Minor gripes then a simple question about mage.

I should preface this by saying that I'm someone new to the setting, currently only have access to WoD5 books and gleam most of my knowledge of older editions from things like the wiki, posts on here YouTube videos etc. so I will 100% accept if I am wrong and just uninformed.

However when I first learned about the world of darkness mage immediately jumped out at me is one of the most interesting settings but it's starting to grate on me a bit. Paradox often makes little sense to me, the ways I've seen it described don't actually seem consensus compliant in the first place so why wouldn't it build up paradox itself? Not to mention if everything came from consensus how did we even figure out how to walk or breathe? Did we have to agree on that first or are there just some things that are truly immutable?

On top of that it feels like every single setting has to bow or placate to mage somewhat. Every single powerful figure was secretly a mage, all the gods are secretly mages, everything is lesser compared to a mage or at least that's the impression I get.

Not to mention on a more personal angle I have a player, I'm a storyteller, who is obsessed with mage and constantly wants to work mage lore in. Always talking about trying to get his character to ascend and become a mage despite the fact we are not playing mage and I have no intention to at the moment.

This is more of a rant than anything else but I guess I do have a question at the end of this because of talking to them, is it really as simple as a realizing that reality is bullshit to become a mage?