We were still viewing them through the spectacles of worldly metrics. We excused the individual’s inability to stand against the mainstream with a realistic profit-and-loss statement, saying, "Reality is different from fiction," or "If you are pushed out, you fall off the edge of a cliff." However, those who defied their eras to live their own lives never held such calculators in their hands to begin with.
To them, whether they were pushed out of the mainstream or not, or whether the world recognized them or not, was never an important issue. They simply lived that way because they had no other choice but to live that way.
The Weight of an Instinct That Does Not Beg for Validation
When Machiavelli wore his courtly robes every night in his place of exile to write, it was not because his life would become worthless if the Medici family failed to recognize him. When Galileo muttered his famous words under the threat of the Inquisition, it was not to win applause from future scientists.
It was not a display of heroism seeking external validation, but a command of instinct surging from within. To Machiavelli, who could not breathe unless he was thinking and writing as a statesman, the presence or absence of a public office could not alter his essence. To a scientist who had witnessed the monumental truth of heliocentrism, the denial of the Church could not erase the sun before his eyes.
They were not crusaders who braved danger with grand resolve. They were simply human beings built in such a way that they could not exist unless they moved exactly as the flame within them dictated.
The Fake Life of the Lorenzo Safety Net
On the other hand, the reason countless modern people, including ourselves, choose the safe, predictable, mainstream life of Lorenzo II is not because we are particularly evil or cowardly. It is because we, too, are simply built to pursue safety that way.
The real contradiction lies here: though we are not built that way, we sit in our rooms consuming webtoons and dramas, overlaying ourselves with a fake ego, thinking, "Maybe I belong to the same breed as those crusaders." Then, returning to reality, we torment ourselves as we conform to the mainstream, or we ostracize those living their true lives, calling them eccentric.
But from the very beginning, the breeds are simply different. There are people for whom worldly reputation and stability are life’s highest values (the Lorenzos), and there are people who must move according to the truth and instinct within them, even if the entire world turns upside down (the Machiavellis).
Concluding the Essay
Ultimately, at the end of the question, all grand narratives are stripped away like empty husks. Whether history preserves them as crusaders or not, or whether the contemporary mainstream tramples them while calling them fools, mattered absolutely nothing to those lonely individuals. They simply endured the single life granted to them, suffering through it honestly in their own way.
Therefore, let us now stop the empty race of chasing validation from others, and halt the futile effort of trying to internalize the narrative of a hero who is not us.
If you are someone who finds happiness while enjoying stability within the mainstream, you can gladly enjoy that stability. Conversely, if you absolutely cannot ignore the voice within you even when the world tells you that you are entirely wrong, you can pack away your worries about being pushed out and walk that path.
Life, after all, is not a stage for proving something grand. It is about leaving your own trajectory—living according to how you were built, according to your own breath—so that you can say, "I lived that way because I had no choice but to live that way." That alone is the true, distinctly vivid human life in this fleeting world.
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