The Modern Lost Boy--Balancing Inner Divinity

By Brian Napolean Cooper Jr.

As I drove down a familiar road on a particularly sunny August day, I stumbled upon a sign just at the edge of the street that read, “discipline equals freedom.” Ironically, this inspirational motto was posted by a storage facility on Ann Arbor’s southeastern tip. Even more interesting, this seemingly insignificant board would almost instantly redirect the course of my life— dramatic, I know. 

But let’s go backward a bit to better understand the forward.

Some of my earliest memories are of boxes. Not literal boxes like those made of cardboard or plastics, but ones built entirely of the world’s socially constructed rules about who I was supposed to be—many of which predated my birth by hundreds of years. These boxes could be better thought of as cages—but referring to them as such would total two dramatic proclamations in the span of two short paragraphs, and I promise I’m not that over-the-top.

I was (still am) black, and so I wasn’t meant to be smart. Since I was (hopefully still am) smart, I was expected to go into a lucrative professional career. As a boy, books weren’t too cool, especially books like Twilight. Likewise, creative writing was for losers. It seemed that every street that I decided to take, I’d immediately run into a roadblock or a “no outlet” sign. Whenever a tiny flame of confidence was lit in my inner core, it wasn’t long before someone or something told me that I was wrong or misled. Let’s just say that I was no stranger to the phrase, “grow up.”

As many of us do, I associated imagination and pure creative energy with childhood, so much so that I was fully convinced that adults didn’t have fun. Not necessarily because the adults around me seemed particularly drab or anything, but because we (the kids) were the ones that dreamt and played and hoped. Young kids were scolded for having imaginary friends past the age of eight, preteens for hanging onto their astronaut aspirations, and fifteen-year-old boys for spending all their time lost in the fictious world of novels. All this scolding persistently came from the same archetypal person: the grownup. To my younger self, it appeared that every one of them had long since passed the invisible threshold into the world of adulthood, into a world void of sunshine and possibility.  

It wasn’t long before my raging fear of growing older set in. In my early teen years, around the time that my father taught me to drive, I remember asking him if he still enjoyed getting behind the wheel, if he had fun each time he shifted our red Ford Windstar into gear. He chuckled and said that he did have fun driving, but I truly believed that he only said this to save me from the daunting realization that I only had a few more years left before I joined him, and all the other post-high schoolers, on the other side of that proverbial threshold. And so, on every subsequent driving lesson, I would ask him the same question to see if I could ever detect the hidden truth in his words.

I lived with a looming storm of dread overhead, taunting me with the promise of one day depleting all my joy and wonder. Soon, the path that was set out before me and the path that I truly wanted to take existed in such a state of dissonance that my inner drive, my divine masculine energy, was all but snuffed out before I could reach the age of thirteen. With this, I retreated inward to distract myself from feeling as if I’d already seen my expiration date. I set up permanent residence in the world behind my eyes. I guess you could think of my thirteen-year-old self as one of Peter Pan’s lost boys, just blacker and with a cell phone instead of a spear.

I existed in this fashion into my high school years, and as the world expanded by way of social media, I found myself moving in the opposite direction, collapsing so far into myself that I’d practically submitted the reigns of my life’s decisions to whoever asked for them. Externally, I went where I was supposed to go, did what I was supposed to do, and skimmed by with as little autonomy as a leaf floating down a stream. But inside, I built entire worlds out of my hopes and desires. 

I would become so absorbed in this internal world that I would delude myself into confusing it with reality. Maybe if I dream hard enough, this all will be real one day, I’d think to myself. I practically swam in the formlessness of fantasy, all the while convincing myself that I was merely “free-spirited” or “spontaneous.” I flew so high in the clouds that I forgot I had legs, and at that point, the concept of “self-discipline” was as foreign to me as the dark side of the moon. 

In my late teens and early twenties, I found myself in the whirlwind of a vicious cycle that would go as follows: 

While going about life in my formless manner, I’d spontaneously receive a magic idea delivered from the heavens, maybe in the form of a story concept or a new college major or a more traditionally lucrative career path (often to please external forces). With this new idea rumbling inside, I’d fuel myself solely on the vision of me accomplishing this goal. I would envision my future in such detail that it almost felt like I’d already achieved what I had yet to set out toward, and it felt good.

But then I would get a whiff of all the work that it would take to get to those dreams, and since I associated work— you know, the activity that adults always droned on about— with boredom, self-constraint, and rigid structure, my passion for the new project would burnout before I’d even started. After all, it’s a lot more fun to fanaticize about goals than to chase them, right?

This pattern was sustained for two reasons: one, I’d become so disconnected from my outer world that I simply didn’t care enough about making genuine, tangible progress towards my dreams, and two, I was doing just enough to trick those around me (and myself) into thinking that I was on a path of upward momentum in the general direction of my goals.

As the years went on, I would see the expansion of my inner world in the form of sun-sparkled meadows filled with the flowers of my life’s goals, ice-capped mountains that housed my visions of the future, and starburst galaxies that continually birthed new stars of ideas. My inner world became my oasis, a place that I could go to get a taste of possibilities. In here, I could rest easy on the cotton candy clouds of Neverland, and no one could ever tell me that I couldn’t. 

