The Epiphany that Broke the Mold
I don’t usually talk about personal stuff here, and I don’t plan to but just this once I thought I might talk about something that happened to me about a year and a half ago.
For my entire life, I was a conformist. I followed the “rules” to the point that I was over achieving in every way possible. Those of you who knew me in high school considered me to be stressed and an over-achiever. The nights when others were out partying, I stayed in an studied. It wasn’t because my parents were oppressive or strict, it was more that I was trying so desperately to validate whether I was smart or not. I actually tried so hard that I worked while in high school, slaving hours at eBay programming. Then the SAT came, the grades, and all the other bullshit that “defines” high school students as they applied for various colleges.
Despite my lower SAT scores, I was able to get into Berkeley and Georgetown. At the time, I considered not getting into an Ivy League a complete failure and considering I hadn’t gotten into MIT, my father’s alma mater, I assumed he was disappointed in my performance.
On a personal level, I was also someone that cared so much about the minutia — “Don’t drive fast”, “Make your parents proud by performing well”, “Focus on what is important, like making a good career and making money”, etcetera, you know the OCD mentality that drives America’s suburban communities.
Then before going to Berkeley, I worked at Facebook hours on end, trying to make up for not getting to Harvard, MIT, and all those schools. I was on a mission to “show everyone up”. After Facebook, I sold some software that my friends and I had built to a music social network for a good amount of cash and the congratulations rushed in and I thought “so this is when I’m going to start being happy”.
Heh, what a let down.
I plunged into a few months of severe depression and thoughts of suicide. I felt as though I was waking up in the morning because someone else needed me and not because I wanted to live my life for myself. I was contemplating leaving school and living at home. I consider the Fall of 2006 the worst time of my life ever. The feeling is like falling into a hole and not knowing how to climb out and contemplating just giving up. It wasn’t because I was scared to go on with my life, it was more that I just didn’t understand why society had to be run a certain way. Why was a mold built for us to conform to? Why do you have to do X, Y, and Z to be successful? It was almost as if society had put an anvil on my head and asked me to jump as high as I could and if I wasn’t able to get my feet more than 1 foot off the ground, I would be subjugated to a life of poverty and failure.
On October 24th, 2006, I said two words that changed it all: “Fuck That.”
I completely changed what I wanted to do with my life. I decided that I wanted to everything in my power to enhance people’s social lives and I figured the first way to do that was by doing what I was good at: building an internet site that helped people socialize. November and December of 2006 marked the beginning of a new era — I gave up my OCD tendencies, reoriented my life to not caring about the things that didn’t matter, and eliminated everything that wasn’t important personally to me. I gave up entirely on trying to “be the best” in school and focused on what I wanted to do. I dropped out of school, started a company, raised a few million dollars, and really the rest is history.
Since then, I’ve realized that life is all about finding what you want to accomplish and doing everything in your power to do that. The reason this blog is called The Iconoclast is because its the iconoclasts that are the ones that realize the mold is just a social construction for people that think life is determined for them. Its easier to follow directions for most people, but it won’t be until those people are in their 50s before they realize that the mold was just something to keep them from reaching their full potential. Now, everything I do is based on what I want and what I think will further my objective of enhancing social lives. I’m sure there are plenty of people out there with other objectives and that’s why humans have been able to succeed in so many areas.
If you watch Fight Club again, watch out for when Tyler says “It’s only when we feel as though we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”