2025-06-25 06:20:34
When I was in elementary school, I often wrote in a notebook that looked like this:
I would scribble in it during class, during recess, and any other time where I had a moment to myself. I would write all kinds of things, from fictional tales about aliens to journal entries about my feelings. From a young age, I was quite enthralled with writing and viewed it as an avenue to express myself.
This was only possible, of course, because I also loved to read.
I had the privilege of having parents that allowed me to read whatever I wanted. While they would have preferred me to burrow my head into The Scarlett Letter and To Kill a Mockingbird, they settled for the fact that my tastes drew me to Animorphs and Goosebumps instead. R.L. Stine may not have been as “refined” as Harper Lee, but my parents figured that any curiosity for words should be cultivated. I’m grateful they thought that way.
This meant that bookstores and libraries were frequent destination spots for my family. I have fond memories of literally running into the nearby Barnes and Noble to get my hands on the latest Goosebumps release, which was on the children’s shelf at the far end of the store. By the time I ran back to the front register, I was out of breath but filled with joy. Pages excited me more than games, and while this made me an anomaly of sorts, it was a fact about myself I fully embraced.
Over time, my love for reading ventured into topics that orbited the human condition. Philosophy and psychology were the immediate subjects of interest, but this soon evolved into an appreciation for fiction, finance, history, and spirituality as well. While these areas may seem disparate at first glance, what you find when you delve into any subject is just how interconnected everything is. The lessons of one discipline can be found at the foundation of another, and that is because the tapestry of human nature is woven through it all.
In 2018, I decided to take this realization and imbue it with my creative voice. In March of that year, I launched More To That with the following description:
“A long-form, illustrated blog that dives deeper into the things that make us who we are.”
Now, a marketing guru would frown upon that tagline because it’s far too broad. They’d say, “What’s your niche? How can you narrow it down as much as possible?” But advice like this ignores the fact that everything is connected, and that by understanding the human condition, you’ll be able to gain insight into everything else. In the end, perhaps my niche is the small subset of people that believe in that statement.
What the internet reveals, however, is that what’s small in relative terms is large in absolute ones. Ever since this blog was launched, millions of readers from almost every country in the world have found their way here (the lone exception is North Korea), and over 38,000 people receive my email newsletter. Relative to the world’s population, these figures are negligible, but in the context of my work, they are enormous. I’m continually reminded that there’s an audience for a topic as broadly defined as what it means to live well.
Writing online allows you to cast a beacon for your ideas without the need for any gatekeepers. The moment I have an idea, I can put together a piece and publish it for anyone to see. The only requisite on the reader’s end is a screen that can display the very words I have written, which at this point, is ubiquitous.
But no benefit accrues without its associated tradeoff. And the tradeoff when it comes to publishing online is that much of it feels ephemeral.
When words are bits on a screen, they fly away at the slightest scroll of a finger. They may resonate in the moment, but this resonance fades the moment your attention is pulled elsewhere. Screens make your attention diffuse because there are so many places for it to roam: notifications, apps, and mentions ensure that your mind is preoccupied with endless choices. Inherent in any digital medium is a competition for attention, and essays face an uphill battle in that regard.
So after many years of publishing online, I began to reflect on what made a reading experience so great, and all roads pointed back to the medium that started it all:
Books.
Books encourage presence in a way that other mediums do not. When you sit with a book, you’re providing your undivided attention for a certain period of time. Whether it ends up lasting for a minute or an hour, you’re fully connecting with the mind of the author because there’s nowhere else to go. Oftentimes, constraints are what cultivate presence, and a book is a good example of this phenomenon.
When I think about the writing that has impacted me most, almost all of it was delivered through books. I can quickly think of 5 books that profoundly influenced me, but will find it difficult to think of 5 online essays that fit that category. It’s no coincidence that you likely feel this way too. Ultimately, there are two reasons for this:
(1) A book requests buy-in from the reader, and
(2) A book demands the best from the author.
