The Broken Compass

There is a chasm of difference between a first-generation entrepreneur shaped by a severely disadvantaged childhood and one born into a second-generation legacy. The former often had no benchmark, no blueprint, no baseline mindset - the latter rarely grasps the extent of that unseen disadvantage. All of this is then thrown into the crucible of having to constantly battle their own nervous system.

Imagine being raised never realising that what you were subjected to wasn't normal - but detrimental. Being gifted a compass with a sick sense of humour is a cruel fate for a child. Then, upon engaging with the wider world, you're forced to crash-course your way through the revelation that everything you have ever known is warped in nature - and so you're left with no choice but to internalise it all. That weight, carried silently, is profoundly isolating. At times, it feels like a furious demon clawing at your insides, compelling you to question where you belong - or if the world even wants you.

Life then becomes an endless experiment of trial and error. These individuals have had to build an internal map from scratch, relying only on lived experience to distinguish what feels right from what does not. And even then, there have been times when what felt right was not, in fact, right - because what was familiar was not true, nor beneficial. There is an inevitable delay, even for those of exceptionally high intelligence. Those who had some kind of framework had something to build upon. Those who didn't scraped together what they could from whatever fragments were within reach.

Survival is not a tale they parade for admiration, nor a badge worn to appear heroic - it is a painful origin story that was never theirs to write, only theirs to endure. And yet, they chose to fight. To live. The existential crises others encounter once or twice in life, they have faced regularly - and have done so since childhood. They operate with spiritual reserves and stamina others cannot fathom - not because they are invincible, but because they had to. It was forged in the hellfires, when they were far too young.

They came from a place of without - thus, having nothing is not something they fear - they have long since survived it. People joke about burnout, but they have burnt through burnout since childhood. What often unravels them is not the god-tier levels of pressure - it is safety. Their most troubling paradox. The rare, disarming moment when they finally feel it often becomes their undoing - because true safety shatters the architecture of survival - that is what terrifies them, for it reaches into the foundations and tears them apart. It is destabilising in the first instance - they feel almost helpless, watching everything they built internally crumble before their eyes - losing control over what they painfully constructed to finally feel some semblance of control, from an existence that once offered none.

And still, somewhere in their gut, they know they will make it through. That is why they are built differently. That is why they already have everything within them to win.