suit, which happens to exist in a specific time and place. Overlay it onto behavior, and you get a personality, everything we refer to as ‘I’.
Sometimes that collection stops improving your quality of life though, and it’s time to press the button on the blender to shake it up again. Just like the way no card deck order will ever reappear again, you will never be able to recapture yourself after you spin the blender.
That version of you will die.
Which sounds scary, like you’re removing your hand from the safety of a buoy and letting yourself be carried out into the sea, but the buoy was never really safe to begin with, it was just present. You became attached to it because over time, it became familiar, like those random reddit usernames that new users get. You might get handed GooseLumps4418 and it have no value, but after 10 years, you ARE GooseLumps. The decade of time you spent lumping your goose around the communities seems to have substance, like it was the bridge that connected you to the others, but it might also just be a Gambler’s Fallacy. You were just too lazy or didn’t really care to explore a more meaningful name in the beginning, and it shouldn’t be required to be commemorated just because it was there. If it’s time to retire GooseLumps and spread your proverbial wings as you adopt ScreamingEagle007, you’re ok to do so without guilt. One bird falls so another can fly.
Many actions in your life are rooted in a reaction to death. Our identities are constructed to preserve ourselves, to signal things to others, to solidify our perspective of the world (and thus ward off the unknown), and to play around with our mortality.
Having that identity makes you feel safe. It’s why people are scared to leave their hometowns. Why it feels exhausting to make a career pivot. Why we keep in contact with old friends whose only binding tie is cheap nostalgia. If you shake it up, you have nothing to hold on to. A babe lost in the woods, and if there’s one thing a social creature like a human hates, it’s being alone in the unknown.
It may sound counterintuitive, but the way to get the most life is by chasing the most death. You’re going to die anyways, but instead of it being a grand finale, you can make it a season-ending episode with an unexpected twist. Operating your life in seasons or phases means that every time you spin the blender, a version of you dies, and a new version of you lives.
The only thing standing between you and a new adventure is the courage to let go of something that no longer belongs to you. Your music taste mostly came from what was available when you were in middle and high school and your fashion sense is highly affected by movie protagonists and archetypes that we were introduced to as kids. The combination that makes you you is a dice roll, and it’s ok to outgrow it. To try to pretend to be the same phase of yourself is disingenuous, and you should at least do the honor of giving that version the proper burial rites instead of dragging its corpse through the streets.
I was at an event last night with Cate Hall and Sasha Chapin and they discussed how to make bold, high-agency moves in the public eye. How to plant a new flag when the eyes of your colleagues and friends might see it, and when the unrelenting eyes of the internet makes it their personal vendetta to tear you down.
Sasha’s answer was pretty straightforward: ego death. Let go of who you were. The desire to grow away from it means that identity doesn’t fit you anymore anyways. The shoes are too small, and it will be painful to continue to move through the world in them.
I am confidently projecting here that for many people, the fear isn’t really accepting the growth, it’s other people’s reaction to it. Here’s the secret about other people though: a strong negative reaction towards you is really a fear-based reaction from their own identity. Every person they see who is willing to have courage is a deep reminder to themselves that they lack it, and that pain causes a lashing back of anger. That’s how you end up with Tall Poppy Syndrome. With crabs in a bucket, pulling each other down when escape is just a few inches away.
People don’t want you to win. Not because they hate you, it has nothing to do with you. It’s because they are ashamed of themselves. Your victory is a mirror onto their own unachieved dreams, and it’s easier to break you down than to conquer their fear.
However, they also need you (though they would never admit it). Without an example, there is no path for others to have guidance towards success. They’ll only hate you until they achieve success for themselves, then they will thank you for demonstrating what is possible. When others choose to hate you, it becomes an opportunity to show them compassion. To say:
‘you hate me for bringing light into your cave, so that you now see how the cave has made you ugly. But use my light to find your way out, into the light.’
Cate described a story of people who reacted quite strongly to her success, but mostly because their own identities were threatened. Her light showed them their ugliness and instead of embracing the new vision, they despised how it revealed their own features.
Their animosity is not your problem. It is not even you that they are mad at! If anything, their frothing mouths are now a place for you to give them water. React in kind to their hatred, double down on enabling others, and it will ripple exponentially.
If you are moving genuinely in the world, then you have nothing to hide. You can’t stop your feet from growing, and it’s not your fault the shoes don’t fit anymore. It just is. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.
If you want to reinvent yourself in the world, my advice would be to do it without spectacle. Don’t make an announcement, it’s too spiky. Up and then down, like a passionate one night stand you never see again. Just make the change, steadily and stably. Be confident and assured that your movement comes from a place honest intention. Start operating in your new identity, allowing to change your own life without needing anyone else’s permission or action. Don’t request attention, just participate in a new direction. If people react badly, pity them for being threatened by your courage, and offer them a hand in kindness.
What’s the worst that can happen? You die? Good, make death an old friend and welcome him back again. He’ll guide you towards your next life.
With love from me to you,
Deacon
Note: No AI was used to write, edit, or otherwise modify this article.