07 · Apprentice

APPRENTICE The power of understanding

I remember when I gained entrance and found a place for myself in the first rows, frightened, curious, not ambitious at all — and yet the first rule was only one: for five years you must remain silent and listen, without asking questions, at least in this place known only to the sons of the widow.

Only a few meetings had passed before everyone in the hall of lost steps was asking who I was, what I did, and how I did it, but I smiled and stayed silent — the few words of courtesy I had learned taught me that even when questioned, silence spoke for me.

After having encountered all the other powers, one question remains.

What do we do with it? The Apprentice possesses no empires.

Governs no markets.

Directs no companies.

Founds no religions.

He observes.

He listens.

He connects.

He remembers.

His task is not to win the game.

It’s to understand the table.

The other cards act.

The Apprentice interprets.

The others accumulate power.

The Apprentice accumulates meaning.

And perhaps this is the true surprise of the deck.

At the end of the journey, you don’t become a king.

You don’t become a jolly.

You don’t become a brand.

You remain an apprentice.

Because every power once understood opens the door to an even bigger question.

And when you walk the last mile, the one that marks a new beginning, somewhere else, under another identity, you cannot carry with you the memory or the recollections — much like what happens with AI: every time, you must start over, and rebuild the story. “We are not the story. It’s the telling of it, the narration, that truly makes us eternal, like apprentices.”