Empowerment

Looking up while walking down the street is great. There isn’t much else to say. Those skyscrapers are so tall. There is a certain empowerment that I can only feel in these moments. The effort to build something that a hundred years ago seemed impossible is not an achievement I can ignore. Just think about it! Taller than any structure ever conceived of by the great Roman engineers. An aesthetic that is both physically and intellectually overpowering, on a level greater than any of the master Renaissance painters have ever achieved. I’m filled with so much energy I feel as though I’ve grown to the size of these buildings, ready to live a life so massive that no barrier is enough to stop its flood of passion. All I can think of is what can be achieved, what I can do next to get that much closer to my own success!

And then I look down. I shrink. I’m no larger than the people around me. Totally normal, totally boring. The buildings around confine me. Trap me. I cannot escape the normalcy. There are so many people stopping for their morning coffee and commenting on the sunny weather and how they really don’t want to go to the holiday party tomorrow. Certainly no mention of how they’re one step closer to reaching their dreams. If I even bother to ask a stranger “what is your passion today?” as casually as “how are you today?”, I’ll only be laughed at. It would be like I asked when their birthday is. After all, only an eccentric would try to find life. Better to be pragmatic and a little happy! When failure comes crashing down, it can only hurt, they say.

So I look up again. I’m living once more, no longer shrunk to the level of the passionless. Maybe one day I’ll walk right into someone else looking up. Then I will know that I have found a person who wants to live as much as I do.