14. THE LONG GAME
Jaytheauthor Travel Journal: Brussels
SERIES MISSION: For the past few months, I have been writing a diary entry to try to process and analyse moments, emotions, and happenings on and off the road. I found that if I let the words come out unfiltered, uncomfortably honest, this practice pulls out many hidden meanings and secrets. I thought these realisations and learnings might help others too, because maybe you too, feel these emotions, and maybe we can both learn from the autopsy of such emotions.
16 February - Brussels
Only last week I was being interviewed twice a day, on live radio, for newspapers, I was even on the major breakfast show in Ireland. Now, as expected, the calls have stopped coming, and the world has moved on as if I were nothing more than a ghost caught in the background of a stranger’s photo. And in a weird way, part of me likes this feeling of being forgotten. Overlapped by the next story. Because when the spotlight is constantly shining in your eyes, it’s hard to find the silence to sit and reflect on what’s actually happened. What good is adoration when you are unable to recognise yourself in the mirror?
I experienced this same spotlight four years ago, when I started posting my Dear Stranger letters across Brussels. The novelty caught wind. TV stations, newspapers, they all contacted me at once. As things like this do. When you become a hot topic, everybody wants a piece of the pie. And just like Ireland, for a week I felt like some sort of local celebrity. Whereas now, I’m just a blip in Brussels’ past.
On my flight from Dublin to Brussels, I sat next to a guy who kept offering me his water bottle filled with vodka. Halfway through the flight, he started talking about his life as a pickpocket. He said something that stuck with me. Something that applies to anyone chasing a dream. “Very few criminals save money,” he told me, “because money comes in fast. Whether it’s five grand or ten, it’s gone by the next week. They believe it’ll come back just as easy as it left. Fast money. Fast spending. Fast problems. But when money comes in slow, when you work hard for it, you value it. You save it.”
His words made me think about my own career. How I’ve been creeping through it slowly, step by step, often falling before finding the next foothold. So when the spotlight occasionally hits my eyes, I already know the bulb will burst sooner or later, so I might as well enjoy it while it lasts. And when the bulb does burst, the silence, the thing that unsettles so many, feels less like a fall and more like a pause. An opportunity to reflect on what was gained rather than what was lost.
I’ve seen so many people become famous quickly. We live in a society that allows it to happen overnight. And because of the speed at which everything moves, they fall prey to the seduction of fame. They let it hypnotise them, let it convince them they are more important than everyone else. But the spotlight is erratic. It finds a glint in your eye and tries to absorb it before moving on to the next shine. It makes people believe they’ve found a rare key, one very few ever get to hold. A key that will unlock every door. That’s when the ego creeps in. When self-importance stains the mind. But what so many don’t realise is that this so-called magic key has a limit on how many doors it can open before it breaks. And when you’re playing the long game, acknowledging the fragility of that key makes the fracture softer. Those who believe it will last forever often fall into the spiral.
What I’m trying to get at is this: it’s easy to want the fast-track route, but with speed comes fragility. The slow road might make your legs ache. It might feel boring. But moving slowly can save your life.
When you walk slowly across a frozen lake, you see the cracks before you step through them. And the more you fall along the way, the stronger you become. So if you ever do fall from a great height, your bones are already familiar with impact. You heal quicker.
Slow and steady keeps the ego quiet.
Fast and furious feeds delusion.
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