Tag: self-discovery

The Last Free Man

The story is born of imagination and a steadfast commitment to the self – a quiet vow to remain resilient in the pursuit of what is right, without ever succumbing to the temptation of surrender.

In a world that demands obedience masked as civility, one man stands alone – unwilling to bend, unwilling to betray himself. The Last Free Man is a defiant soliloquy that wrestles with freedom, identity, and the quiet tyranny of conformity. This is not a plea for understanding, but a declaration of selfhood sharpened by intellect.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. – Friedrich Nietzsche

You ask me to surrender? To accept what has been handed down as though it were holy writ? My dear fellow, I refuse. Not out of some adolescent rebellion or romantic notion of heroism, but because acceptance – when it is demanded, not earned – is the most vulgar form of defeat.

Guilt? Oh, I’m terribly sorry to disappoint, but I am not afflicted with it. I’ve committed no crime unless thinking freely has become one. And if it has, then build your gallows high, for I have much thinking left to do.

I propose something scandalous: to begin again. Yes, again! Not because I’ve failed, but because I’ve seen through the farce and I’ve no interest in playing a part written by a committee of cowards. I shall go on as if nothing happened. I will smile with precision, laugh on cue, and behave with the poise of a trained diplomat – while inwardly dismantling the very stage upon which your little tragedy plays out.

You see, I’ve grown intolerably weary of your smallness – your provincial minds dressed in national flags, your exaltation of the average as though mediocrity were a moral virtue. I won’t be contained by it. I won’t be enlightened by your dim lanterns. My belief in a greater leap – in something sublime, extraordinary, inconvenient – is unshaken, and I intend to guard it as one might guard fire from the rain.

I offer my hand, but I do not bow. I converse, but I do not grovel. If you hinder me once, I shall proceed twice. I am prepared for collision, but I am not prepared for stillness.

Ah, but you think me dreamy? Sentimental? Perhaps I am. I dream of a world with trust that does not need a witness, of friends who are not creditors in disguise. And why should I not dream? You, with your charts and your clever cynicism, have done little with your realism but decorate the cage.

I refuse to become the caricature your expectations have sketched for me – neat, predictable, and politely subdued. I will not sever my emotions to squeeze into your rational ideal. I was born human – a beautifully inconvenient state of being, admittedly – but one I’ve grown rather attached to.

Look at them – they own maps and boundaries. I possess the idea of infinity. And I, poor fool that I am, will keep knocking. Not because I believe the door must open, but because I believe that knocking itself is a form of hope. And hope – when not commodified or preached – is a revolution.

Don’t mistake my patience for docility, nor my endurance for resignation. I am not your servant in spirit. Celebrate your victories if you must – no one will begrudge you your illusions. Surround yourself with flatterers who will polish your ego as though it were some ancient idol. But know that I will not join the ritual. I will not dance to that drum.

I refuse to be the deity of average men. I shall remain, to the bitter end if necessary, a servant – no, a disciple – of excellence.

So if this is a monologue, it is only because the world has yet to answer. I speak not to you, but through you, to the thing I refuse to betray: myself.

Echoes of Oblivion: A Journey Between Vanishing and Becoming

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
— George Bernard Shaw

I long to be forgotten, to slip quietly into the shadows of existence, leaving not a trace behind. I wish to vanish as if I had never drawn breath, as if my footprints were mere whispers upon the sand, stolen by the tide. For every deed done and every dream left undone, for each ambition that crumbled beneath the weight of my own hesitations, I yearn to be forgotten.

Let me fade for all the masks I wore, for the facades I built with trembling hands. For what I appeared to be but never truly was, let the world release me. For every silent scream I buried beneath painted smiles, for every show of resilience when all I craved was the quiet comfort of surrender, let me be erased.

I want to be forgotten for every truth I twisted into falsehood and for every lie I whispered in the name of good. For all that I concealed, the shadows where I hid my fears, I wish to drift away into nothingness. Forget me for my blindness to reality, for my idle acceptance of the slow-burning miseries, and for every reckless leap of faith that landed me nowhere but deeper into the abyss.

Do not remember me for the tangled knots of unworthy attachments, nor for the burdens of unforeseen sorrows I dragged behind me. I long to disappear not only from the echoes of your memories, which perhaps never truly held me, but also from my own relentless quest to etch my name upon a world that never paused to listen.

Forget me for the songs that withered in my throat, for the melodies I never set free. For the way my furrowed brow wrapped me in discomfort, a tight embrace of my own making; let me slip into oblivion, a feather on the wind, a petal swallowed by the river’s current.

Let me be nothing more than a half-remembered dream, a mist that the morning sun quietly lifts away.

And then,

I yearn to hear an unending ovation, not for grandeur or fame, but for these weary eyes that have long forgotten the solace of a blink. Let the applause be a soft echo through eternity, a quiet hymn for the silent vigil I’ve kept with life. I wish to be remembered not for grand gestures, but for the gentle curve of my lips offered to a soul who needed it most; a smile not as an act, but as a refuge.

I do not seek the harsh glare of a spotlight, but rather the tender embrace of a sun that spills warmth generously, draping me in light without demand. I wish not for mere drops of passing rain but for the steadfast flow of a river, a sanctuary to fall into, to drift upon, to belong to.

I crave not just wishes but blessings, the kind that well up in the corners of my eyes, that blur the world with gratitude. I want the strength of embraces, not the hollowness of lifeless handshakes. I dream of wandering an endless path, where the pace matters not; where the journey, whether walked or sprinted, is a melody of its own.

I want to touch the wounds hidden beneath layers of old stories, to trace the lines of pain I never realized were drawn upon my skin. I long to surrender, not in defeat but in reverence, to the vastness of truth that hums beneath the noise of living. I want to love the art I never finished, to find beauty in the incomplete, to let imperfection breathe and call it divine.

I wish to shatter the walls of awkward silences, to replace them with a rhythm, a pulse that fills every hollow space with the cadence of life. I don’t want to merely search for distant beacons; I want to hoist my sails and meet them, to let the wind carry me to where the horizon meets the sky.

I want to plant a tree and nurture it, to wrap my arms around its bark each day, a promise etched into its roots: I will stand against any darkness that threatens it. I want to embody the fierce duality of an uncompromising saint or an unapologetic warrior; both soft and unyielding, serene and wild.

In the end, I long to play music that drifts like mist through the universe, notes that blend into the very nothingness from which all things are born. I want each melody to dissolve the boundaries of existence, to find eternity in the echoes, to lose myself in the infinite quiet of the cosmos; alive, real, and beautifully (un)done.

There exists no binary resolution wherein the end seamlessly converges with the genesis, and where the inception inexorably inclines toward conclusion.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.”
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet