“Reason is the enemy of all greatness: reason is the enemy of nature: nature is great, reason is small. I mean that it will be more or less difficult for a man to be great the more he is governed by reason, that few can be great (and in art and poetry perhaps no one) unless they are governed by illusions.” — Giacomo Leopardi

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

How many of us are perfectly reasonable in our lives? We are taught to be so. Reasonable is predictable, manageable, reliable. When we aspire to be good, we are subscribing to a routine of reasonable. And of course there’s nothing wrong with reasonable, there’s just nothing particularly profound to be realized when we stay in that box. We simply cannot put a dent in the universe with reason. Dents require the velocity of audacity.

Few can be great unless they are governed by illusions. Illusions of grandeur. Illusions of what might be far beyond what is. To dream and then chase that dream as if our very lives depended on it(doesn’t it?). To step outside of what is expected of us and write our own script beyond the imagination of the perfectly reasonable people in our lives. That is where illusions may lead.

Of course, illusions may also lead us off the cliff to our doom. It’s reasonable to have a safety net, to wear a seatbelt, and to put on sunscreen. We can structure our lives around reason and still chase the dream. We just can’t put all our eggs in one basket—reasonable or illusion, and expect them to survive when we inevitably stumble. But let’s face it, that kind of logic is entirely too reasonable.

It comes down to risk and reward. Those of us who are risk-averse aren’t likely to adapt the world to ourselves because we’re too busy adapting to it. The trick is to know our tendencies and learn to stretch beyond our comfort level. When we habituate discomfort as a normal state we adapt and grow and become. Change becomes something we are accustomed to, and more, something that we initiate.

This entire blog post is reason in action. I might simply have said “just do it” and headed out the door to realize some grand illusion. Something less unreasonable would be to simply click publish and stretch my comfort zone after I’ve had a good breakfast. But those are the words of someone governed by reason. Just who is the boss here anyway?