Own the World

…and heat it up a bit

Not literally, of course. It’s just a mentality.

And owning the world doesn’t mean you control every aspect of it. Things go wrong. Things go sideways in ways you never saw coming. Owning the world just means you own your experience of it… the lens, the interpretation, the response. The world is yours in the same way a story belongs to its narrator… every plot twist, every disaster, every stroke of luck gets filtered through them.

You might say, “that’s privilege… hubris, egomania.”

No it isn’t. Not at all.

“OK then… main character syndrome.”

Well… yes, actually. You literally are the main character. The entire world, your entire reality, is chemical pathways and electrical firings inside a small orb floating above your body. The world literally revolves around your physical perspective. You are the center of your reality, and your reality is the only one you have access to.

I’ve written about this before. But the common pushback I keep hearing deserves its own response.

The first line of pushback usually hinges on selfishness. That thinking of yourself as the main character means you don’t care about the other characters in your story. And that’s not remotely true. Characters fall in love. They care for one another. They adventure together. The story sucks without other characters. Just because you are the main character doesn’t mean you’re the only character of any importance. You might not even be the most important character. But you are still the main character.

The second line of pushback is more interesting. And it goes something like this…

“Not everyone can be the main character in society.”

Meaning… not everyone can become an entrepreneur, leave the traditional stable life, ditch the career ladder, travel the world, live off the grid, etc. Because if everyone just blew it all up and took risks, society would collapse. The ocean can’t be all sharks. We need tuna. We need plankton. The ecosystem requires diversity… a food chain.

And that’s true for animals. In forests, meadows, oceans.

But is it actually true for human society?

Humans adapt. Here’s a thought experiment….

Say every single person in the corporate world didn’t show up to work today. A full global boycott. There’d be serious pain near-term, sure. But then every government and company would quickly rush to reinvent themselves and mold their structures to match the new culture. Because society… which governments and companies serve, or at least operate within… reflects what the people inside it are actually prioritizing and doing.

Now think about your high school science textbook. Remember that illustration that explains what molecules do when they heat up? In hot material, the molecules are vibrating rapidly… bouncing around… all of them, not just some. In cold material, the molecules are barely moving at all.

So what’s a “hot” society… one with lots of energy? It’s a society where everyone is vibrating. Rapid movement… physically, mentally, philosophically. Just action. Not a handful of adventurous molecules careening around while the rest sit still. All of them.

And they’re not just moving faster. They’re further apart. More space between them. More variety. Less clustering. Translated to people, that means less commoditization of everyone’s lives… less of the same suburb, same career ladder, same 401K, same Sunday routine. A hotter world is a more diverse world… diverse in thought, in paths, in what a life can actually look like.

Maybe everyone can pursue something new. Some radical life change. Because doing so would make the world around you hopping with intensity and awesomeness. Just a way more interesting place to exist.

So maybe you’re not “playing your part” by doing what you’re told. Being safe in your job. Safe in your suburb. Investing dutifully in your 401K. Maybe you’re not holding the ecosystem together at all.

Maybe you’re keeping the world from being more interesting than it could be.

And you don’t have forever to find out.

Memento mori.