At some crossroads in life, a sudden realization hits us: no matter how relentlessly the world injects the same correct answers and forces a mainstream lifestyle, there are people who simply cannot be pried into that mold. They haven’t made any grand resolutions, yet, like salmon swimming upstream, they naturally walk into the rugged path of the outsider.
Watching them sparks a pure question from deep within. Are some people simply destined from the start to live that way? Are they born with a blueprint of the soul that is fundamentally different from ours?
The Fortitude of the Soul Known as Inborn Temperament
Perhaps they are. Every human being possesses an innate skeletal framework called "temperament." Some feel most at ease from birth when they blend harmoniously with the surrounding air and secure stability. Others, however, suffer a suffocating agony the moment their inner truth clashes with external reality.
The reason Machiavelli changed his clothes every night to write even while trapped in a rural corner was not because he was intrinsically grand, but because he was born with a temperament whose soul would starve to death if he did otherwise.
To them, a comfortable life following the mainstream is a living hell where they must wear ill-fitting clothes and act a part for the rest of their days. These are people for whom the internal collapse of losing oneself is far more terrifying than the danger of being pushed over the edge of a cliff. Those who are "destined to live that way" may ultimately be individuals born with a flame so solid inside them that all the cold water in the world cannot easily put it out.
A Cumulative Choice, Not a Fixed Fate
Yet, it feels incomplete to dismiss this merely as "genetic destiny." No one is predetermined from the start to be a flawless crusader or misfit. They, too, must have been afraid at every turn, wavered, and faced the temptations of mainstream comfort.
Despite this, the reason they ultimately walked a different path is that they accumulated choices—incrementally yet consistently—to "live as themselves" at the minor forks in the road they faced every single day.
It likely began as a tiny streak of stubbornness. The moments they chose quiet silence because of an uneasy feeling inside while everyone else said yes; the nights they read one more book that spoke to their heart rather than following the crowd. As these trivial choices piled up over time, they forged a solid trajectory of a self "destined to live that way"—one that refuses to be swept away even by the colossal waves of the world. Your temperament may be preset, but completing that temperament into a life is ultimately a matter of daily choices.
Concluding the Essay
"Are some people destined to live that way?"
The most honest answer to this question lies within your own inner resonance. If your heart sank or felt a sudden stir while pondering this question, it means that the seed of "that breed"—the kind that wishes to protect something as precious as life itself over the world’s correct answers—is hidden inside you as well. Someone truly and perfectly assimilated into a safe, mainstream life like Lorenzo would never lose sleep over a question like this to begin with.
Whether you were born as that breed or not does not matter. What matters is whether you are living according to your own breath right now.
There is no need to force yourself to become a Machiavelli who shakes the era. It is enough to have the courage to stop and listen when a signal suddenly flashes while walking the path everyone else takes, whispering, "This doesn’t feel like me." As you erase those predetermined answers one by one, you too will eventually find yourself the master of your own unique life—able to smile and say, "Before I knew it, I just ended up living this way, but I happen to quite like the flow."
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