As I looked up from my phone after scrolling through some reels, the walls of my office felt like they were closing in. Almost every reel, every influencer nudged about following your passion and chasing your dreams. They said you had to leave everything behind to win. But none of them talked about the cost of failure.

I had a friend once. She quit her well-paying job to start a cafe. Her wealthy family paid her rent while she figured it out. She told me to take the same risk, said the universe would catch me. Unfortunately, she failed to get the cafe yield the desired profits. Months later, I asked her who caught her when she missed. She laughed and changed the subject.

I knew the universe or my family wouldn’t catch me. They were busy holding themselves up. Things don’t happen just because you want them to. Nobody lays you a red carpet because you have a dream or a vision. It’s easy to leap when there’s a safety net set below. But what do you do when there’s no net and the ground is hard?

Sometimes I wonder what it’s like on the other side. If it’s as free-flowing as they say it is. Or if it’s just another story, told by people who never knew what it meant to fall without help.