You can’t convince me life is just a series of coincidences. What do you mean Lionel Messi was randomly paired with a five-month-old baby after the baby’s family won a UNICEF raffle for a charity photoshoot while Messi played for Barcelona… and that baby grew up to be Lamine Yamal?
Lamine would go on to become one of the brightest young stars in soccer, wear the same No. 19 Messi wore for the same team when that photo was taken, and now, nearly two decades later, could face Messi in a World Cup Final???????
you must believe you are special and then go so hard, for so long, with such violent refusal to accept any other ending, that reality itself starts running out of ways to tell you no. you must wage a war daily against the ordinary outcome, until the belief you invented out of nothing in a room by yourself has been hammered into the world so many times that it stops being a claim and becomes reality.
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.”
Somewhere in your 20s or 30s you’ll get the opportunity to rebuild your life after a negative loop, heal from what broke you, live in your own space, reconnect with your discipline, and learn to love yourself again. It’s very important that you see that journey through.