When the Author Never Arrives
Some people live their entire lives without ever arriving.
The body moves.
The mind accumulates knowledge.
The world keeps turning.
But the author never takes the pen.
In these lives, the script remains inherited. Decisions are made, but always with an asterisk. Actions occur, but responsibility is deferred. When something goes wrong, a reason is always ready: upbringing, circumstance, trauma, timing, society, fate. None of these are false. None of them are sufficient.
The author never arrives when a man mistakes explanation for absolution.
He can explain himself perfectly. He can name every wound, every betrayal, every failure that shaped him. But the explanation becomes a refuge. It allows him to remain intelligible without becoming accountable. So life happens to him devoid of meaning and experience that refreshes the soul, strengthens the body, and allows the mind to adapt. Motionlessness is a sign of death but this is by choice and not by the nature of man. For the nature of man is the want of more life and advancement. He waits for clarity before acting because he needs assurances. He waits for confidence before choosing because fear regulates that which chooses to be strong. He waits for certainty before committing because conformity outweighs individualism.
And in waiting, the moment passes.
When the author never arrives, the shadow grows louder. Not because it is evil, but because it has been left unattended. Unexamined pain does not disappear; it governs. What was meant to inform begins to dictate. He believes he is being cautious, when in truth he is being carried. He calls this patience, he calls this wisdom, he calls this realism and he is made purer for it. The price of purity is pain and suffering that gives birth to clarity and we all know that birth is never a painless process. The pain makes you honest and learn the lesson in life that everything has price. Weigh the option to hold your hand from writing like an individual who knows that to be alive is to be present; to do the opposite is to already have one foot into the grave and a fist raised to the heavens.
But it is delay disguised as thought.
Without authorship, identity becomes reactive. Calm when life is calm. Disciplined when structure is imposed. Moral when tested lightly. Under pressure, he fractures not because he is weak, but because nothing inside him has been claimed as his own.
He is well-read but uncommitted.
Insightful but unpracticed.
Aware but unmoved.
The most dangerous part is that he does not feel lost. He feels reasonable. Supported. Understood. He has explanations for everything except why his life feels smaller than it should.
And while his future just slips away
In baggy jeans and snapbacks
Dreams away
He'd never forget that wish he made
Years ago and high of hope
That he’ll become something~ Memi - Be Something
Slowly, resentment replaces ambition.
He begins to judge those who act decisively. He calls them reckless, naïve, unexamined. Their movement threatens his equilibrium. It reminds him that something is still required of him.
When the author never arrives, fear becomes permanent housing rather than a passing signal. Guilt lingers without instruction. Pain circles endlessly without lesson. Nothing resolves because nothing is owned.
This is not tragedy.
It is stagnation.
The tragedy is not that life was difficult.
The tragedy is that no one ever claimed the difficulty as theirs to shape. Authorship does not require certainty. It requires consent.
The moment you stop asking whether you are ready and start acting as if the responsibility is already yours, the author arrives not as a savior, not as a hero, but as a steward.
Until then, life will continue writing on your behalf.
And the longer you wait, the harder it becomes to recognize your own handwriting.