The Default Setting isn’t Destiny
Most people are born into a default setting for life. It’s inherited—quietly passed down through family, culture, school systems, and media.
A rhythm so normalized it becomes invisible:
Be born → go to school → get a job → find a partner → have kids (or don’t) → retire → die.
It’s not malicious. It’s just… the path most traveled.
And for some, it might even feel right. But for others—for those of us born with a different internal compass—that setting feels like a cage.
And breaking out of it?
It’s not a gentle awakening.
It’s an initiation.
For me, the shift began in the quietest way.
I was reading a fantasy novel—one of many I’d devoured since childhood—and something… sparked.
It was like a breadcrumb dropped between the lines.
A feeling I couldn’t explain, only chase.
“This feels real.”
Not literally, not factually—but something in it rang truer than the world I’d been taught to accept.
And I realized: maybe that’s the secret. Maybe imagination isn’t just an escape.
Maybe it’s a bridge.
Fantasy showed me that new realities are created first in the unseen—through the portal of imagination.
Not as make-believe. As seedwork.
As memory. As truth. As a tuning fork to what’s possible.
That’s when the calling started. A whisper that said:
“There is more than this. Follow it.”
And I did.
But chasing that whisper meant tearing down everything I thought I knew.
It meant late nights alone, sitting with my journal and my doubts.
It meant looking at the ruts my thoughts traveled in—the grooves shaped by fear, shame, and generational expectation—and choosing, again and again, to carve a new path.
I’ve spent countless hours rewiring my own neural pathways.
Like redirecting water in the arroyo. At first, it seems impossible.
The old channels are deep. Automatic. Familiar.
But slowly—drop by drop—I dig a new trench. And over time, the current begins to follow.
Still, the tug-of-war in my mind is real:
Is this real?
Can I trust it?
Is it safe to believe in something this big?
Because this path does feel like walking the edge of madness.
And maybe it is.
As Joseph Campbell once wrote:
“The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.”
To choose the mystic’s path is to learn how to breathe underwater.
To break free of the default setting means learning to trust what calls you forward more than the voices trying to pull you back.
Because here’s the truth:
The default setting is next to nothing compared to what actually exists.
We were never meant to be bound by someone else’s idea of safety.
We are here to remember, to reclaim, and to become.
If you’re feeling the unraveling…
If you’re hovering on the edge of the known, terrified to step off the map…
Do it anyway.
That pull you feel? That’s not foolishness. That’s your future self calling.
The magic isn’t behind you. It’s what you were born to carry forward.
And you’re not crazy. You’re waking up. And if you’d like to know more about becoming more, check out this post.