When the Violin Strings Break
A Lantern in the Shadows
When the Violin Strings Break
A Lantern in the Shadows
Throughout my life, I was constantly told that purpose was something to be discovered. Everywhere I looked, the message was the same: find your purpose, live it, share it, discover your reason for being, serve humanity, make an impact, change lives, build a legacy, use your voice, stand on a stage, teach, lead, guide and inspire. This narrative was so pervasive that I never questioned it. Perhaps the most telling thing is not that the message existed, but that I absorbed it so completely that questioning it felt unnecessary and even disloyal, as if asking about it was a kind of failure.
Like many people, I spent years searching for my purpose, treating it like a costume I hadn’t yet found the right size for. At one point, I believed my purpose was to help people heal through horses, while at another, I thought it was to transform homes with beauty, atmosphere, and design. I even believed I was here to demonstrate how colour could influence emotion, how environments could impact wellbeing and how energy could flow through space. There was always a mission, a destination, another way to help. From the outside, it seemed meaningful, but inside, something felt amiss.
At the time, I overlooked the fact that I was chasing outputs while neglecting inputs. I was eager to share something with the world before truly understanding who was offering it. My focus on my contribution blinded me to the question of who was actually contributing. I was performing a purpose rather than living the truth. This distinction only became apparent as my creations began to crumble.
Life has a way of dismantling the identities that no longer fit. Not because it is cruel, but because what is false cannot be sustained forever. When my own world fractured, I found myself standing amongst the debris of beliefs I had never consciously chosen. Ideas about who I should be. Ideas about what success looked like. Ideas about service, contribution, visibility, leadership and worth. For the first time, I stopped asking what I was here to do. I started asking who I was beneath all the doing. What beliefs had I inherited? What stories had I accepted without examination? What roles had I been performing? What parts of myself had been shaped by approval, expectation and external validation? What was actually mine?
Those questions changed everything. Because the deeper I looked, the less interested I became in the modern obsession with purpose. I began to wonder if we have confused purpose with performance. We tell people they are here to save the world before they have learned how to sit quietly with themselves. We encourage them to become teachers before they become students of their own nature. We celebrate visibility while neglecting self-knowledge. We reward influence while overlooking integrity.
Perhaps that is why so many people spend their lives searching. They are looking for themselves in the reflection of other people’s expectations. And the searching itself becomes shaped not by genuine curiosity but by the invisible architecture of collective belief, the shared assumptions of communities, movements and systems that define in advance what is worth looking for and what is not. A belief system not only feels like it offers answers. It also determines which questions are permitted. It draws a circle around permissible thought and calls that circle wisdom, and what falls outside the circle is not examined but dismissed, often before it has even fully formed in the mind of the person who might have thought it.
What troubles me about this is how thoroughly the mechanism is concealed. Belief systems do not typically announce themselves as limitations. They present as liberation, as clarity, as belonging. They offer community, language, shared values, a coherent map of reality, and the deeply human comfort of not being alone in one’s understanding of the world. This is not nothing. These are genuine gifts. But they come at a cost rarely disclosed at the beginning: the price of belonging is often a quiet surrender of the questions the group has already decided are settled. And once a question is settled collectively, the person who raises it again is no longer seen as curious. They are seen as disruptive, ungrateful, and as someone who does not understand or has not yet reached the level of comprehension of the rest of the group. The social cost of questioning is not always anger. It is sometimes subtler and more wounding: withdrawal, the slow cooling of welcome that tells a person their continued presence in the group is conditional on their continued agreement.
I have watched people swallow questions whole rather than face that cooling. I have done it myself. Not because the question lacked merit, but because the sense of belonging felt necessary in a way the question did not. And this is where belief systems become something more than intellectual frameworks. They become identity. When a person’s sense of self is fused with a particular set of beliefs, questioning those beliefs is experienced not as intellectual inquiry but as an existential threat. The question feels like an attack not on an idea but on a person. That fusion is what makes collective consensus so powerful and so difficult to disturb from within, because the person who has merged their identity with a belief system does not engage with questioning as a thinker but defends against it as a self.