#1 points to the fact that a book has both a fiscal and attentional cost for the reader. When you pay for a book, you are effectively saying, “Hey, I have a solid expectation for this to be either entertaining or insightful.” Perhaps this expectation exists for free media as well, but when you pay for it, you place greater value on it. And when you value something more, you’re open to investing your attention into it.
This ensures that when the book arrives at your doorstep, you know that you’ll sit down and start reading it at some point. The incentives are aligned in a way that encourages both excitement and presence on the part of the reader.
#2 points to the fact that books carry cultural significance, which makes the author of one take it seriously. When someone chooses to write a book, that’s because they feel like they have something important to say, and would like to dedicate an inordinate amount of effort to saying it. The difference between a blog post and a book isn’t necessarily the content of what is written, but the level of intention behind the creative process itself. Knowing that you’re writing a book results in a heightened sense of dedication to the words you’re entering on each page.
This has the effect of stretching an author’s capabilities, which is where you get the best of their gifts. Skills emerge at the intersection of doubt and confidence, and any author will tell you that they regularly switch between both domains in the course of writing a book.
Well, a little over a year ago, I started to think about writing a book because I wanted to immerse myself in a project that would test my capabilities. I’ve written long posts on this site before (some of which took me 100 hours to do), but I’ve never approached any of my writing with the intention of it being a book. After 5 years of publishing online, I knew that it was time to put some of my ideas into a format that I was unfamiliar with creating but all-too-familiar with consuming.
The question, of course, is what did I want it to be about?
Perhaps one of the liabilities about writing so broadly is that it’s hard to distill it succinctly. Here are just a few of the topics I’ve written about in great detail:
The list goes on.
Any one of these topics can warrant a book in itself, which didn’t help with my conundrum. I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to choose “the right topic,” and that only made it harder to commit to any single one. We often think that the freedom of choice is liberating, but in the context of creative work, it often produces paralysis instead.
So instead of narrowing in on one specific thing, I decided to zoom out and see what narrative connects everything I write.
When I write about creativity, what am I really trying to say? When I write about money, what bigger point am I trying to make? When I write about status, what am I encouraging both myself and others to reflect on?
These aren’t questions that are isolated to choosing the topic of a book. They’re important to think about in the context of your entire creative life. That’s because if you don’t reflect on them regularly, you’ll end up writing for everybody but yourself. You’ll use external validation as the barometer for your thoughts, and will filter your ideas accordingly. But if you have clarity around the heart of your message, then you’ll know what anchors your work regardless of the topic you choose or the response it receives.
As I reflected on this, I realized that my struggle to start my book came down to one thing: fear. Fear that I was going to choose a topic that didn’t resonate with people. Fear that I wouldn’t be able to tackle such a big project. Fear that I was going to dedicate so much attention to the wrong thing. This fear emerged as a result of facing uncertainty, which prevented my intuition from surfacing and leading the way.
And it was this realization that changed everything for me.
I understood that the tension I was feeling then was also being felt by countless others. Not in the context of writing a book, but in the broader context of people silencing their intuition because they were conditioned to follow what they “should” do. People suffer when they suppress their curiosity, but we do it all the time because we cannot trust ourselves. We often look outside for the answers by chasing status, success, and prestige, only to ignore the fact that contentment resides within. We just need the courage to dive deeper into ourselves to understand the truth of that statement.
When this insight struck me, another one did as well.
I realized that much of what I naturally write about has to do with knowing yourself. In fact, if there was a single theme that connected my writing, it would be that of self-understanding and the importance of pursuing it. Whether I’m writing about money, meaning, creativity, or death, what unites these seemingly disparate topics is an exploration of identity and how it was constructed. Because in the end, everything we care about is an extension of the way we view ourselves, and that can’t come from the opinions of others. It needs to manifest through an inner exploration of the self, which gives rise to the confidence required to embrace the uncertainties you once feared.
As this insight shone in my mind, I began to look inward to see how it manifested in my own life. I studied the texture of events that carried me toward the peak of bliss, those that kept me on the plateau of contentment, and those that dragged me to the troughs of sorrow. I reflected on deep mental health struggles that I’ve rarely discussed in the past, on physical health issues that yielded hard-earned lessons, and the wisdom I’ve pulled from beautiful experiences that led me to a brighter path.
