Awaken Your Inner Hero

Let me be honest, a life with purpose is not as beneficial in the short run for the world economy as is the narrative that convinces you that a better television, the latest tablet, or a new car is what you need to be happy. Or, that the newest facial cream, work-out machine, or diet plan is what you need to be more beautiful. In the words of Steven Pressfield, “We live in a consumer culture that’s acutely aware of its unhappiness and has massed all its profit-seeking artillery to exploit it. By selling us a product, a drug, a distraction.”2

It wasn’t my son Benjamin’s mistake, it was mine. I had transformed a toy designed for adventure, exploration, building, and destroying, into a museum. I had transformed it into something static. I was teaching my son that life has to be lived according to a handbook and when you finish something, you put it on show in order to observe it and show others your work of art.
My son was refusing to be controlled by that way of thinking. Of course, he wanted to assemble the plane, but he also wanted to destroy it and after that, assemble a boat with the remaining pieces. He wanted to assemble a different world every day—today spaceships and planets, tomorrow boats and pirates. He wasn’t willing to stay in the ordinary world