As I observed this pattern more closely, I realised something about growth that’s rarely discussed: genuine development often demands a willingness to temporarily become unrecognisable to the communities that shaped you. This isn’t romantic; it’s often genuinely disorienting and sometimes deeply painful. It’s disorienting to navigate a period where the frameworks that once organised your understanding of the world crumble and new ones haven’t fully formed. Most people don’t linger in this uncertainty long enough to discover its depths. Instead, they reach for the nearest narrative, system, teacher, movement or identity, replacing one inherited self with another. This constant searching and unanswered essential question explain why the journey continues.
As I observed this further, I realised my purpose wasn’t to serve the world. It was to know myself. Not in a narcissistic or self-indulgent way but in the deepest possible sense. I wanted to understand my nature, patterns, fears, projections, wounds, values and convictions. Ultimately, I wanted to become rooted within myself rather than constantly seeking direction from external noise.
An oak tree doesn’t grow strong by chasing every breeze; it becomes resilient because its roots delve deeper than the winds that threaten to sway it. This image has resonated with me. Today, I witness countless individuals bending like bamboo to every new idea, trend, guru, movement and identity presented to them. One day they adopt a philosophy from a book, the next day a seminar, and then a podcast. They’re endlessly collecting narratives without ever pausing to consider the collector themselves. I know this firsthand. I’ve done it myself. I understand the feeling of viewing life through others’ eyes and measuring oneself against external ideals. I know the difference between performing wisdom and truly embodying it.
Perhaps that’s why I no longer want to be seen as a leader, guru, teacher, authority or hero. I have no desire to stand on a stage and dictate how people should live. I don’t want followers to affirm my way or disciples to mimic my language. I also don’t want to assume responsibility for someone else’s beliefs. As I journey on, I find myself drawn to conversation over conversion, questions over answers, stories over doctrines and metaphors over commandments. I’ve become less interested in changing minds and more in understanding them. I’m less interested in persuading and more in listening. I’m less interested in leading people somewhere and more in creating space for them to discover their own paths and potential.
Perhaps that’s the alchemist in me. An alchemist doesn’t force transformation; they create the conditions for it, allowing each substance to reveal its true nature. Similarly, I no longer feel compelled to interfere with every belief I disagree with. If a system doesn’t directly impact me, I don’t need to dismantle it. And if someone believes differently, I don’t feel the need to convert them. I respond to an invitation. When invited, I might share an understanding, not insist on it, simply expressing what I’ve seen and learned from my own direct experience. I see each person as having the choice to perceive or believe what they wish. Reality will eventually test every idea. My role isn’t to control the outcome; it’s to remain in relationship with truth as I understand it from my perspective at any given moment. And from that place, to ask questions. Every insight that followed in this essay began with a question – not a certainty, not a doctrine, not a mission, but a question.
Life reaches a point where you stop seeking answers and begin searching for assumptions. This subtle shift transforms everything. Most people are fixated on the next solution, opportunity, investment, technology, guru, spiritual teaching, tax structure or way to get ahead. I once believed the world was divided between those who knew and those who didn’t. However, I now see it as a division between questioners and consumers.
Every generation is sold a story, though the details change while the structure remains the same. Buy property because it always appreciates. Invest in gold as a safe haven. Create a family trust to safeguard your assets. Maximise your super because it’s tax-efficient. Embrace crypto for its decentralised nature. Build an AI business because it’s the future. Manifest your desires because reality responds to your thoughts. Choose an electric vehicle for its environmental benefits. The tune may vary, but the song sheet is remarkably familiar. What draws people back to this familiar tune isn’t just greed or naivety but something deeper: these stories are almost always endorsed by the communities people belong to. Questioning them risks losing that community. The financial, spiritual, environmental and political narratives are held together not only by evidence but also by consensus. This consensus carries a social enforcement mechanism that evidence alone lacks.
