And here's what I’ve noticed: chickens can fly.
The wings actually work. I’ve seen a hen launch herself six feet into the air to escape a dog, survival instinct transforming this awkward, earthbound creature into something almost graceful. For a moment, it’s the Wright Brothers with feathers.
The Yard
But put that same chicken in an open yard. No fence, no predator, freedom in every direction. And it will walk the same ten square feet of dirt for its entire life. It won't explore the edges of the property. It won't test what's possible. It will scratch the same patch of ground until the day it dies, never knowing what it was capable of, because nothing ever forced it to find out.
I watched one of these chickens the other day, circling its little territory, and I thought to myself: that's the saddest thing I've ever seen.
Then I got in my car and drove to the same office I've been going to for ten years. And somewhere on that drive, I decided I didn't want to be the chicken anymore.
I spent years just optimizing the yard.
A few weeks ago, I tried to jump the fence. I performed stand-up comedy at a conference in front of several hundred people. I understood the room. The format was forgiving. And something clicked. The laughs came easy, the timing felt natural, and afterward, strangers kept finding me to say I was their favorite of the night. For a moment, I let myself believe the wings worked. I felt alive in a way I hadn't felt in years.
Testing the Wings
Then I went to a real open mic.
A Wednesday night in Philadelphia. The air smelled like stale beer and indifference. Twenty strangers in a bar, half of them comics waiting for their own sets, staring at their phones. I had notes in my hand. My timing was off. Whatever magic I'd felt two weeks earlier didn't follow me into that room.
Afterward, I sat in my car, hands gripping the wheel, wondering if I'd made a mistake. Not the mistake of bombing. I mostly expected that. The mistake of wanting something I might not be built for.
I believe there is a difference between a failure and a ceiling.
We talk about failure constantly now. Failure is almost fashionable. Entrepreneurs brag about their failed startups. Athletes give speeches about the games they lost. There's a whole industry built around reframing failure as a stepping stone, and there's truth in that narrative.
But we don't talk about ceilings.
The Ceiling
A ceiling isn't a stumble. A ceiling is the biological, merciless realization that your best, your absolute, bleeding-edge best, isn't good enough.
I wonder if, sometimes, greatness can't be earned. If you're seven feet tall, your chances of making the NBA are roughly one in six. If you're five foot nine, they're closer to one in five hundred thousand. You can want it just as badly. You can work just as hard. But the ceiling is different, and it was set before you were born.
I don't know where my ceiling is. That is what keeps me up at night. I know I can be good at most things I pour myself into. But great? The best? Is it foolish to even think that's possible? Who do I think I am?
Maybe I'm just a chicken who felt a gust of wind once and mistook it for flight.
I think this is why most of us stay in the yard. Not because we lack ambition. Not because we're afraid of hard work. We stay because trying and failing is survivable, but really trying and discovering you are mediocre is a verdict.
As long as you never really go all in, you never have to hear the judge read the sentence. You can protect your ego with the comforting thought of "potential." I could have done it, if I really tried.
So we keep walking our ten square feet. We build lives where nothing forces us to find out what we’re actually capable of, and we tell ourselves that’s enough. The days pass without incident. The wings gather dust.
The chicken doesn't know any better. That’s the mercy of being a chicken. It lacks the awareness to understand the tragedy of its own containment.
But I know better. And I suspect you do, too.
However, you cannot know where your ceiling is until you hit your head against it.
Staying in the Room
Most people never get close. They quit in the middle, in the long desert where the work isn't paying off yet, and they tell themselves they weren't built for it. Maybe they weren't. Or maybe they just left before the compound interest kicked in.
The only way to find out is to stay longer than feels reasonable. To be bad in public enough times that you either break through or break.
So I'm staying in the room. I'm going back to open mics. I'm getting on stages where I don’t belong, saying things I'm not sure will land, letting myself be bad at something I care about in front of strangers who have no reason to be kind.
Not because I've conquered the fear. The fear is still there, whispering that I'm wasting my time, that I should go back to the yard where it's safe and the paycheck clears and I am respected.
But maybe I can be great. I don't know. I just know it's better to live like it's possible than to assume it isn't.
I would rather discover my limits than live inside boundaries I invented for myself. I would rather hit a hard ceiling and know it was real than spend the rest of my life wondering how high the sky actually went.
The yard is open. The fence was never there. And the wings, if you still have the courage to trust them, work just fine.
I'm going up anyway.