The word idea comes from Greek idein, meaning to see. But anyone that’s ever had an idea—and followed it—has seen that the idea grows from something purely fictional to something concrete. A child that relentlessly dreams of going to Disney World one day makes it there; an entrepreneur that relentlessly dreams of sending rockets to space eventually does too.
Right now there is a growing idea that we have a king in our country—a country that, we say, has no place for kings. But the idea itself is half-baked: there are more than 340 million kings in our country. If only we could see that.
If only we could see that for anyone to see a king outside of them, a king must exist inside of them too. If it didn’t exist in them, they would not know what the thing outside of them was. In fact, they might not see it at all.
In many ways, to see a king—even if an incomplete or distorted vision or idea of a king—is better than seeing no king at all; we now see that there is an idea of kingship, a kingdom within us that we have yet to follow and make real in our own individual lives.
But we have been so concerned with the sliver of an idea that one person is king at the expense of others, that we have failed to explore the depths of the idea that lives within us as a birthright would.
Throughout time, the idea of a king has never been permanently unseated. This time around, it’s clear that a king is not born but created by our ideas. Which means that there will always be more. What we keep missing is that the only solution to a king outside of us has and will always be to become our own true kings—and help others do the same. A single king in a sea of true kings is of no real concern; it exists within balance and harmony, surroundings that keep it in check.
There are more than 340 million kings in our country. The question is, will you follow that idea?