This sentence by Van Gogh hits hard:
“If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning.”
High intelligence often comes with heightened pattern recognition. You start noticing social masks, forced conversations, performative friendships, hidden motives, emotional immaturity, and energy that feels draining instead of nourishing. Many highly intelligent people also have more active nervous systems, deeper inner worlds, and lower tolerance for superficial stimulation, so solitude can feel safer than constantly shrinking themselves to fit environments that don't feel aligned.
nothing humbles you more than realizing how many things you once prayed for are now a part of your normal life, and you barely even notice them anymore.
People respect you more when they don't see you often. Even parents. Trust me. It's strange how distance rearranges love, how absence restores what closeness erodes. When people are deprived of your presence, they start seeing you clearly again, not through habit but through awareness. Proximity dulls perception. Space sharpens it. That's just how the human mind works.
Uncommon advice: If you don't know what to pursue in life right now. Pursue yourself. Pursue becoming the healthiest, happiest, most healed, most present, most confident version of yourself. Then the right path will reveal itself.
what a privilege is it is to afford a gym, buy healthy food, pay bills, have legs that walk, eyes that see, a brain that functions, work every day, and take our bodies to their full potential.
one of the quotes i find most inspiring on a hard day:
"Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom"
Ecclesiastes 9:10