My interest lies not in the story itself but in the aftermath – what happens when the violin strings break?
Consider gold. For years, people have promoted it as existing outside the system. However, following the thread reveals the illusion’s fragility. Buying gold creates a record, and selling it creates another. You might pay capital gains tax, need storage insurance and transport, and find a buyer. But if the financial system collapses, who buys your gold? And if no one does, what’s the difference between owning gold and owning an idea about it? I recall stories of bullion dealers refusing to buy during gold booms or offering below-market prices due to overwhelmed sellers. This happened with silver too. Suddenly, the difference between price and liquidity became undeniable. The screen price was one thing, but the ability to convert that asset into essentials like food, shelter, and purchasing power was another. Reality lies in the gap between these two.
This same pattern recurs everywhere. Family trusts were marketed as sophisticated structures for protection and efficiency. Thousands were spent establishing them, confident the supporting rules would remain. Then, governments began discussing changes. Suddenly, what had seemed like a permanent advantage revealed itself as temporary. The structure was never truly independent; it was created by the system. Now self-managed super funds are touted as the solution – more efficient, more control, better outcomes. Perhaps. Under today’s rules. However, every financial strategy places a silent wager on the future. The question rarely asked isn’t whether a strategy works now but whether the assumptions underpinning it will still hold twenty years hence.
The same blindness pervades the digital economy. Start a social media account, use AI, build a personal brand and create passive income. People speak as though this future has already arrived. However, every single one of these businesses relies on electricity, internet infrastructure, payment systems, data centres, cloud storage, algorithms and consumer confidence. We’ve become so accustomed to this scaffolding that we can’t see it. We admire the building and ignore the foundations. What fascinates me is how often convenience disguises dependency. We’re told to trust digital systems yet forget they depend on physical infrastructure. We’re told to trust crypto and then reminded not to lose the hard drive. We’re told to trust cloud services while forgetting they’re just someone else’s computers. We’re told to trust platforms even though they can change their rules overnight. We’re told to trust technology while the power grid groans under increasing demand.
The world is increasingly a web of invisible dependencies, each one building upon the last. Everything functions perfectly until it doesn’t.
This same dynamic plays out in environmental narratives. We’re told cattle are a problem due to their methane emissions while data centres hog enormous amounts of energy and water. Electric vehicles are promoted even as battery fires, charging infrastructure, insurance costs, and grid limitations become important considerations. Lab-grown food is hailed as progress, yet long-term questions remain unanswered. The pattern is clear: sell the vision first and discuss the complications later. This isn’t an argument against innovation but rather for discernment.
I’ve come to realise many industries aren’t selling tangible products; they’re selling emotional outcomes. The gambling industry offers hope, pornography provides fantasy, self-help promises transformation, manifestation claims control, the financial sector delivers security, and the spiritual realm often presents certainty cloaked in mystical language. Each industry taps into a human longing and builds a marketplace around it. The deeper question is why people buy. Some say it’s greed; others, fear; but I suspect it’s a combination of all those factors, plus loneliness, uncertainty, ambition, and the ancient human desire to escape reality. We crave guarantees in a world devoid of them, permanence in a constantly changing world and certainty in a universe that denies it. This yearning makes us susceptible not only to individual narratives but also to the consensus that forms around them. After all, consensus feels like evidence and belonging feels like confirmation. Sometimes, the warmth of shared belief can be indistinguishable from the warmth of truth.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve never been interested in blind faith. To me, faith isn’t the absence of questions; it’s what remains after they’ve been asked. One of my most valuable principles came from alchemy: “hands off the wheel.” This isn’t about passively approaching life but recognising that control becomes an illusion at some point. The work is to know yourself, ask difficult questions, observe reality, and let it reveal itself. Alchemists didn’t seek truth through avoidance; they sought it through testing. Heat the substance, apply pressure, separate it, and observe what remains. An idea should be treated no differently. If a belief can’t withstand questioning, perhaps it wasn’t true in the first place.
