No One Is Rooting For You

Is humanity inherently good or bad?

Where does morality come from? Are certain values innate or learned? Are some individuals naturally friendly and kind-hearted while others are born to be shitheads? I think about these things from time to time.

I’ve developed the general belief that no one is rooting for you.

If you have at least one person in this world that truly and genuinely supports you and wants your dreams to come true with no strings attached then you should consider yourself fortunate.

But for the other 99% of the people you encounter in life, let me break the news to you, they are not rooting for you to succeed. Hell, I’m not rooting for you. Do you think I want your blog to blow up? Do you really think I want you to have more readers than we do?

Recently, I decided to dive into the world of photography. Why? Obviously because there’s not enough Asian photographers out there.

It only took a day or two before I encountered a few people that wanted to take a big dump all over my pursuits. No, I don’t own a fancy Canon DSLR (it’s always the Canon users), nor do I have a $2,000 telephoto lens, but what’s it to you? It’s almost as if people are afraid that you’ll be successful so they want to put out that flame of desire before it gets bigger.

Everyone has their own worldview, the set of morals and principles that guide and reinforce the way they see life. Whenever something comes along that challenges or even shatters this worldview, they feel threatened and get defensive. We saw this when Elvis started shaking his hips on TV and when Bruce became Caitlyn. The polarizing reactions weren’t a reflection of Elvis or Caitlyn; they were a reflection of the individual viewer and the discomfort they felt seeing someone living life with a different worldview from theirs.

We all want to be ourselves, do we not? We want to try new things. We have different dreams and interests. I’ll tell you this much: the bigger the dream, the more hate you’ll get from your peers, your so-called friends, and even your family. You want to be a Hollywood actor or a rockstar? Almost everyone will be waiting for you to fail. Why? Because people are risk-adverse. In their minds, they would never dare to do anything crazy because they feel like they would certainly fail, and so obviously that means you should fail too. People want to be right. They want their worlds to make sense. But what if you’re crazy enough to take huge risks in your life and they actually pay off? These people may have a hard time with that.

So just be clear on this: if you want to try anything daring in your life, just know that most people will be rooting against you. It’s not so much about you, it’s more about their own insecurities and self-imposed limitations. It doesn’t matter though, it still feels equally shitty to know that you don’t have a whole lot of support. But that’s exactly why it will feel so much sweeter if your dreams come true.

Then again, they’re probably right. You’ll probably fail. But will you go for it anyways? That’s the question.

Chris.