David McElroy

We spend most of our lives wandering blindly.

We see the rooms where we live. We see the streets where we walk. We see buildings and people and cars and cities. For most of us, our physical eyes faithfully show us the world around us.

But our real eyes — our spiritual eyes, emotional eyes, metaphysical eyes, call them what you prefer — are closed and blind. We don’t even know they exist. The physical world is only a tiny fraction of reality, but our spiritual blindness limits us. We are just as blind as a sightless man is in our physical world.

All sorts of truth is written in our hearts. Every now and then, we glimpse that. Ever so often, the inner light is so bright that we can’t ignore it. Those are the times when we simply know things, even when they don’t make sense to anybody else.

I spent most of my life blind to what my heart already knew. But as I’ve slowly started awakening, I often feel overwhelmed with what I know. And once a truth is seen, it can’t be unseen.

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I can still vividly see what my fleet of planes looked like.

I wasn’t sure how many there were. I wasn’t even certain what we would use them for. I just knew the company would be so large that it would require a fleet of planes. At least six or eight of them. Not small planes. Huge airliner size. The design was simple but bold. Each plane was a solid color, but each was a different color, bold enough to stand out anywhere.

And each one had the company name on the side. In monstrously huge letters. In a powerful typeface — such as Futura extra bold or Folio extra bold — it just had my name. The company name. It just said, “McElroy.”

Confession is good for the soul, but it’s miserable for the ego. I need to confess these old desires for ego satisfaction, because if I’m not careful, they could return.

And I don’t need that kind of toxic ego in my life anymore. It nearly destroyed me.

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I started my life full of hope. I believed people were good and that my future was bright.

The world was some sort of ideal and rational place, at least in my mind. A future utopia. I learned to believe — in a way that isn’t clear to me anymore — that intelligence and hard work were always rewarded. I believed most other people were decent and well-meaning. They shared my values.

Living an adult life is nothing like what my childhood led me to expect. I question the intelligence and rationality of most people. I’ve come to believe we all have some minor (or major) form of mental illness, most of which we ignore. (That means you and me, too.)

Most of all, I’ve come to see that most people don’t share my values. They’re not much like me.

I’ve discovered that high intelligence is often a handicap, not a ticket to success. Shallow hearts and dishonest actions are often rewarded instead. Most people don’t care about one another. The material utopia which I was promised has led most people to focus so much on the benefits of our material advancements that they overlook the spiritual and emotional elements which are ultimately more important. I see us as a shallow and unhappy culture.

And I have become bitterly disappointed about all of this.

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