I no longer ask about popularity, profitability, or fashionability. Instead, I ask if something can withstand scrutiny. I examine its assumptions and hidden dependencies. I consider how it responds to changing conditions, including the hypothetical scenario in which violin strings break. The most dangerous aspect of a consensus isn’t its potential for error – errors are correctable – but its ability to extinguish the habit of questioning. Without this habit, growth becomes a series of superficial replacements rather than genuine deepening. Transitioning from one belief system to another without ever questioning its underlying structure signifies a lack of development. It’s merely an update. The operating system changes, but the fundamental passivity persists, keeping individuals vulnerable to whatever narrative the current era presents.
Every era has its stories, prophets, and promises. Some materialise while others become cautionary tales. The challenge isn’t finding certainty but developing discernment to differentiate between the two. True discernment can’t be borrowed or downloaded from a community or consensus; it must be cultivated privately. This involves observing the space between what you’ve been told and what you actually see and being willing to sit with a question long enough for it to become your own rather than theirs.
Sometimes I think the future arrived so gradually that no one noticed the bargain being struck. It wasn’t technological; it was psychological. We traded understanding for convenience, participation for automation, resilience for efficiency and sovereignty for comfort. Initially, the exchange seemed reasonable. Why wouldn’t it? The systems worked perfectly – lights flicked on, money appeared, food arrived, and information appeared instantly on a screen. Navigation replaced memory, search engines replaced knowledge and algorithms replaced discernment. The machinery became so seamless that we stopped noticing it.
That’s why Upload feels less like science fiction and more like a metaphor. While many focus on the digital afterlife, I’m drawn to the theme of dependency. Residents believe they’re free, yet every aspect of their lives is controlled by infrastructure they don’t own or understand. Their comforts are rented and choices mediated. Reality exists within a system maintained by others. Perhaps that’s why it feels familiar. Modern life increasingly operates on similar principles. Our money resides in databases, our photographs on servers, our businesses on platforms, our relationships through apps and our memories in cloud storage. Our identities are behind passwords, and our livelihoods depend on networks of electricity, telecommunications, software, and regulation, which most people overlook until something goes wrong.
We’re told this is progress, and in many ways it is. However, each layer of convenience introduces a corresponding layer of dependency. The irony is that as our systems become more advanced, these dependencies become increasingly invisible. A farmer understands dependency because it’s tangible – weather, water, soil, livestock and seasons. Everything is visible. A modern knowledge worker might earn a living with a laptop and internet connection while relying on global supply chains, data centres, payment processors, satellite networks, cloud infrastructure, electrical grids, government regulation, and corporate platforms, yet they’re unaware of it. The dependence hasn’t vanished; it’s simply become abstract. This abstraction mirrors a phenomenon within belief systems: when someone is deeply embedded in a consensus, that dependency becomes invisible in the same way. The questions they don’t ask don’t feel like absences; they feel like answers already provided.
This is why I often ask different questions from others. For example, when someone claims artificial intelligence will create unlimited opportunities, I wonder what happens if the electrical grid fails. Similarly, when someone says social media is the future, I’m curious about the consequences of changes to platform rules. When someone asserts that cryptocurrency offers freedom, I’m concerned about the loss of access. When someone advises keeping physical gold outside the system, I wonder who will buy when everyone is selling. When someone suggests that trusts provide protection, I’m curious about the impact of legislative changes. When someone says superannuation is the solution, I’m wondering what happens when governments need revenue and alter rules. The underlying question remains constant: what is this dependent upon? The answer often reveals more than the promise itself.
