We are all connected. Nothing exists in isolation. Yet so many people striving to discover and live their real life, jaded from knock-backs and battle-scars, end up on a lonely path. A path that skews your reality.

I’ve walked that path. I’d reached a point where I was so focused, so blinkered, that it no longer bothered me that I couldn’t get backing for my venture, or build the team I needed. I was going to change the world, by myself, if it killed me.

I had come to a place where I truly believed my life was a self-contained book—a story written in its own right.

But that belief was arrogant.

The day I realised just how arrogant, I found myself deeply humbled. That day, I realised that while taken in isolation my life is a self-contained story, but life cannot, and does not, exist in isolation. I realised that, in a cosmic context, my life isn’t a book in its own right, it isn’t even a chapter. In fact, it isn’t even a page, or a paragraph, or even a word.

My life is merely a syllable.

Now, here’s the thing with syllables—taken in isolation, they are often, maybe even usually, meaningless. In the context of the whole—a word, or a sentence—they are often imperceptible. Yet, as seemingly insignificant as a syllable may appear, they are vital to the meaning of the word, the sentence, and the story.

Syllables give, and receive, meaning from what lies either side of them.

Try this: imagine that you are a syllable—the syllable ‘tho’ (pronounce ‘thu’ for the purposes of this illustration). On its own, ‘tho’ seems pretty insignificant. Pretty meaningless.

Now imagine the sentence ‘he was thorough in all he did’.

You see yourself? In the context of the whole, ‘tho’ is hard to spot—just three letters among 23, one syllable among eight, virtually imperceptible.

But what if you—’tho’—decided not to take your place in that sentence and the story in which it features? To walk away and take the lonely path?

If you decided not to take your place, the sentence would read quite differently.

Instead of ‘he was thorough in all he did’, it would read ‘he was rough in all he did’.

Wow. By not taking your place you just took the sentence you could have been a part of and turned it on its head.

So, you see, ‘tho’ (that’s you) may only be three small letters, one tiny syllable, with no perceptible maning by itself, but it has the potential to have one huge effect.

We are all just syllables, and we all have a choice—to take our place in a story that is way bigger than we are, or to blaze a trail alone. But here’s the thing: inside the story, you can be many things—you can be thorough, or thoughtful, or even thoroughbred; but, outside the story, you will only ever be ‘tho’.

Inside the story you bring meaning to what lies either side of you, and take meaning from that which bumps against you. Outside the story you have no meaning at all.

Inside the story, you are part of a bigger whole. Outside the story, you are simply three letters that sit next to each other.

You were meant to blaze your own trail, to create your own life, to be the person you were meant to be. But you were never meant to do that alone. You were meant to take your place in, bring meaning to, and take meaning from, the greatest story ever written—the unfolding story of life.

So what do you choose? Will you take your place in an amazing, unfolding adventure that is eager to welcome you, or will you walk alone?