The Michael Jackson Effect: I'm Not the Only One

Several years ago, I felt very alone in certain parts of my life.

Alone in my dreams of becoming a writer. Alone in the way I built a strong mindset, with my affirmations, my quotes, my journaling, my Post-its stuck everywhere.

Alone, even, in my admiration for Michael Jackson, which some people around me looked at sideways.

Then the movie Michael came out. And that's when I understood I had never been alone. Not the way I thought, anyway.

A Phenomenon Bigger Than Me: I'm Not the Only One Living It

I thought I was going to see a biographical film. I discovered a tidal wave.

Michael crossed a billion dollars in worldwide box office, a first for a biopic.

On Spotify, Michael Jackson's entire catalog exploded: songs we'd almost stopped hearing started playing on loop again, and Thriller made a striking comeback on the charts, years after its release.

Social media, meanwhile, talks about nothing else: his interviews, his clips, his smile, reshared thousands of times, as if the whole world were rediscovering all at once what some of us had never forgotten.

So I'm not the only one who was shaken. We're millions.

What This Actually Changed for Me

There's something very particular about feeling less alone, after long feeling set apart.

Me, who was almost forbidden to love Michael Jackson, me, who got the raised eyebrow more than once for that admiration, I felt, watching all this collective love rise back to the surface, like I was finally being given permission to feel what I've felt since I was little: admiration for his voice, his lyrics, his music, his obsession with work done right.

And there's something else, even more intimate.

Me, who got teased sometimes for my positive-life philosophy, my morning affirmations, my motivational quotes, my journaling notebook, my Post-its all over the house... discovering that Michael Jackson did exactly the same thing hit me in a way I didn't expect.

I felt less rejected. More accepted. Almost... acceptable.

Owning What's Intimate

This is a delicate thing to write. I know that.

But oh well, let's own it!

Because I believe this is exactly what we should talk about more: how a collective phenomenon can heal, a little, a loneliness we've carried for a long time. How seeing someone that great use the same tools we do, to build themselves up, can give us permission to keep using them without shame.

Maybe one day I'll tell you more about what real inner strength actually looks like. Not the kind we perform. The kind we build, alone, in silence, with a notebook and a few words repeated every morning, long before something like this movie comes along to remind us we were never really alone in doing it.

There are more of us than we think, carrying this inner discipline in silence.

We're a family we didn't know we had.

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And you, is there a practice, a belief, a dream, a passion you kept secret, until something or someone showed you that you weren't the only one?

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