The Power of New Beginnings: Lessons from Past Great Adventurers and the Great Gatsby

Recently started a book called the “King’s Shadow” by Edmund Richardson, described as the 

“extraordinary untold and wild journey of Charles Masson - think Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid meets Indiana Jones - and his search for the Lost City of Alexandria in the "Wild East" during the age of empires, kings, and spies.” 

What an amazing story it is. He found that in the crazy quilt landscape of different people you could become whoever you want to be. 

“Masson learned something important. When you walk into a room full of strangers, there’s a precious moment where you can become whoever you want to be: a prince or a beggar, a pilgrim or a scholar, a strong man or a weak one. If you tell your story well enough, you will be believed.”

You can literally recreate who you are, regardless of who or what you did before. It’s like the Silicon Valley “fake it till you make it” strategy before the term existed. This is why it’s important to move and live in new places. You have no anchors to the past of who you were so you can restart. This was why I moved to Asia from Canada after University, and then to the United States several years later. 

America is still the place. A place where you immigrated and can start over and be who you can be. First from Europe to the eastern seaboard. Then as America became more civilized, many of their people moved toward the West for new opportunities and settled as pioneers. A brand new start. 

As exemplified by the character of Jay Gatsby in the “Great Gatsby”, military vet turned bootlegger and multimillionaire “richer than god”, who recreates himself through pure will and lots of very good storytelling. Yes, he gets found out in the end but this is such an exemplary novel illustrating what is so unique about American culture. We don’t care where you come from, as long as you are willing to work hard, and have big ambitions, that’s all that matters. 

This seems to slowly be eroding but I still see embers of this all across the USA which gives me hope. It’s much harder to do the completely brand new start now, as the world has gotten smaller. Networks are tighter and global. Plus, you have this thing called the internet, which makes it very hard to leave no footprints in the world. 

But the world is still an immensely big place, full of wonderful opportunities and adventure. So don’t be afraid of new beginnings. If you are not happy where you are in life, in a relationship, in a job/career or even city. Change it all up. Restart. As Herman Hesse said “There is a miracle in every new beginning.”