All of this may sound damn cool, and I would have to agree. To hold onto childlike imagination and wonder is truly a superpower in a world overrun by rat races, mindless consumerism, and those metaphorical boxes that I mentioned earlier. The problem wasn’t in my brain mechanisms themselves, but in how I was employing them. I used my colorful mind to escape rather than to create. 

This escapism reached its finale during the winter of my twenty-second year, the era that started the destruction that would ultimately lead to my reformation. At the start of this frigid winter, the tension between my lofty goals and my static action hit its crescendo, climaxing in a grand crumbling of all that I knew. Instead of a slap back to reality, the universe gifted me a swift and sudden kick to the backside. My vision was not yet crystal clear, but my eyes had been forced open.

Instead of graduating from college as were lots of my peers, I found myself at the receiving end of a dismissal letter from my institution. As I held the letter in my hands, knuckles turned to icicles and heart pounding in my ears, it was evident that my directionless wandering had not led me to the land of Oz. No, it seemed that I was much more fit for the land of college dropouts. 

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To make it easier to harbor this secret, I withdrew from my family and friends, electing to spend my time on my own so that no one could sense the darkness that seemed to be chained to my wrist.

With this isolation came waves of emptiness. It wasn’t that I was sad, I simply didn’t care about anything. I lost motivation in damn near every aspect of my life, which meant that staying at a job for longer than three months was all but impossible. I was out of school, out of work, out of human connection, and out of direction. Truly, I felt as if a fire had been set under the foundations of my life and everything that I’d become comfortable with was burnt to ashes.

To numb the discomfort of this destruction, I fell into various other forms of escapism, but more in the realm of earthly pleasures, one of which being my dependency on unhealthy foods. I was in the prime condition to fall prey to these storms of addiction because it was only when the water from their dark clouds rained down on me that I felt anything: it was only then that I felt alive. It wasn’t long before I gained upward of fifty pounds and my body became unrecognizable. 

Eventually, even my inner space became a cold world of gray clouds and barren plains, and it was then that I knew that this wasn’t going to be the story of the rest of my life. I’d declared myself at my own personal rock bottom, but with that, I knew it was only up from there. In this place of darkness, I finally understood the beauty of the light. With the help of my seemingly eternal optimism, I willed a sunflower to burst through the frozen grounds and reach skyward toward the sun that I knew would one day return to me.

It was a full two and a half years after that fateful winter when I saw the sign, “discipline equals freedom,” and I knew then that without reclaiming my power, nothing in my life would ever change. If I were to continue onward in the fashion that I’d been moving— going wherever I was led and warding off responsibility at every turn, all the while pretending that I directed the ship— I’d never reach the destination that I had long ago conjured in my mind’s eye--a destination of freedom, exploration, and peace. But even more important than this realization was the validation and care that I now afforded to my inner light, my truest essence. For the first time in a long time, I wanted to get better. 

Over the next few months, I would embark on an arduous quest to rebuild my life from the ashes left in the wake of the fire of aimlessness. I had to shine lights into hidden parts of myself, the parts that equated adulthood with emptiness. I had to realize that to exist in a world completely structured around my goals and desires was beautiful, not strenuous. As I built, I imbued every brick with confidence, drive, and structure. More importantly, I discovered that it was possible for me to work my ass off.

Soon, I found my existence beating to a new rhythm. I’d learned to wield the infinite strength of my feminine creative prowess while amplifying and grounding this power with my masculine forces of dedication and will power. And the more that I lived in this way, the more that I live in this way, the more that my dream seeds blossom into the wonderous lotus flowers that make up my reality. 

When I had slain the parts of my makeup that worked against me, the parts that enabled me to lie idly as I was steamrolled by the world, avenues opened for my passions and goals to seep through into the physical. With my eyes washed clear of the debris of the old ways, I reenrolled into college to study sustainability where I now maintain a perfect GPA. After powering through nearly an entire year of bodily ailments from a previous life of lethargy, I now exercise daily as evident by the strengthening of my body. And now that I’ve learned to dream with my eyes open, I stand confident in my hope of one day becoming a published novelist, and I’m fearless in the face of the concrete steps ahead to achieve this lofty goal.

So, to answer my previous question: no, it’s not more fun to fantasize about goals than it is to chase them. I was entirely misguided in thinking that my imaginings were any more delectable than this reality, and it wasn’t until I finally opened my eyes that I saw this. With that, I implore all the dreamers out there to keep on conjuring those visions of ecstasy, but please, always remember that even Peter Pan must take breaks from flight to plant his feet in the soil.

And lastly, to little Brian, thank you for never giving up your ability to see.

Brian Napolean Cooper Jr. is an Ann Arbor native. The oldest of five children, he grew up in a house never short of noise. Since the age of twelve, he found his own voice through the creation of fantastical worlds. When not creating, Brian is spending time with his family, studying sustainability at Arizona State University, or playing fetch with his puppy, Atlas. You can contact Cooper at briancooperjunior@gmail.com. 

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