These days you are considered a weirdo if you live without a phone. Yet nobody cares if you live without a purpose. Anything wrong with that picture?

Have you ever felt this: your life slowly ticking away, minute by minute? It’s in the moments like this that you fully realize how truly unique your life is. All of a sudden it dawns on you that there has never lived nor ever will live anyone just like you. You understand that your life is just a momentary flame between the billions of years that preceded it and countless billions that would follow it. And you know, know with all your heart, that every moment of your life is also truly, unequivocally unique.

But as this flame of life flickers in the wind, you can’t get rid of an uneasy feeling that you are just not using it right. That you are spending these precious finite moments on things that simply don’t matter. And you want to live your life differently, live it knowing that every moment is spent with some meaning and not just wasted. You already can see this new, meaningful, purposeful, majestic life in front of you. But then… then the feeling is gone and you return to your regular life, where moments are cheap, as if they were infinite. What is it about life that we always strive to understand but never quite grasp?

No matter what they say, you always have a choice. You just don’t always have guts to make it.

Being yourself has a price and the reason we have so many me-toos in this world is that very few are willing to pay it.

But new life is real. It does not have that false, not rooted in reality sense of security, it does not have room for that naive belief in social norms and abstract concepts like “civilized argument”. There’s no place for games in this life. Everything is serious from now on. Here they don’t waste time trying to convince you here—they punch you in the face and watch you spit out your convictions with blood. It is life that newspapers and TV scream about every day—life with violence, dirt and blood. With ice-cold water and the cold stone of hands, indifferently drowning a kicking and screaming human being. A life where disobedience to power is a crime that leads inevitably to a swift grave payback. This life isn’t new—it has always existed. Only until today it was somewhere far, far away—in a different country, in a different neighborhood, in a different house. It was someone else’s life.
When it’s not about you—it’s always far, far away. But this time it’s about you. And so this life is the only reality.

Young shining talents in their early twenties rarely end up in management. Much more often they work enthusiastically around the clock, making their employers richer and managers happier. And then suddenly some of them go on to establish their own companies, and a few short years later the entire world begins wowing in astonishment, while the ambitious managers in their thirties desperately try landing a job at one of these hot new startups.

Every age had people like you. Had you lived two hundred years ago, you would’ve become factory and estate managers. Half a millennia ago, you would’ve tried to join the court of a nearby lord. And five thousand years ago somewhere in ancient Egypt you would’ve strived to become priests, as it was the most realistic way to acquire some power. A manager is simply the most suitable place for fulfilling your needs in the fabric of the modern society. The most suitable starting place, since appetite comes with eating…

All you need to do to be considered controversial these days is to speak your mind. It doesn’t matter what the subject is. Saying what you really think is just not fashionable.

We’re so used to classifying people as leaders and followers that we don’t even realize how much we all depend on people who are neither one. They are too independent to follow and too self-sufficient to be interested in leading. They mind their own business, do their own thing and keep moving the world forward with all its followers and leaders.

God may be the producer of the Life show, but guess who often gets the director’s seat?

Our goals keep us going, but it’s our dreams that makes us tick. So if you disconnect your goals from your dreams don’t be surprised if one morning you realize that your life is on autopilot.

You can always spot intelligence, but stupidity comes in all shapes.

Do you want to win here?” asked Stella.
Robert shrugged.
“I like competing.”
“So you agree with Clark that all we want is power?”
“Never cared for it. You’ve got to be really insecure to want power.”
“Insecure?” she asked, surprised. “I don’t think powerful people look insecure. When you have power, people depend on you. You’re in control.”
“No,” said Robert. “You aren’t. Look, you’re smart, but you got it all wrong. This power thing, it’s nothing. It’s just people agreeing to do what you want. But the moment they decide to disagree, your power is gone. When you have power, you may be in control of some, but only because you depend on others. The more power you have the less free you are. And I happen to value my freedom.