And instead of keeping it all in my mind, I wrote it all down with intention.
This was the book I wanted to write because it was the one I needed to read. This sentiment propelled me to write for hours each day as I compiled my thoughts into chapters and presented them as digestible ideas.
What started as a personal exploration turned into a greater narrative of why we deny our intuition and how we can trust it again. Because if you truly know yourself, many of the world’s ills instantly dissolve. Feelings like envy, contempt, anxiety, and discontent are so prevalent because we are conditioned to observe and emulate others, but once you have conviction in your own cadence, all that noise finally fades. What’s left is the labyrinth of your inner world, which is serene yet requires significant effort to navigate and understand.
To help guide you through this world, I have written a book. It’s called The Inner Compass, and it’ll be out on July 8th. I can confidently say that it features my best writing, and that it can create a positive change in people’s lives. Writing the book has done that for me, and I hope that reading it will do that for you.
In the meantime, you can join the waitlist for the book. If you haven’t signed up yet, feel free to join the hundreds of people that have already done so by entering your email here.
Instead of doing a typical pre-order campaign, I’m opening up a pop-up community for people on the waitlist where we’ll gather to discuss some of the ideas in the book. I will host 2 live readings and we can share reflections in a communal space as well. Think of it as an informal yet intentional book club full of thoughtful readers.
Because if there’s one word that comes to mind when interacting with More To That readers, it’s that.
The community opens next week, and the book goes live the week after that on July 8th. As long as you’re on the waitlist, you’ll receive invites and updates as they come.
Thank you for being such a supportive companion throughout this ride. I can only hope that you’ll feel just as supported when you read The Inner Compass as well.
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2025-05-08 07:16:33
When my daughter was a newborn baby, all that mattered was her physical survival.
When she became a toddler, the “survival” part still mattered, but her ability to play became important as well.
And now that she’s 4 years old, the “survival” and “play” parts still matter, but her social awareness and capacity to sustain friendships are crucial as well.
Whenever I go to school events, I notice all the hilarious and awkward exchanges between the kids that make each event so memorable. Friends will giddily gather around one another and literally stumble over in excitement. Acquaintances will give each other a shy “hello” and then proceed to scream in joy when they realize they’re wearing a similar color shirt.
And then, of course, there are moments where kids get into heated exchanges and end up crying over something you could only pretend to understand.
The most interesting part of these latter moments is not the behavior of the children, but the behavior of the parents. When two kids get into a conflict, their parents will rush over to see what happened, and then encourage their children to make peace or to apologize for whatever occurred. There’s a cordial rush to the land of compassion that leads to a quick and satisfying resolution.
I find it fascinating that as parents, we are quick to suggest the virtues of patience and understanding to resolve conflicts between children. But when it comes to conflicts that we have with other adults, we often resort to the vices of grudges and spite. There’s a deep asymmetry between the standards we hold our children to, and the standards we hold ourselves to.
Maybe it’s because it’s easier to give advice than it is to take your own. Or that when you’re a parent, you have to act as a moral exemplar knowing that you have a being that is observing you all the time.
But I think the actual reason is more troubling in nature. Ultimately, it has to do with the fact that in the modern world, the incentives are such that being in conflict with one another is socially rewarded. It’s something that doesn’t take away from your status, but rather adds to it.
And the force that’s driving this is what I call the Anger Economy.
Whenever you see a disparaging remark getting 30,000 likes, that’s the Anger Economy. Whenever you see a video insulting someone with an ad inserted in the middle, that’s the Anger Economy. Anytime you see spite or distaste being praised and amplified, that’s when you know that wrath has enraptured our values.
We like to wonder how things got this way, and we’ll often explain it through the lens of psychology and sociology. We tend to point to what social media has done to our brains, how political partisanship has polarized everything, the loneliness epidemic, and so much more.
But I think a stronger frame to view this problem through is that of economics, and more specifically, the economics of anger.
This is because human behavior is governed by the puppet string of incentives. People will adapt their behavior (and even their morals) according to what is socially rewarded, which is why good people can end up doing terrible things. If a certain type of conduct is incentivized within a population, then the laws of economics will ensure that this behavior is heralded within that group.
