Dearest Gentle Healer,
It has come to this author’s attention that a most curious phenomenon has swept through the minds of the ambitious and the gifted alike. One might call it a fever. One might call it a revelation. I prefer to call it, simply, the truth.
On April 24, a certain observer- whose identity I shall protect, for now- attended a viewing of the Michael Jackson film. And before the final frame had flickered to black, something had shifted irreversibly in their constitution. A theory. A deliciously dangerous theory. One that I find myself compelled to share with you, for I suspect there are those among you who have been playing far too small with eh gifts that flutter quietly in your chests.
They are calling it the MJ Theory of Diabolical Delusion.
A scandalous name, is it not? One that would make the dowagers clutch their pearls and the moderates reach for their smelling salts. But as you well know, dearest healer, this author has never been interested in what is a moderate.
Let us examine the evidence.
ON SEEING WHAT IS NOT YET THERE
It is said that the late Michael Jackson did not merely practice until he succeeded. He practiced until failure became an impossibility- and more than that, he saw the cheering crowds long before a single ticket was sold. He felt the stadium tremble under his feet while standing in an empty rehearsal room. He was, by all accounts, completely and utterly delusional about what the future held.
And yet. The future arrived precisely as he had seen it.
The first principle of this theory, then is, what I shall call The Mirror Delusion. The audacity to gaze upon one’s current reflection- unpolished, unproven, uncelebrated- and see not the present reality, but the future inevitability. To treat the vision in one’s mind not as a fantasy, but as a memory from a tomorrow that has simply not yet caught up.
One cannot help but wonder: who among us is currently staring into the mirror seeing their own limitations, when they ought to be seeing their coronation?
ON RELENTLESS AS A LOVE LANGUAGE
There are those in our society who mistake obsession for ambition, and ambition for greed. How tiresome. Hoe pedestrian.
The MJ Theory offers a different interpretation entirely. Mr. Jackson relentlessness- the kind that kept him in studios until his body surrendered, that demanded perfection not from cruelty but from devotion- was not the grinding desperation of a young man trying to prove his worth.
It was love.
Love for the craft. Love for the gift. Love so ferocious and consuming that anything less than total devotion felt like a betrayal of the very thing he had been entrusted with.
The author must ask, dearest healer: when was the last time you loved your gift so aggressively that sleep became negotiable? When did you last refuse to abandon your creation at eighty percent, not from fear of judgement, but because the thing you were making deserved more? DIABOLICAL, INDEED!
ON INHALING THE MASTERS AND EXHALING SOMETHING UNKNOWN
A delicious contradiction, this third pillar.
Mr. Jackson studied the immortals- Mr. James Brown, Mr. Fred Astaire, the great Chaplin- with the humility of a novice. He inhaled their greatness, frame by frame, note by note.
And then, when the light found him, he did not resemble any of them.
He looked like an alien.
He did not join the lineage, dearest healer. He broke it open and began a new one with his own name engraved upon the throne.
The lesson? Study your predecessors with the devotion of a scholar. But when the moment arrives to create, do so with audacity of someone who believes they are the first of their kind. The world does not need another echo. It is positively drowning in the echoes. What it awaits- what it aches for- is the stage, unprecedented frequency that only can emit.
ON HOLDING BOTH THE CHILD AND THE CROWN
This, perhaps, is the most misunderstood element of all.
The man who commanded stadiums with the authority of a general was the same man who climbed trees, engaged in water balloon warfare, and spoke to animals as though they might answer. Peter Pan was not a character he played. It was a philosophy he lived by.
The MJ Theory proposes that genius requires both.\
The softness to receive the Devine whisper of an idea. The iron will to build an empire around it.
Too much child, and one becomes a dreamer with a thousand beautiful concepts and not a single completed work. Too much king, and one becomes a tyrant who produces efficiently and feels nothing at all.
The alchemy is in the integration. To be porous enough to hear what others cannot, answer disciplined enough to bring it into form. This is not contradiction. This is completion.
ON THE GIFT THAT IS NOT YOURS TO KEEP
And now, dearest healer, the most vital piece- the one that separates the diabolically delusional from the merely insufferable.
Mr. Jackson, for all his spectacle, maintained that he was simply a vessel. A channel. The music, he insisted, came through him, not from him.
If this is true- and I suspect, in our quieter moments, we all know it to be- then the greatest crime is not failure. It is hoarding. To be entrusted with a frequency that the world requires and to keep it locked away in one’s sitting room is not modesty. It is betrayal.
Sharing your gift is not self-promotion. It is obedience.
A FINAL WORD FROM THIS AUTHOR
So here we are, gentle healers. The evidence has been laid before you.
Be diabolically delusional about what stirs within you. See the stadium full before a single seat is occupied. Love your craft with he ferocity that frightens the sensible. Study the masters, then politely dethrone them. Remain soft enough to hear the music in the silence, and hard enough to build the kingdom it demands.
And never, ever forget: it was not given to you to keep.
NOW GO. Moonwalk over every gatekeeper who ever underestimated you.
And do try not to be boring about it.
Yours in scandal and truth
Coach Chanel G
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