“Icarus should have waited for nightfall, the moon would have never let him go.”
It didn’t begin with some grand revelation, It began quietly, when I finally started saying out loud what I truly wanted, not what I was supposed to want not what was safe, small, or easy to digest. Just the truth, raw & unfiltered & that’s when it happened the quiet backlash, the subtle guilt from others disguised as concern, the unspoken rules that made it clear wanting more than the minimum made me the problem.
They made me feel like I was asking for too much, like I was too much & I started believing them.
Fear snuck in like a fog, settling in my chest, my voice & my decisions. It became the compass I didn’t know I was using, & for a while, I let it guide me, choosing silence over confrontation, settling instead of striving but lately, something’s shifted, Something cracked & through the crack, a little light got in.
I found myself thinking about Icarus, again.
Before escaping tho, Daedalus warned his son, “Don’t fly too high or the sun will melt the wax on your wings and you will fall, Follow me closely. Do not set your own course.”
But Icarus became so excited by his ability to fly, he forgot the warning and followed his own course instead, he flew too high, the wax melted, and Icarus fell down into the sea and drowned.
You probably know the myth.
Everyone tells the story like a cautionary tale, As if ambition was the villain, As if his biggest mistake was wanting too much.
But they never talk about the flight, What if that moment was worth it to him?
What if, for a few glorious seconds, he lived more fully than most people ever do?
Icarus had a choice between a brief encounter with whatever he wanted or a meaningless existence, He didn’t just want freedom, He wanted more. Something beyond survival. Maybe he just wanted to see how high he could go, even if it cost him everything & maybe just maybe that wasn’t a tragedy. Maybe it was a choice.
I won’t lie to you.
Can ambition be dangerous? yes, I know how unhealthy it can be. But ambition as a whole? To call it out as a bad thing ? I know what it feels like to burn out, to stretch yourself thin, to want something so badly it hurts. But ambition in itself? That hunger? That fire? It’s not wrong.
What’s wrong is pretending you don’t want more just to make other people feel comfortable
Right now, I’m not quite where I imagined I’d be, The future? It’s a blur. A fog I keep walking into with no map, just instinct. I don’t have the answers or even peace.
But I do have this quiet rebellion inside me ,the refusal to shrink, to want more even when it terrifies me. I used to feel ashamed of that hunger but now I let it live.
So here I am, chasing something I can’t fully name yet.
Climbing toward a version of myself I haven’t met.
Not because I know how this ends but because I want to know how far I can go before I fall.
And if I do fall, at least it’ll be with my eyes open and my wings stretched wide.
And when it all gets too loud, when doubt comes dressed as reason, I’ll remember Icarus, not the tragedy but the beautiful boy who dared to fly.
Till Next Time♥
