You Must Lose Your Mind to Find Yourself
On freedom, creativity, and madness
To the deep thinkers,
Welcome to the Deep Thinkers Newsletter: A collection of essays dedicated to going beyond the surface.
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"A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free." — Nikos Kazantzakis
Lately, I've been consumed by a deep, unfamiliar kind of existential angst. Not the kind that ruins, but the kind that nudges me to look closer. There is a presence urging me to investigate further. To explore the despair I’ve long been afraid of facing.
Now, I am no stranger to an existential crisis. Souls like mine—we always seem to be shrouded in shadows, working twice as hard just to keep a smile on our faces.
But something feels different this time.
This time, it doesn’t feel like the despair is trying to pull me further into the darkness; it feels like it’s trying to wake me up. It feels like it’s trying to show me the world from a new vantage point, as if saying: look again.
Maybe the disenchantment I’ve felt for years was always a guide. Maybe this is just the first time I’ve chosen to follow it instead of running away.
When Freedom Looks Like Madness
The moment I realized this crisis was different came during a conversation with a friend of mine. Our talk eventually veered into the existential, and I told him what I wanted most in life was to be free…and I mean, truly free.
I told him I didn’t want the shallow freedom we’re sold. I want liberation from every layer of adopted beliefs, norms, and traditions that we’ve been conditioned to accept.
I explained that this desire began as an unconscious yearning to shed every layer so I could find myself in the truest way possible. Eventually, it evolved from that unconscious yearning to a semi-conscious migraine, to a full-on conscious alarm that won’t stop blaring.
My friend's response? He thinks the freedom I'm searching for is impossible in this world. To him, obsessing over freedom when powerful entities control everything is crazy. It's madness.
I told him he might be right.
And yet, I must still find out for myself.
Drifting Without Anchors
The world is constantly changing. Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman coined the term liquid modernity to describe our reality, always in flux, always demanding we catch up.
To live in the modern world is to always feel like you're behind in some way. Trying to keep pace feels like a fool's errand. Every week, scratch that, every day brings something new. This lack of stability becomes disorienting, nauseating even. And this struggle to stay informed only makes it harder to uncover our individuality or trust ourselves—our taste, opinions, sense of morality, or even what deserves our attention versus what's merely a distraction.
Like most people, I've found myself unmoored, chasing trends and collective opinions. But most of it is so disingenuous. I find so much of what gets attention these days incredibly stupid, a complete waste of mental energy. I feel disconnected, like an alien overhearing conversations that sound painfully hollow.
Media. News. Gossip.
Media. News. Gossip.
On and on and on.
It all feels so empty.
I’ve often been no better, feeding into the monstrous machine that is modernity. I’ve played along to fit in. I’ve nodded, laughed, and participated in these hollow exchanges while quietly feeling more and more detached from the world.
But I'm tired of playing along.
The modern world pretends to embrace uniqueness, but it's a system that is actually eradicating it.
We're drowning in public opinions about everything. So-and-so's favorite books, their analysis of this, their thoughts on that. Not to mention, the relentless parade of pointless products influencers promote.
The concept of originality has turned into a farce.
We're "more connected than ever," but if the core of the system is rotten, it’s no wonder these “connections” feel rotten as well.
Searching For Answers
It took me a long time to acknowledge my depression. Growing up in a household that didn’t believe in the very concept will do that to you. But once I gave my feelings the spotlight they’d been begging for, I spent the next decade of my life trying to “fix” myself.
I followed self-help gurus. I explored Stoicism, Existentialism, and Taoism, foraging for that "aha!" moment, the final answer I could plug into an ever-fleeting happiness equation I was trying to solve.
I sought salvation in material things and the usual life goals: college degree, nice apartment, stable job. I traveled alone. I looked to God and the Bible. I took psychedelics. But the number one tactic I used to fight the darkness was avoidance, numbing myself in a fog of distractions that promised reprieve from my torment.
I thought inebriated bliss was the same as peace.
Unsurprisingly, none of it has worked. And that’s because deep within the forest of noise and indulgences, I’ve been lost in quiet despair—an unspoken knowing that I was made for more, that sedation wasn't salvation.
And so, remaining on the surface was no longer an option. I had to embark on a different path, one running contrary to expectations. One that probably makes me seem crazy to most people I know.
Madness and Liberation
Søren Kierkegaard might feel like philosophical wallpaper now, the brooding figure in Instagram carousels and bookish group chats (no offense?). But long before becoming a social media staple, he was asking uncomfortable questions: What does it mean to live authentically? What if despair is hidden in the human condition? What happens when we stop playing along with the crowd?
After calling off his marriage, Kierkegaard became a social outcast. Recognizing that his inner struggles and philosophical pursuits would make him a poor husband, he chose to renounce happiness to fulfill what he saw as a deeper calling.
From the outside, it was an insane choice. But to him, it was the right one. It was his Leap of Faith, the process by which individuals find salvation amid existential suffering. He chose to be who he thought he should be rather than who the world wanted him to be.
Kierkegaard took control of his destiny and was thought to be mad for doing so, and nothing reinforces that perception quite like this quote.
As I grew up,
I opened my eyes and saw the real world.
I began to laugh and I haven't stopped laughing since.
Another, more modern example (and someone who’s been a personal influence) is Donald Glover (aka Childish Gambino), who has long defied conventional categorization.
When Glover released his studio album Awaken, My Love!, he detoured from the rap music that brought him notoriety within the hip-hop community. The single "Redbone" confused diehard fans like myself, but the song took off, and so did Gambino's funkadelic era. Glover’s shift wasn’t just musical, it was philosophical.
