Empires From Islands

Slowly, you open your eyes. The warm sand beneath you comforts your body. The radiating sun bathes you in sweat. Tears fall from your eyelids. The tropical island—the place you've dreamed of since forever—has become your home. It's majestic waters, supply of coconuts, and fluorescent beach roses are yours. The palm trees, previously towering you, now seem smaller, shorter, and more personal.

An island is a sanctuary: disconnected from distractions and overthinking. In solitude, we can focus on growth, building, and thinking. Being alone gives us a space free of harmful social influences. Away from the parties, away from social media, away from the perturbing noise, we can dream. And hopefully transcend. Our attention is placed strictly on survival and individual aspirations, where we can internalize, reflect, and reconcile ambitions and decisions.

Isolation is necessary. When we constantly throw ourselves in overcrowded social environments, filled with expectations and norms that are not conducive to our future, we are unable to individualize. We conform. If we are to believe in ourselves, then we need time to be alone with ourselves, so that we can listen to ourselves. Our true desires and self-understandings emerge in the darkest of rooms and remotest of islands.

Complete isolation isn't the point, but some isolation is.

The road to success always reaches the intersection of loneliness. Most aren't willing to spend countless hours in the gym. Most aren't willing to sacrifice their Saturday nights to study. Hard work performed in an empty gym or in the vacant library, when no one else is willing to do so, lifts us towards the palm trees.