It is hard to start the journey,
It is harder to accept ignorance,
It is hardest to look beyond words,
This is the road to wisdom.
The Beginning
A decade ago, I had already spent fifteen years lodged in the labyrinthine bowels of a corporate giant. Friends and family were astonished by the perks I enjoyed: excellent compensation, prestige, and job security. Back then, I had an unexplained obsession with Intervention, a show about families who try to save loved ones trapped by addiction. Now, let me be clear—I rarely drink, and I’ve never smoked, gambled, or used drugs. Yet, I resonated deeply with those desperate protagonists. I was chasing a different high, perpetually craving my next dopamine hit: a promotion, a high-stakes project, or a special mention in a company report. A digital drip of social media affirmed the lies I told myself to get through the day. The evenings were numbed by TV dramas about fictional heroes and monsters, while the needs of my real family were ignored. It was only a matter of time before an intervention would be manifest.
The big day came after a carefree family outing to watch Zootopia. My kids and I belted out Shakira’s “Try Everything” on the drive home like we didn’t have a care in the world. The song exposed a raw nerve, and I told my wife how I felt. The storm within had grown impossible to ignore and there was no one to talk me out of what I was about to do. I went to work, fortified my nerves with liquid courage (yes, they served drinks there), met my boss, and quit my job. In one move, I marooned myself, like a Spartan subjecting his son to a mortal rite of passage.
The IV drip of the corporate sedative was all I had tasted for years, but I bravely faced my newfound sobriety. Yet, I was still hungry for a high, so I channeled my energy into launching a startup, convinced that success would bring me purpose. But after every pitch, investors seemed to see right through my hollow enthusiasm, as dealers see through junkies. The few clients I managed to land slowly drifted away, unimpressed. At home, I felt like a dead weight.
In a last-ditch attempt, I took refuge at a company with a noble mission. If I surrounded myself with people chasing a dream, I hoped to catch it by osmosis. But after only eight months, I was unceremoniously let go—my emptiness unfulfilled.
The Ocean of Ignorance
The nights got worse. A recurring nightmare haunted me: a vast, cold ocean stretched indifferently in all directions. Unseen predators circled under me while I struggled to stay afloat, my legs paralyzed by fear and hanging like bait. Poised on the knife’s edge, despair began to gnaw at me. My health crumbled. Doctors delivered a grim verdict: I had only a few years left. The frog had leapt from the safety of its well, only to burn in the blazing sun.
My story doesn’t end here, but this much is enough to make the point: the journey to self-transcendence is not for the faint of heart. Rarely is it forced upon us, and we dare not force it upon ourselves. Our deepest samskaras and vasanas, those ingrained beliefs and habits that bind us to our illusions, are a prison we call home. Unlike the well-meaning simplicity of giving or receiving advice, radical self-discovery requires confronting yourself—vulnerable and unarmed. The highest stakes are involved: you risk self-abandonment or worse. And let’s be honest: the odds of a win are slim.
I realized in my despair that we all have something in common: we are all immersed in the same vast ocean of ignorance. Some of us strain mightily toward the surface, reaching for the light of self-awareness. Others grow weary, slipping into the undertow of drudgery. Most of us passively let these ignorant currents carry us wherever they will.
The Detour of Words
When suffering is at its peak, and we make peace with it, something new happens. We realize that the very experience of our struggle points to a deeper cause. It suggests that there is a foundation beneath the tragedy, for even a tragedy must have a reason. Fleeting as it may be, this realization gives us hope, if only for a moment. At that moment, we freely blurt out hard-won revelations and sing them with abandon. We write poems about brief glimpses of reality and share stories that make us laugh and weep, all the time trying to hold on to the ungraspable.
Our expressions in moments of catharsis—the patterns we form as sounds or scripts—are merely the currency of true and false ideas. Words are merely breadcrumbs we leave in our wake to help us remember the way and for others to follow. And yet we elevate breadcrumbs to signposts, transform signposts into commandments, commandments into holy books. We place language on an altar, convinced that mastery of words is mastery over life. We are ready to kill for words because we are blind to their true nature. They are only shadows, cast not by truth itself but only by the hand pointing to it.
In the end, exhausted and numbed, we realize that words, however revered, are hollow compared to the reality they attempt to describe. The map is not the terrain, the signifier is not the signified, a description is not an experience, and an experience is not the world as it is. Our attachment to words keeps us circling at a distance, not exploring from up close the substance they claim to hold.
Once a word is uttered, it becomes the past. The present, ever-pregnant with possibility, evades our grasp. Wisdom lies in recognizing the distinction between the known and the possible, between past choices and future potential. The journey is long and uncertain, but with this start, you’re already on the path.
