IMPOSSIBLE DREAMS AND OPEN CAGES

“The cage is open, but the bird has forgotten how to fly.”

“Birds raised in captivity see flying as an illness.”

Cities, planes, cars, technology of all sorts, and almost everything we use in our daily lives started as an idea. Everything you see around you exists because someone dreamt of it first. And by dreamt, I mean both the literal dreams that show up during sleep or altered states (many discoveries were born this way) and the imagination we use to envision something before it exists.

In ancient times, being called a dreamer was an honor.
Today… well, it usually means one of two things (or both), and neither is flattering:

“There’s absolutely no chance you’ll ever be an astronaut. You’re delusional. Get a grip.”
“You need to be more present. You’re always in your head.”

And sure, living entirely in your head isn’t healthy.
But the truth is: we only try to escape reality when our environment is super shitty.
This isn’t philosophy. It’s science.

You’ve probably heard about this famous rat experiment conducted in the 70s-80s. One group lived in a miserable metal cage with morphine water at their discretion. Obviously, they abused it obsessively until they died. The second group lived in Rat Park, basically rat Disneyland, with the same morphine water available. But they never touched it, showing that if the environment is healthy, there is no need to escape it, no need to “numb the pain”.

If our leaders blame communities for self-destruction, they’re also blaming their own failure to create environments where people can thrive. But that’s a different rant.

Everything today revolves around comfort. Safety. Convenience. Happiness.

We are the safest humans have ever been.
Life expectancy is at its peak.
The average person has access to food and utilities that kings didn’t have a century ago.
Trips that once took months now take hours.
Everyone is literally one WhatsApp video call away.

And yet we feel more miserable, more alone, more disconnected, and more misunderstood than ever.

Why?

Because we confuse comfort with happiness.

Comfort doesn’t make you happy. Overcoming adversity does. Strength does.
Growth does. “A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.”

But today nobody wants to be called a dreamer, so most people just conform.
To a job they hate.
To friends who humiliate them.
To a partner they have nothing in common with.

And somehow, that seems easier than being mocked for wanting more.
Easier than standing out.
Easier than refusing to sleepwalk through life.

In a world where “shitty 9 to 5 by day, Netflix by night, three weeks of holiday a year” has become the norm, wanting something different makes you outrageous. A nonconformist. An exception. Ultimately, an outcast.

So we sleep. We ignore that phantom-limb-like itch from our higher self calling us toward something greater.

We are miserable because we are not who we are meant to be, and we’re not doing what we’re meant to do. And as the gap between who you are and who you could have been widens, your soul starts banging in all sorts of pipes louder and louder.

We don’t dream big because we fear judgment and failure.
But we forget that our own self-judgment for not following those dreams will hurt infinitely more than the judgment of others.

There’s a quote:
“Hell is when the person you are meets the person you could have been.”
Lately, that’s the fear haunting me most: showing up at the final debrief with fuel still in the tank, with a U-Haul full of flowers that were meant to turn a wasteland into a garden, but they were never planted, so the wasteland just turned into a larger wasteland.

Of course, we resent those who dare to dream and fulfill their dreams.
We call them lucky. We say fate smiled upon them.
That they had rich parents, better childhoods, inherited trust funds, opportunities, whatever.

Statistically, this is complete bullshit.

I don’t necessarily associate money with success, but society uses money as a scoreboard, so I’ll use these stats to make a point.

U.S. Social Security Administration retirement stats, quoted by Hal Elrod in The Miracle Morning:
Out of 100 people reaching retirement:

1 is wealthy
4 are financially secure
5 are still working because they have no choice
36 are dead
54 are broke or dependent

Meaning: only 5% reach retirement financially secure.
The rest are dead, broke, dependent, or trapped.

Now the part that destroys the “lucky rich people” narrative:

According to Yahoo Finance, 79% of today’s millionaires are self-made.
And about 71% of billionaires built their fortunes from scratch, too.

So where does this leave us?

First: if you’re fucked, there’s a good chance it’s not your fault. It’s your environment.
Second: the “retire and sail into the sunset with a million dollars” fairytale is a myth. Only 1% pull it off, 99% don’t.
And third, the most important: you don’t need anything special to be in that 1%.

It’s not where you were born.
Not your skills.
Not your talents.
Not your family.
Not your inheritance.

Studies show that people with lower IQs often succeed more in business because they don’t overthink everything.
They execute. Move fast. Break things. Fail forward.

The single biggest differentiator between those who succeed and those who don’t is (drumroll):

Belief.
Willpower.
Grit.
Perseverance.
Persistence.
Stubbornness.
The good ol’ ability to tell the world to fuck off and obsessively pursue what you know you’re meant to do, regardless of who or what life throws your way.

Edison failed 10,000 times before finding the right filament for the lightbulb.
Most people quit after two failed attempts.

It’s easier to assume a successful person was a trust-fund baby than to admit you simply didn’t put in the work.
It’s easier to say “they’re lucky” than to say I’m lazy or not willing to do what’s necessary.
But your brain is lying to keep you comfortable, until the fat lady sings and you realize you became nothing while telling yourself you could have been anything.

And that hurts.

You can keep pointing fingers, or you can start chasing your dreams.
You can resent others, or you can become the kind of person worthy of the results you envy.

Because statistically, if 80% of millionaires started from scratch, they didn’t just get their fortune. They became the kind of person required to create and keep it. Most lottery winners end up poor in a few years, and this is exactly why. Because they skipped steps. Because they are not the type of people who could create and hold that wealth, they just woke up with a huge pile of cash under their pillow and no financial education or idea of how to manage or handle that type of cash. So, like Brad Pitt says in Fight Club, they just buy stupid shit they don’t need, to impress people they don’t like, and they’re back to square one in no time.

But if you put in insane amounts of work, have delusional faith, fervent obsession, and irrational persistence, then it becomes statistically impossible for the universe not to give you something back.

Imagine God saying:
“My sakes, Peter, the bastard’s been busting our doorbell every day for ten years. Just give the man what he wants.”

When you find the thing you’re meant to do, you’ll find the energy too. The kind that makes you forget to eat or sleep. You’ll grow the balls to raise a middle finger to anyone who doubts you and walk your own path, not the happy-retirement fairytale path society sells.

Some people touch a piano at five and compose symphonies by six.
Most of us aren’t that lucky.
Most of us need to try fifty things before one finally hits home.

So if you already know what you’re meant to do, JUST DO IT.
If you don’t, start exploring. Start experimenting.

“When you commit to nothing, everything is possible, but nothing is probable.
Action collapses possibility into probability.“

DISCLAIMER: These ideas aren’t mine. They belong to smart, successful people, so it’s safe to believe them. It would probably be more accurate to put everything under brackets; I just don’t remember who to attribute them to…