Gaius Julius Mother f***ing Caesar. Be like him. Minus the getting stabbed part, Julius Caesar is a man worth emulating. A man who would not let anything or anyone stand in his way. Growing up in a prestigious Roman family that had been hit by financial woes, Caesar aspired to return his house to grandeur. Over the course of his long military and political campaigns, Caesar continually aspired to improve himself, knowing full well he had not reached his potential. This is a man who had conquered territory after territory, who would one day change the very fate of Rome, and he broke down in tears knowing he could never do what Alexander the Great did. He did not just have ambition; he had the character to put those ambitions into action. Yes, to our modern sensibilities, he was a brutal tyrant, but he was a man like any of us who began with a simple aspiration; an aspiration that would change the very fate of the world as we know it.
We all have doubts and insecurities that plague our minds at every turn, and mixed in with these insecurities are ambitions wild and crazy. Ambitions that we feel only pressed forth to accomplish until those doubts seep their way into our minds. We compare where we are to where the legends of our times might have been at our age. There was never a time where Shakespeare had not been Shakespeare, or where Van Gogh had not been Van Gogh. These legends where always at the top of their game, we try to tell ourselves, and yet it’s not true. No one begins at the top; no one begins a legend in the making. We make ourselves legendary by finding what we are good at and hopefully enjoying and pursuing it.
Julius Caesar had to have held doubt, from the looming legend of Alexander the Great to the fact that as he crossed the Rubicon the whole might of Rome turned against him. Caesar never let his doubt stop him, never gave in to those feelings of worthlessness or pointlessness. And neither should you. That voice that lingers in your head, chipping away at your self-image, is a self-constructed illusion. A byproduct of fearing success because you think you're not good enough; not worthy enough of succeeding. The thing is, you have to accept that you might just fail in order to succeed, and you have to realize you are worthy of success. Remember, Julius Caesar crossed his Rubicon and brought his enemies to their demise. Your enemy might not by the towering imperium of a mighty empire, but your enemy is your own self-doubt. Learn to overcome it, learn to cross your personal Rubicon, and one day you will be sitting atop of life, an emperor in spirit.