Two men with seemingly nothing in common, rejecting convention and expectations, choosing instead to follow their inner compass.
The main source of connection to our inner compass is our creative expression. We all carry with us a reserve of creative gold. When we choose to create, we begin to loosen the grip of rigid systems that have stifled our originality since childhood. But to reclaim our originality in its purest form, we must embrace the tension between who we are and who we’ve been conditioned to be.
In other words, we must return home.
The Journey Home
Søren Kierkegaard called it the Leap of Faith, a move away from rational detachment and into inward, subjective truth. I think of my version as The Journey Home: a return to the deepest parts of ourselves, to the version of us still free to create, express, and live without the weight of societal expectations.
The Journey Home draws from Kierkegaard’s legacy but speaks to a uniquely modern crisis, where noise drowns out intuition, conformity buries authenticity, and passion is too often mistaken for madness.
To return home, we must:
1. Choose Passionate Commitment Over Objective Detachment
Rationality and risk aversion have their place, but on the path to discovering our subjective truth, they often become barriers.
Take relationships, for example. Remain too rational, too detached, and the union withers. A detached observer cannot offer the love and care required for the emergence of beauty. Meaningful creation—transcendent creation—requires risk. It demands the courage to put your heart on the line.
Rational detachment, by contrast, is a cage. To leave it may seem foolish. It’s a risk, because it’s true: if you step outside, you could get hurt. That’s why it’s called a leap of faith.
Just as entrusting your heart to someone could leave you broken, choosing to believe in yourself might (and often does) bring failure, frustration, and doubt. However, truth is found not in observation, but in immersion. In subjectivity. In inwardness. In passion.
2. Embrace Individual Truth Over Universal Systems
Universal systems don't make us feel anything. Moral codes, religious dogmas, political ideologies, and even self-help frameworks offer structure but often bypass the emotional weight of lived experience.
On the other hand, individual truths are sources of emotions. And even when we don't completely understand another's individual truth, we can feel it through their works—their essays and poems, their films, their paintings, their music.
Meanwhile, the works rooted in universal systems rarely evoke the same kind of feelings. That is, the formulaic, algorithmic, controlled machine of mainstream creation often feels soulless.
Now, not all popular media should be demonized. But the works that have inspired me most are those that rebel against convention. Not for rebellion’s sake, but because the divine madness seeps through their work. The love and care are felt in every note, frame, and brushstroke.
They are proof that when we venture on The Journey Home, when we create from our soul, we speak a language that can transcend the confines of universal systems.
3. Confront Dread, Anxiety, and Despair
Life is filled with so much pain and tension, and all the while, we are covertly (and sometimes, overtly) nudged toward quiet acceptance. This creates a society of people who suppress to survive. That suppression, without expression, morphs into dread, anxiety, and despair.
The reality is: there is no shortcut to conquering these feelings. We must journey inward to confront them, meet them where they live, which in itself is a massive defiance of convention.
The courage to face our inner demons is one of the greatest catalysts for liberated expression. And paradoxically, it’s through the journey into darkness that the raw material for creation is born.
It’s there, in the shadows, that the light breaks through—where the false self can be laid to rest, the artist can finally breathe, the soul begins to remember, and the world starts to take shape in a way that finally makes sense.
4. Leap Beyond Reason Into Faith and Meaning
Kierkegaard's Leap of Faith transcends reason. It's about trusting ourselves and leaping in directions others deem mad. It requires inspecting our beliefs closely to determine which serve us and which don't.
Your creative spirit is the source of strength here.
Start projects with no guarantee of success or approval. Compose songs, write essays, create videos.
Create. Create. Create.
Create meaning in personal rituals, such as meditation, prayer, or spiritual traditions, carrying them out without certainty that they "work." You don't know if it's real, but your practices matter to you.
When you create without guarantees of success, when you create meaning through personal rituals that don't lean on established dogmas, you learn to be yourself rather than explain yourself.
And what is more freeing than that?
Your Madness Is a Badge of Honor
Every day, I try to remain on The Journey Home. It’s not always pretty. I’m often paralyzed with doubt and self-loathing. I take detours. Sometimes, I just sit down on the path, too exhausted or too scared to keep moving. But my inner compass is leading me to create and share more, and I'm doing my best to honor the call.
There's no guarantee what I'm doing here will succeed, but to write, create, and dedicate time to work on my dreams is the madness I’ve chosen.
Many of my friends don’t understand why I spend hours on these essays. The idea of sitting with difficult ideas, learning for the sake of curiosity, feels foreign—maybe even ridiculous—to them.
I know the mindset here on Substack is different. This is a space where these concepts can breathe a little easier. The real challenge is carrying them out into the world. A world where most people wake up, go to work, come home, and numb themselves in front of a screen until it’s time to do it all again the next day.
It’s in that world that living with intention, curiosity, and conviction feels like rebellion.
To be viewed as mad, in a world as backward as the one we live in, is a badge of honor. So wear yours with pride.
What does your inner compass tell you to create? What "madness" have you been avoiding that might actually be your path to freedom? Share your thoughts in the comments, I'd love to hear about your own Journey Home.
If this essay resonated with you, consider supporting my writing journey! You can ‘buy me a coffee’ using the link below 👇🏾
What I’m into this week:
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (book)
“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
Much love,
- Jon ♾️
How to live in this world when there is a deep sense of knowing that it's all an illusion and that there is a more meaningful way to experience this existence is something that I've been exploring/battling/experimenting with. Your essay is reassuring, Jon, thank you!
I love this. Although questioning our actions and questioning societal expectations is often the harder path, that curiosity will hopefully provide us with a more enriched life 🤞