Freedom from Dependency

Trading. Forex. A blog. Videos. Social media. Travel. Every time I saw the wave before others and every time I rode it I got off before it reached shore.

I showed a version of me built to survive. A pile of habits collected over time — some from childhood when I was looking for attention, some from my teenage years when I was looking for respect, others from adulthood when I was trying to prove I could make it.

I wrote in my journal: "I always thought others were better than me. That they had something more. That they were more capable, more attractive, more performing."

I've always been afraid of being alone. My greatest strength is independence, but it implies my greatest weakness: being alone.

We're born alone. We die alone. And in between, we live often unable to tell others what we're feeling. But it's precisely in that solitude that you find yourself. Not at parties. Not in distractions. Not in noise.

"I don't believe in myself, so I always have to prove things to others to make them true."

I spent my whole life wanting to be someone in the eyes of others.

Why am I getting these results right now and not others?

And where does it come from? Doctrines. Academic teachings devoid of life experiences. Books studied without living them. Family patterns we might not have chosen. Voices of others we mistook for our own.

Generic like a hotel room: clean, functional, identical to all the others. You sleep there and tomorrow you don't remember being there.

And until you wait for others to define you, you're interpreted. You don't exist.

And that, from the inside, is a harder life than all the others. A life of private dreams that will never see light.

And that, from the inside, is a harder life than all the others. A life of private dreams that will never see light.

It was: what about me? And others like me? And the children from last week's village?

And we, who were born in contexts of do whatever you want, pay the price of that freedom that's never sufficiently acknowledged.

He arrives before all the others. Always. At seven he's already on the roof — the roof of a building that doesn't exist yet, exposed rebar sticking out of concrete, wooden planks, no protection, as if he were immortal.

For the first half hour he's alone, him and the cold. Then the others arrive, but meanwhile he's already started: the blows on the iron rise up to my window while the city, behind him, wakes up calmly.

And you know, the victory isn't the traffic light: it's the ability to decide without observing or waiting for others.

And after a while something strange happened. The children who were rewarded started drawing less. The ones who received nothing kept going like before, for the pleasure of it. The others didn't — the reward had switched something off. They had stopped drawing out of love, and were only drawing in relation to the prize.

It was the closest thing to freedom I have ever felt.

The choices you really need to watch out for aren't the big ones — the ones you sit with for days: those, you usually find a way through. It's the others that get you. The ones you make without thinking, that you don't even notice, and that turn out crooked, never quite what you wanted. Waking up slowly, setting multiple alarms, getting up instead of sitting back down. That's the warning bell.

I went for work, even though "work" is a strong word: I went to be with people, to meet others, to spend a few days together. Networking, the sharp ones call it.

See the trick? I place my power out there. Among others. In relationships, in the middle, when I light up the room. A power on my own I don't grant myself. Alone, still, in silence, with no one to win over, I don't feel strong: I feel small. I need others to tell me I'm worth something, otherwise I don't believe it myself.

So get one uncomfortable thing into your head: there's no such thing as "the clean brain, the real me, just how I am." There's no one who hasn't been programmed by something or someone. There are only two kinds of people. Those who let their brain be washed by others and by chance, forever. And those who at some point pick up the pen and begin, painstakingly, to rewrite it themselves.

Twenty-eight years of things written by others, to be dismantled piece by piece, knowing that for months you'll see nothing happen. It's the least gratifying work in the world. And it's the only one that matters.

And I know what steals it from me every time. Comparison. Measuring yourself against others — it eats you alive. I've talked to you about this before, and I don't want to do it again, because the lesson "don't compare yourself" is something everyone knows and no one applies, myself included.

The second: when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same.