I am an Outsider: A Story of Freedom

by Tessa Lena

I am an outsider, and here’s my story of freedom.

To keep my humanity, I consistently ran away from systems. Early on, I ran away from the academia even though I was promised a very bright and secure career. I then ran away from the corporate labyrinth because my soul was dying in there. I kept my heart, and because I did, I have immediate and vibrant answers to some of the big questions that Systems People are asking in their high-end keynote speeches. I have peasant senses that make it very easy to grasp the degree of murder that modern systems bring upon the soul – and it’s a Catch 22.

I have functional answers because I ran away from the machine. But because I ran away from the machine, I am not accredited by the machine, and Systems People are skeptical about the answers that come from a Non-Systems person. The things I have to say are not familiar.

It is a classic interface incompatibility problem: Questions and answers live in different dimensions, and if my answers travel to the dimension where the keynote speeches live, they will lose their heart. Real answers about happiness and humanity are humbling, they don’t help anybody’s career-building ambitions, they are so beautiful you can’t describe it, they lie in mystery, and they leave no room for pointless glitter.

But simple, peasant humility is uncharted territory for a self-respecting urban educated mind!

When I talk to self-respecting educated minds about this (the famed self-respecting educated minds, the demographic that I used to be a part of – but then I ran away), I hear the following:

‘We will gladly pontificate about lost innocence and we will buy expensive retreats – but we are not going to touch the real thing.’

‘We want answers but we don’t want to change our idea about ourselves and our self-aggrandizing intellectual paradigms’

The tragedy.

Here is the real problem. The machine annihilates the senses that we are born with, the senses that allow us to find happiness, to be fully present in the primordial state. The Machine beats up and chews up and covers up the context. The soul-eating Machine runs on broken language because language, imperfect as it is, is meant to reflect reality. If our everyday language were straightened out to be more consistent with eternal nature and our physical reality, the Machine would explode. So it keeps blocking us from expressing ourselves like children, from being free–and in the meanwhile, people who were born to be happy, keep getting together at conferences and jerking off about systems.

Fuck!

The ability to find the solution depends on trashing the interface entirely. And that is not an easy thing to do.

I am an outsider with a heart, a brain, and a memory of home.

I am the little guy who spent a lot of time unlearning the very qualities that make one palatable in a Systems Society.

I know a thing or two about being happy, and I know with absolute, piercing certainty that it has zero to do with what most influencers and futurologists are saying to the masses (using uplifting, accessible language). It has nothing to do with gadgets, slogans, space ships, collective affirmation chanting, pseudo-intellectualism, ’science,’ or ‘technology.’

The future is the same as the present. You are born, you bring with you a magical connection to the universe, your unique feeling that you vividly remember when you are a kid–and then forget–your purpose, your unique sound, your version of love.

You are born, like a song of uttermost beauty – and then the people who have been traumatized before you, try to shame you out of remembering your song. Most of them are not bad human beings, they simply forgot, and they want you to be an important practical goose, for your own good.

Your song that exists for your happiness, doesn’t help the Machine. If you are to remember your song, you will know with absolute, piercing certainly, just like I do, that most of what the influencers and the futurologists are telling you, is a mix of wishful thinking and ego. From A to Z, ego. It adds nothing to happiness except it maybe teaches you how to navigate the labyrinth filled from wall to wall with distorted mirrors and sad, important practical geese.

And branding?

I whisper, from the bottom of my heart: ‘I am waiting for the day when people will see branding for what it is (psychic warfare), when goods and services will go back to being just goods and services, and when marketing messages will get the hell out of the sacred space.’

I know it won’t happen for a very long time–but I keep whispering, because I am right.

‘A spiritual message driven by commercial interest dies immediately. They don’t live together, they don’t eat at the same table, don’t you know?’

But it’s hard to blame the practical geese. The Machine is brutal.

The problem is that everything is driven by money. The Machine has figured out how to repurpose our in-born desire of being respected to feed itself, and how to make us do unnatural things, to chase the feeling of being important.

It’s a grinder.

Nobody – not the janitor, not the president, and sadly, not even the artist – is free to say what she knows in her heart of hearts, as long as she cares about having a social status of any sort, and a source of income.

Blessed be the ones who don’t think too much about any of it.

It’s a grinder, yo.

People at the bottom of society have more freedom to talk and have dissenting opinions – but that’s only because there is almost nowhere to fall from where they already are.

If you own stock, if you are looking for a job, if you want to keep a job, if you want to get published, if you want to get a prestigious interview, and sometimes if you want to stay alive – you have to say just the right thing, palatable enough, harmless enough so as not to alert the gatekeepers of the Machine to your inadequacy or your sudden uncontrollable freedom. And it would be just fine if people with ears knew that you are using your mouth in jest, that you are just doing what you have to do, if they sympathized with your unfreedom… Unfortunately, most people with ears are trained to take the spectacle literally.

Blessed be the ones who don’t think too much about any of it.

When the words that are coming out people’s mouths are polluted with self-preservation (be it basic bread or a high social status), the words are going to be distorted.

We all follow our instincts, and self-preservation takes over. When we are under pressure, we are all practical geese.

It’s a grinder.

Alas, in a world driven by financial self-preservation, truth-telling is a commercial affair. You can tell the truth – but only from a media-friendly angle, and only in a way that doesn’t piss off the sponsor, the donor, and the advertiser – and that meets the linguistic habits of your target demographic, of your very own echo chamber that feeds you. Truth, the edited version, hello.

Hello.

Can you hear me crying?

Fuck, I am an outsider.

I am married to my song, and the world is beautiful but ill.

I am an outsider.

I ran away from every machine, even though it gave me nice grades. But I can’t be running anymore. My brothers and sisters are all in here.

I was an outsider.

I was an outsider, and I still have a heart.
Photo credit: Victor Zamalin

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