Before power, there was persuasion. Before persuasion, there was language.
Every illusion begins there.
Advertising tells you you’re incomplete. Politics tells you you’re powerless. Religion tells you you must be forgiven. The algorithm tells you you must be seen.
Different voices, same message: You are not enough as you are.
We rarely notice how fluently we speak in our own captivity. How we repeat the words that keep us small. How easily language becomes a leash disguised as logic.
“Consumer.” “Follower.” “User.” We internalized those words until they became identities. We built empires of meaning on vocabularies of control.
And then we wondered why the world felt hollow.
Language isn’t neutral. It carves the invisible architecture of perception. It tells us what is desirable, what is dangerous, what is divine. Say a word enough times and it becomes a mirror. Look into it long enough and it becomes a cell.
Advertising doesn’t sell products. It sells permission to exist. Politics doesn’t sell vision. It sells fear of the other. Religion doesn’t sell redemption. It sells the illusion of brokenness. And the algorithm? It doesn’t sell attention. It sells identity on lease.
Write them down, word by word, until you see the pattern. See how every system manufactures emotion through repetition. See how “choice” became “consumption,” how “connection” became “content,” how “freedom” became “brand.”
We didn’t lose ourselves by accident. We outsourced our vocabulary.
To break the spell, we must reclaim the word. Stop parroting the phrases that keep us compliant. Stop mistaking slogans for truths. Stop confusing visibility with worth.
Freedom doesn’t start with rebellion. It starts with authorship.
The moment you name the illusion, you step outside it. The moment you write your own sentence, you stop being written by someone else.
Maybe the future isn’t about better algorithms or louder slogans. Maybe it’s about quieter words…truer ones. Words that return us to presence instead of performance. That remind us to be before we brand.
Because if every illusion begins with language, then every awakening begins with a new one.
So ask yourself: Whose words are living in your mouth? Who profits from your definition of “enough”? And what truth could begin, if you spoke in your own voice?
Today is World Mental Health Day. The feeds are full of pastel posts reminding us to “check in on your friends” and “end the stigma.” It’s beautiful. It’s necessary. But it also feels incomplete.
Because every year, while citizens talk about self-care, the people running our countries remain the least self-aware among us. They govern billions without ever being asked the simplest therapeutic question: “How are you, really?”
Imagine if therapy were a prerequisite for public office. Imagine if emotional regulation were tested as strictly as campaign funding. Half of geopolitics might evaporate overnight.
We keep treating mental health as an individual issue, meditate, journal, breathe,while ignoring the fact that unhealed leaders make wounded nations. Their childhood traumas become our policies. Their unchecked egos become our inflation, our wars, our polarization.
We screen pilots before we let them fly a plane, but we hand nuclear codes to people who clearly haven’t processed their fathers.
That line shouldn’t feel funny. It should feel terrifying.
What if every G7 summit began with group therapy instead of photo ops? What if debates required empathy training instead of sound bites? What if “national security” included psychological maturity?
Because here’s the quiet truth: The world doesn’t need more leaders with confidence. It needs leaders with conscience. Therapy doesn’t make you soft; it makes you safe to follow.
So while we celebrate mental health today, maybe we should widen the circle. Healing can’t stop at citizens it has to reach the cabinets, parliaments, and palaces too.
Maybe the next revolution won’t be political at all. Maybe it’ll start on a therapist’s couch.
