We must go the distance for the ideas we have given our heart–especially when those ideas help man answer the eternal question “What is this all about”–along the path of becoming there a thousand-fold transformations happening inside and around us; I believe any attempt to prevent this transformation restricts our potential causes apathy toward the manifestation of our ideas. Our self image is an obstacle, or catapult, to our self-progression, and our response to hardship, internal and external, reveals the strength of our passion. There is no need to romanticize pain, struggle, or turbulence, suffering is difficult enough, but becoming, in spite of the tribulations, develops a security in the heart. Writers like Victor Serge exemplify the commitment of a man, writing through revolution, exile, persecution, and completely devoting himself to his work providing an example that there is both a responsibility to ourselves and the people. We are required, once we have uttered our desires in that silent aloneness that creation happens, to take a chance, and enter the world of transformed men and women. However, there is nothing wrong with starting over, but without a devotion through doubt how far can we go in anything.

“We made the world we’re living in and we have to make it over,” -James Baldwin

The act of writing is the process of continually refining and reshaping the world, and writers of different opinions, backgrounds, stories, and ideas are needed to constantly stabilize, shift, bring balance to the psychology of the masses. The balance is brought through vulnerability and the willingness to move through fear and take risks; often having to catch myself worrying about my own fate as a man, not merely as a writer, a yogi, or thought provoker discovering writers like Victor Serge provide a deep faith in my potential. I believe, we become our actions and those choices must be consciously made in order to prepare us for the result of those actions, and the cycle of making choices and being responsible for those choices is played over and over. We believe our lives are shaped by psychology, which is partly true, often overlooking the importance of history; when there is an example of faith, strength, perseverance, and happiness, in spite of the guilt, we are provided with a model of our potential. But when there are no examples, no role models, and your family, environment, community provides no examples of your aims, you are forced to become the example, however, surprisingly, we also discover the amount of beauty contained in our environment. The people around us–while they may not be writers, artists, or entrepreneurs– contain an example of continuing through struggle, or loving through trauma, or redemption through overcoming drugs. Regardless of the amount of examples in movies, TV, Instagram, or books there is always a deep distance between the people we look up to and us, but the people around you–once you cleanse your perception of cultural views of success and assumed happiness–offer the attributes of success in unlikely places. The most important part of our becoming is being; the only force that prevents despair from landing onto our hearts, and provides the necessary strength to constantly recalibrate. Our triumph, as individuals, goes beyond the acquisition of goals, the accumulation of wealth, but is the internal transformation of our spirits; our triumph is a pure heart, not one consumed by greed; our triumph is a controlled ego, not one that believes in division; our triumphs is remaining a student of life, not a self-proclaimed master; our triumph is never wavering from our pursuits, and being incapable of giving up.

If you want to read about the life of Victor Serge follow this link.