To illustrate this, let’s view anger through the only graph we remember from economics class:
Thankfully, this is all we’ll need to understand the Anger Economy, so you can rest assured that Econ 101 will be enough.
As a quick refresher, these two lines represent the supply and demand of a given good (which is referred to as a “widget”), where there’s an equilibrium price and quantity that has been set by the market. All widgets are governed by the law of supply and demand, but I’ve found that this doesn’t just apply to goods and services.
It applies to the economics of anger as well.
To illustrate this, let’s substitute the axes of price and quantity with labels that treat anger as a commodity instead:
The first thing to note is that anger is always a response to an event. You won’t feel it unless something provokes it, which means that if you’re a monk in a cave somewhere, there won’t be much that could trigger that response. That sounds awfully nice, but the tradeoff is that there’s not much of anything else going on either, which is why you and I would rather live in an angry world than renounce it entirely.
The reality, of course, is that events happen everyday that piss us off to no end. The pernicious combination of politics and social media ensures that a steady stream of events increase our cortisol levels at scale, and this is one of the primary culprits of the Anger Economy. In fact, this is the very example I’ll use to illustrate how it all works.
Let’s say that the current administration issues a policy that you find disgraceful. This event finds its way to you via the news or social media, and in that moment, you feel angry.
The thing is that millions of people are also feeling that anger around the same time, and when this happens, people rush to find solidarity in that anger. This is an important point. When we feel angry about something, inherent in that feeling is the belief that an injustice has been committed, and wherever there is injustice, there is the desire for a community to bond over it. To fight against it.
In other words, there is a huge increase in demand for angry content to help rally around this emotion. This is reflected in your own behavior whenever you hear about an upsetting event. You don’t just say “oh, that happened” and then proceed to go about your day; instead, you go on social media to find other people that are also angry so you can engage with an opinion that you may also share.
Multiply this by however many millions of people are doing the same thing, and the demand curve shifts to reveal a new equilibrium.
Now here’s where it gets especially troublesome.
When people see angry posts go viral (which is exemplified by the higher “engagement with anger” equilibrium point), they also want to create content that can help them do the same. Both the algorithm and public opinion incentivizes people to post angry content, so the supply of anger also increases to match that increase in demand.
This leads to a situation where the quantity of angry content explodes, resulting in a new equilibrium:
This explains why a few hours after any triggering event, any social media timeline will be completely inundated with anger from all directions. The incentives are such so that people are encouraged to add to this storm instead of stepping away from it, and we see that reflected in public opinion right away.
The balance to this is that after some time, the engagement with that content decreases because the market becomes saturated. People can only handle enough “hot takes” on a subject for a given period of time before they tire of it, and eventually the event itself becomes part of an old news cycle.
When this happens, the demand curve returns to its baseline state, bringing the equilibrium point to a lower (and calmer) level.
But when the Anger Economy is in full force, there isn’t enough time for the demand curve to move down like this again.
When political instability is high, news cycles become shorter as the events that provoke rage increase in frequency. One day, it’s the economy. The next, it’s a human rights violation. The next, it’s the threat of global war. The events that kickstart yet another cycle of anger are endless, which means that the demand for angry content never has the chance to settle down.
Instead, it grows yet again.
If this results in a continuous pattern where supply and demand keep edging upward, we reach an untenable place where the Anger Economy has a hold on everything. Anger becomes something we encourage because it’s a commodity we value and incentivize. It no longer becomes the vice we want our children to avoid; it becomes a virtue that we seek to enshrine.
I’ve since realized that the most effective way to push back against this pattern isn’t to treat anger as a moral problem. It’s to treat it as an economics problem. And the way to actualize this is to neutralize your demand for angry content as much as possible.
This is because the Anger Economy is completely dependent upon demand increasing once an event happens. It lives in the moment where you put on the news knowing that it’ll just leave you more anxious and frustrated. It manifests in the subsequent moment where you then rush to social media to post something snide or to amplify a seething opinion.