Perhaps that’s why I struggle with certainty wherever I encounter it. It’s the language of sales, while reality speaks in terms of conditions. Sales speak in tones of guarantee, whereas reality acknowledges it depends. Sales presents a single answer, but reality offers one under specific circumstances. As I grow, I realise wisdom isn’t about accumulating answers but recognising conditions. Nothing exists in isolation, without context or consequence.
This is where the alchemical principle comes back in. The great work wasn’t about certainty; it was about refinement. Alchemists placed matter in the fire not to destroy it but to reveal its nature. Heat exposes weakness, pressure reveals structure, and time uncovers truth. The same applies to ideas, institutions, narratives and ourselves. A belief that can’t withstand questioning isn’t strengthened by protection; it’s weakened. A system that can’t survive scrutiny isn’t made safer by censorship; it’s made more fragile. A person who avoids examination never discovers what’s genuine within themselves, and a community that enforces agreement over inquiry hasn’t found the truth; it’s simply eliminated the conditions under which it could be discovered.
It is also why I’ve come to value questions over answers. Questions remain vibrant and dynamic while answers often solidify into dogma. Questions inspire movement and discovery, whereas dogma fosters stagnation. Questions invite exploration while dogma demands obedience. An individual unable to hold a question, forced to immediately resolve it into a position, camp or allegiance, hasn’t truly grasped the essence of thinking. True thinking requires embracing genuine uncertainty without succumbing to the comfort of immediate consensus.
Maybe this is why every genuine search eventually leads back to the same place. Know yourself. Not for certainty, risk removal, or guaranteed success, but because without it, identity isn’t something you develop; it’s something you absorb. And what’s absorbed without examination isn’t truly yours – it belongs to the era, movement, community or consensus dominant at your formative time. Self-knowledge allows you to distinguish between your actual beliefs and those simply agreed upon due to the cost of dissent. This quiet yet crucial distinction may be one of the most important a person ever makes.
Personally, I no longer believe life’s purpose is to become something. Instead, I believe it’s to understand what already exists: your own nature, values, rhythms and convictions. This involves discerning what truly belongs to you versus what was absorbed through culture, family, ideology, fear, aspiration or imitation. It’s about reading, questioning, watching, listening, applying and remaining curious. Above all, develop the discernment to recognise what truly fits based on your own experience rather than external authority. Truth is dynamic, evolving and deepening as you grow. The need to explain everything diminishes, the need to convince others softens, and the need to belong at the expense of yourself dissolves. What remains is a quieter, more aligned relationship with life grounded in experience rather than certainty, performance rather than conformity, direct experience rather than consensus and awareness rather than control.
Self-knowledge remains a rare form of wealth, unaffected by legislation, taxation, downloads or marketing. It endures even when stories collapse, trends reverse, experts disagree, systems change, markets fluctuate, promises dissolve, and the violin strings finally break. Perhaps this is what faith has always meant to me: not faith in institutions, markets, governments, ideologies, or even humanity, but faith in the ongoing process of refinement. I believe that if I remain willing to question, observe, examine, and repeatedly return to what’s true in my own experience, life will continue to reveal what needs to be seen. It’s faith in the distillation of one’s essence. The more we know ourselves, the better we meet the world, not through instruction or influence but through the quality of our presence and the person we’ve become by honestly looking at ourselves.
They say a leopard never changes its spots, but before you can read them, you have to recognise you’re looking at a leopard.
I spent years being called stupid and ignored by people who couldn’t do that. I could always see the leopard, but I spent years lost trying to be what they wanted me to be.
People judge things they can’t control because seeing demands too much from them. Following is easier, but when the collective goal is extraction and personal gain at any expense, you’ll eventually be the one being drained. You simply won’t notice it. Never let someone else’s opinion define you. That’s the key lesson.
The alchemists referred to it as the Great Work. I’ve simplified it further: know yourself. That’s always been the task, and it always will be.
Delahrose Roobie Myer
A scribe, listening to the field. A little lantern in the shadows.
Author: Fatima’s Alchemy