@AlexAndBooks_ My advice: don't pressure yourself to understand everything immediately.
Read to see yourself. A concept you feel blind to today might become your saving grace years later when you experience life. Reading is a slow-burning resonance that explains your future.
The obsessive desire to know yourself is a paradox. True healing doesn't happen when you finally understand yourself, but when you no longer matter to yourself.
You are liberated when you forget about yourself and fight for something bigger: love, art, or a greater cause.
Quarter-life crisis is real.
For those who felt completely lost in your 20s, how did you eventually find your direction? I'm curious to hear different perspectives.
#quarterlifecrisis
Going to leave you with this tonight:
The best thing you can do for yourself is actively increase your surface area for luck to hit you. Go outside, travel more, go to new cates, museums, events, take a new route home, go for hikes, see cities, countrysides, take your notebook, speak to people, ask questions, start businesses - go on more side quests. You can literally just do things, and the more you do, the more serendipity and synchronicity will find you.
A reminder from Atomic Habits by James Clear:
“It doesn't make sense to continue wanting something if you're not willing to do what it takes to get it. If you don't want to live the lifestyle, then release yourself from the desire. To crave the result but not the process is to guarantee disappointment.”
There is a certain type of person everywhere now, especially online.
He consumes endless information every day: philosophy, psychology, productivity, spirituality, neuroscience, business, self-improvement, history.
He knows a little about everything and deeply experiences almost nothing.
His entire identity becomes built around understanding instead of living.
He watches videos about confidence instead of speaking confidently. Reads about discipline instead of becoming disciplined. Studies relationships instead of learning how to love. Consumes motivational content instead of taking action.
He feels intelligent because he is constantly mentally stimulated. But stimulation is not transformation.
Most of the time, knowledge becomes emotional protection. Reality is unpredictable. Reality humiliates. Reality exposes weakness. Books and ideas do not.
Inside information, he can continue imagining himself as intelligent, deep, insightful, different from ordinary people. So he remains trapped in preparation.
He constantly feels as if he is "becoming" someone, while his real life remains strangely untouched. He develops sophisticated language for problems he never confronts directly. He can explain human behavior beautifully while being unable to handle ordinary discomfort, rejection, uncertainty, loneliness, or risk.
He slowly turns life into observation instead of participation.
The internet rewards this personality heavily. He receives validation for sounding aware rather than becoming capable.
Eventually, he begins confusing self-analysis with growth and information with wisdom.
But beneath the intelligence usually exists the same thing: fear. Fear of failure. Fear of embarrassment. Fear of reality answering back.
Because action destroys fantasy. The moment he truly acts, he can no longer hide inside potential.