TAG. YOU'RE IT.
Nobody is coming.
Read that again.
Nobody is coming.
Not another expert.
Not another headline.
Not another politician.
Not another AI tool.
Not another doctor.
Not another guru.
Tag.
You’re it.
That’s the day your life begins. That’s the day my life began.
People ask me where my courage came from.
As if someone handed it to me.
Nobody handed me a damn thing.
I earned it. All of it.
I earned it by being wrong a lot.
I earned it by standing alone a lot.
I earned it by walking out of offices where I knew, deep in my bones, that someone was telling me a story that wasn’t true for me.
I earned it by having my head handed to me more times than I can count.
I earned it by paying the price for speaking when silence would have been a lot easier.
Courage isn’t a personality trait.
It’s scar tissue.
People tell me they want what I have.
No.
You want the result you see.
Do you want the years that produced it?
Do you want the loneliness?
Do you want the doubt?
Do you want the nights when nobody clapped, nobody believed you, and nobody rescued you? Or nobody showed up !!
Because that’s where courage comes from.
Everybody wants certainty.
Almost nobody wants the fire that creates it.
Here’s what I’ve learned after a lifetime of searching.
The world will keep offering you permission slips.
Permission to fit in.
Permission to stay quiet.
Permission to doubt yourself.
Permission to hand your life over to someone who sounds more certain than you do.
I’m not interested.
There is somebody living inside your skin.
That person has a voice.
That person knows when something is wrong.
That person knows when you’re lying to yourself.
And if you ignore that voice long enough, you don’t die all at once.
You die by inches.
One compromise.
One excuse.
One permission slip at a time.
I refuse.
I refuse to live someone else’s version of my life.
I refuse to apologize for questioning.
I refuse to wait for permission to become who I already know I am.
If that makes people uncomfortable...
So be it.
History has never been changed by people waiting their turn.
It has been changed by people who finally decided they would no longer betray themselves.
Nobody is coming.
Good.
Because the moment you stop waiting to be rescued...
...you discover you were never looking for a rescuer.
You were looking for yourself.