The World Wants You to Fail

This post has been kicking around in the back of my brain for more than 20 years. It’s ugly and brutish and short. It’s also something I wish I’d been told growing up. And then told again in my twenties. And then one more time in my thirties, just so the message would stick.

Here’s a little secret: The World would like for you to fail. It wants your golden parachute to have a hole in it. It wants your love boat to sink. More than anything else, the World wants your race car to spin out of control on the last curve and tumble into a fireball of broken dreams and bitter despair. The World, you see, is running just fine without your meddling and would appreciate it if you would keep your grimy little dreams to yourself.

The World has established rules that keep the trains chugging along their schedules. There are rules that keep the cogs turning in their place, grinding through their daily orbits for the benefit of The World’s inner workings. There are rules that make sure the hand on the rudder of The World is always the same.

That hand is not yours.

On the other hand, The World wants you to believe that someday, if you work hard enough, if you bleed enough, sacrifice enough, lose enough, maybe it will be your turn at the helm. If you do what you’re told well enough, long enough, no matter the cost to you, maybe you’ll rise through the muck and the grime and the grease and the shit to get your breath of clean, fresh air.

Except you won’t.

As long as you try and work within the machinery of The World, you’re doomed. There’s no place for dreamers or artists or rebels or writers inside the great, churning orrery at the heart of The World. As long as you stay in there, you’re selling yourself, bits and pieces and bloody chunks at a time. Because The World runs on broken dreams and stolen hope, on ground up souls and tattered ideals. The World runs on rough trade and inequality. It runs on you.

But none of that has to matter. Because you define the nature of your world and your place in it. Because you don’t have to live inside the machinery of The World.

Will you?