(Contains spoilers of the movie Fight Club).
The 1999 movie Fight Club has two main characters. One is the Narrator and is played by Ed Norton. The other is called Tyler Durden and he’s played by Brad Pitt. Tyler is a larger than life character who joins the Narrator as an equal partner in his search to escape a dreadful existence. Slowly, they build a cult following of misfits who want a better life for themselves, and finally they convince themselves they can create a better society.
You were looking for a way to change your life.
You could not do this on your own.
All the ways you wish you could be, that’s me.
At the end, the Narrator discovers that Tyler Durden is himself on steroids.
We didn’t see it coming. Throughout the movie, the Narrator-half dresses like a plain, average dude. He doesn’t have brilliant ideas, and when he fights he gets hit more often than not. He is frail.
Tyler, on the other hand, was a guy who calls the shots, the leader people followed, and the one who got in on all the action (including sex).
I look like you want to look, I fuck like you want to fuck.
I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in the all the ways that you are not.
Sexyness aside, that looks a lot like being an entrepreneur. We are normal people, and just as the Narrator we have a tendency towards the dorky.
But at the same time we aren’t. On top of our nerdy characters we build our alter ego who is a crazier person who is confident enough to pursue the life we want for ourselves and for others. This persona is obsessed about a mission and has a will strong enough to chase that dream, to fight despite difficult odds.
I believe that everyone secretely dreams of a better world, efficient and playful, but few get to play the underground hero trying to make it true. We the entrepreneurs get together to ship small pieces of software and hardware because we believe that they can make lives easier, better, less ordinary. And maybe if we do those well, we can move to bigger and bigger things.
Just like in the movie, sleep is expensive and the bruises are terrible. And that’s where a wild version of ourselves comes in handy. We endure with Tylers irreverant heart that somehow has a high-bandwidth tunnel to an adult’s reasoning and tools.
People do it everyday. They talk to themselves, they see themselves as they’d like to be. They don’t have the courage you have to just run with it.
Naturally, you’re still wrestling with it. So, sometimes you’re still you. Other times you imagine yourself watching me.
Little by little, you’re just letting yourself become .. Tyler Durden.
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(or maybe not, maybe we’re just nerds).