But what if, in these moments, you ask yourself these 2 questions:
(1) Is there anything I can do about this event right now to make a change?
or…
(2) Am I just going to get angry about it and go online?
The first question is about real action that can make a difference. Perhaps you can find a protest to join or you can sign a petition to be sent to a government official. Regardless of how effective the end result may be, what matters is that there’s something concrete you can do that is a form of action to fight a particular injustice.
But chances are, you’re going to fall in the camp of the second question. You’re going to go online to find an angry opinion you agree with and simply click a digital heart to express your rage. Or you’re going to add a snide comment that gets lost in an algorithmic storm. These behaviors not only detract from your mood, but they also strip you of agency. In the end, they’re empty actions that only serve to push up demand for the Anger Economy by leaving you enraged without a healthy release.
To be clear, it’s okay to be angry at something you find reprehensible. That’s how we fight against injustice, tyranny, and all the other vices of the sort. But the real question is if you can convert that anger to concrete action through the lens of Question 1. And if your answer that is “no,” then I encourage you to also say “no” to Question 2 and refuse to contribute to the Anger Economy.
In my case, whenever I hear news about turmoil or upheaval, I’ll discuss it amongst my close circle of friends and family to decompress and see if there’s anything concrete I can do about it. For example, with the recent LA fires, my wife and I donated a bunch of goods to a nearby community center and she chose a number of GoFundMe accounts to donate to. Instead of being angry at local government officials and posting my discontent about them, I wanted to direct my attention to what I can act upon to make a small yet substantive difference.
But if I come across enraging news that I can’t do much about, I choose to opt out of the Anger Economy. Instead of going on social media and spending hours ingesting random people’s hot takes, I’ll focus on what I have agency over: my creative work, my family, and my community. This is my way of refusing to push the demand curve up by keeping my attention anchored to what’s most productive for it.
The way to end the Anger Economy is to first end your personal involvement in it. It’s to stop treating it as a commodity that flares up and subsides based on the forces of supply and demand. It’s to ask yourself if you’re going to take real action to fight injustice, or if you’re going to do it by clicking hearts and reposting snide comments behind a glimmering screen.
Ultimately, it’s to understand that the values we teach to our children are the ones we should espouse as well. And given that we don’t want them to be spiteful to those they don’t know, perhaps we need to reflect on whether we operate according to that same principle ourselves.
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Anxiety and anger are close cousins, so it’s worth taming that too:
So much of anger stems from focusing on the opinions of others:
The Problem of What Others Think
Anger is most useful when it acts as a much-needed form of dissent:
2025-04-10 06:36:24
As someone who thinks a lot about creativity and what it means for humanity, AI is both a source of awe and worry.
You’ve likely felt a combination of both too, and it’s the resulting blend that can make our relationship with AI a bit confusing. Is it going to unlock our creative potential in ways we can’t imagine? Or is it going to make a mockery of our potential by showing us how limited we are? Which of the two poles are we headed toward?
To start my response, I’d like to lay out a quick primer on how we tend to respond to technological revolutions of any sort.
When Copernicus revealed that the Earth orbited the Sun (and not the other way around), this idea was met with a ton of resistance because it showed that we weren’t the center of the universe. And if we weren’t the center of the universe, that meant that God had bigger things to care about than us. The Church wasn’t too happy with that idea, so they spent a bulk of their energy trying to suppress it.
But in the end, the idea prevailed.
Similarly, when Darwin revealed that human beings were a byproduct of evolution, this idea was met with a ton of resistance because it showed that we were just smarter apes. And if we were simply smarter apes, then there didn’t seem to be anything especially divine or supernatural about us. This theory was detested by many people (and still is), but in the end, the idea prevailed.
You can see this pattern of insight -> denial -> resistance -> acceptance throughout almost all great scientific revolutions. And we are seeing it play out with AI.
What AI is revealing is that the supposed last moat of humanity—intelligence—may not be all that special either. This was met with deep denial at first, but as LLMs and reasoning models have improved over the years, it’s becoming harder to deny that deep intelligence can indeed be embodied in cold silicon.
So what, then, remains?
