Is It Glory or Insanity?

There’s a thin line everyone talks about but no one can draw.The one between genius and madness, courage and recklessness, vision and delusion.

It shows up every time someone decides to do something that “doesn’t make sense” to most people… and refuses to stop.

So the question appears, whispered or shouted:

Is it glory or insanity?

The uncomfortable part is this:You rarely know which one it is in the moment.

When the World Says “You’re Crazy”

Most people don’t call you insane because they’ve done the math.They call you insane because you’re violating a script they’ve accepted:

• “You don’t leave a stable job for a risky idea.”

• “You don’t build something no one has asked for yet.”

• “You don’t challenge banks, big tech, or institutions. You adapt to them.”

When you step outside that script, you trigger a defense mechanism in others:

• They feel unsafe watching someone bet bigger than they ever would.

• So they rename your courage as madness to feel safe again.

That doesn’t mean you’re right.It just means their reaction doesn’t prove you’re wrong.

The Anatomy of “Glory”

Glory isn’t just success with lights and applause.Real glory usually has these elements:

1. A clear cost.You risk reputation, money, stability, comfort. People who chase glory without paying anything are just posing.

2. Something bigger than ego.A product that changes how people live, a platform that frees creators, a system that gives new power to people who never had it. If it’s only about your name, it burns out fast.

3. Evidence of reality.

   • Users that keep coming back.

   • Partners that are willing to bet on you.

   • Systems that actually work, not just pitch decks that sound beautiful.

Glory demands results, not only dreams.

The Anatomy of “Insanity”

Insanity, in this context, isn’t a medical diagnosis.It’s a pattern of behavior where reality stops being invited to the conversation.

You see it when someone:

• Ignores all feedback, not just bad feedback.

• Rewrites every failure as “the world doesn’t understand me,” without ever asking if they might be wrong.

• Keeps changing the story instead of changing the product, the plan, or themselves.

Insanity is when:

• Vision no longer gets tested against facts.

• Risk is pushed entirely onto others.

• “One more try” becomes an excuse to never reflect, never adjust.

The scary thing?From the outside, glory and insanity can look identical for a long time.

Same stubbornness.Same intensity.Same refusal to quit.

The difference is in what changes over time: reality or just the narrative.

The Pivot Point: Evidence

The key question isn’t:

“Is this person crazy?”

A better question is:

“Is reality slowly bending toward their vision, or is their story drifting away from reality?”

Some signals it might be glory in progress:

• Each iteration solves more real problems, not fewer.

• People who aren’t your friends or fans still choose to use what you built.

• Institutions, even reluctantly, begin to adapt to you: partnerships, integrations, conversations that didn’t exist before.

Some signals it might be insanity in disguise:

• Every setback has the same villain: “haters”, “the system”, “envidia”, “la burocracia”, with zero self-critique.

• The product, plan, or behavior barely changes, but the excuses evolve beautifully.

• The only people who believe in the vision are those who depend on you emotionally or financially.

Reality is the referee.It doesn’t shout. It just keeps score.

The Inner Battle: Why You Keep Going

From the inside, the question feels different.It’s not “am I crazy?”It’s usually:

• “Am I ahead… or just lost?”

• “Am I pushing a boundary… or pushing my luck?”

• “Is this resistance proof I’m onto something… or proof I’m refusing to learn?”

If you’re honest, you’ll notice both forces:

• A part of you that knows something is possible.

• A part of you that fears you’re building a cathedral in the sky.

The tension between those two is not a bug.It’s the price of trying to build anything that doesn’t fit into the default template.

How to Walk the Line Without Falling Off

You can’t eliminate the risk of being wrong.But you can discipline your madness so it has a real chance of becoming glory:

1. Ask reality, not just your reflection.

   • Talk to users.

   • Talk to partners.

   • Talk to people who don’t owe you kindness.Listen more to what they do than to what they say.

2. Put your own skin in the game.If you’re risking others more than yourself, the line is already broken.

3. Track hard metrics, not vibes.

   • Are more people using it?

   • Are partners coming closer, not further away?

   • Are systems actually integrating, not just “in conversations”?

4. Be willing to kill your favorite idea to save the mission.Insanity clings to the exact shape of the vision.Glory is flexible on shape, but unshakable on direction.

5. Have at least one brutally honest friend.Someone allowed to say:

   “This part is brilliant.This part is bullshit.Fix it.”

So… Is It Glory or Insanity?

The most honest answer is uncomfortable:

You usually only know after the fact.

Once:

• The product is live and loved,

• The system is adopted,

• The world rearranges itself around the thing you insisted on building…

Then people call it glory.

Before that:

• It will look like stubbornness,

• sound like obsession,

• and feel, even to you, dangerously close to insanity.

The trick is not to chase glory or avoid insanity.The trick is this:

• Stay loyal to the truth, not the story.

• Let data correct you.

• Let results humble you.

• Let courage push you, but let reality shape you.

Walk that line long enough, with enough honesty and enough resilience, and one day the question might flip:

From “Is it glory or insanity?”to

“How did anyone ever think this was impossible?”