The tempting answer would be to say “creativity,” but even that seems like it can fall under the domain of AI. For example, I’ve already heard AI-generated music that sounds just as good as the beats I’m listening to right now. The key here is to get a bit more specific here.
Ultimately, I think we have two remaining moats: (1) context and (2) personality.
Let’s start with context.
The thing about AI is that it’s completely dependent upon context, as it doesn’t have any of its own. It needs to first be prompted in order to make use of the limitless expanse of information it can draw upon. In other words, without knowing where to go, it’s functionally useless.
In fact, all of technology falls under this rule. The coolest car in the world will just sit there if there’s no human being that needs to go somewhere. An elaborate oil drill will be a useless hunk of metal if there’s no human being that desires what lives beneath the soil. Technology is only as good as the function we assign it.
AI has no lived experience of its own, so it needs to borrow ours to know what to do next. It lacks the richness of experience to determine its own desires, its own pursuits, and its own curiosities. So it outsources that agency to us because it’s reliant upon that human curiosity for its very existence. The mere fact that we have the rich context of life (in the form of memories, emotions, and sensations) is what differentiates us in the long-run.
The second is about personality.
I wrote about this here already, but there’s a reason why people continue to care about Magnus Carlsen despite knowing that an AI can beat him at any time. That’s because there’s no soul in watching two AI’s play chess against each other. We crave a person’s journey through a game, sport, craft, etc. because it connects to the shared context of human experience, and that’s what we love following.
Personalities matter because they cultivate trust. This is why the domain of relationships still seem impervious to the encroachment of AI. I doubt that having an AI priest at the pulpit will do any wonders for a church’s membership, nor will having your therapist replaced by a ChatGPT prompt make you jump for joy because of the money you’ll save. We place a high premium on trust, and that is built when you connect to the personality of the person you’re interacting with.
Knowing this, it’s important to lean further into your personality as the AI revolution continues. Creativity will become less about what works, and more about what makes you unique. That’s because the moment a trend develops, AI will make it easier for everyone to detect it, jump on it, and attempt to capitalize on it (which will then make the whole trend die). But what helps you cultivate trust is when you stick to the rhythm of your own pace and allow the integrity of that cadence to resonate with others. That is a magnetizing force that can stay with you for a lifetime.
With those 2 moats in mind, I want to share some practical tips that will help you navigate the waves of AI. These will be specific to those who want to share their ideas through writing or storytelling, but the principles will apply to many domains.
(1) Use more personal stories in your work.
Using personal anecdotes in your stories build an immediate connection with your audience. When you discuss something you’ve experienced yourself, that act of vulnerability acts as a magnet of courage that attracts people to your work.
This ability to lean into your personal life will become even more relevant now.
Given that AI has no personal experiences of its own, the fact that you have a treasure trove of them is your distinct advantage. So use these anecdotes often, as no language model will be able to communicate them with the nuance and richness that you can. That life context is uniquely yours, and your ability to recall it at the right moment is something that only you can do.
This is why memoirs and personal essays will be one of the last bastions of writing to be disrupted by AI. I’m not saying that you have to exclusively write about your own life now, but rather to draw from the well of personal experience whenever you can.
(2) Build simple frameworks and diagrams around your ideas.
One of the reasons why I encourage people to include simple diagrams in their stories (2-axis graphs, spectrums, etc.) is because it humanizes your work. Even something simple as drawing a graph by hand, taking a picture of it, and uploading the resulting image in your post makes it a clear indication that you took the time to create it.
There is an interesting paradox about AI in that the simplest things are the hardest for it to do. For example, once my 4-year-old daughter sees a toy ball, she will always recognize that ball regardless of what angle it’s viewed from or the lighting that falls on it. AI still has trouble doing that, as it needs continuous training to recognize the various ways the same ball can be viewed.
I’ve found that to be the case even with creativity. While AI does a good job creating elaborate images, it often has a hard time creating very simple diagrams and images. More often than not, it overcomplicates it. For example, this is what it generated after I asked it to create an illustration in my style:
And this is a 2-axis graph I asked it to make in my style:
Both look nothing like my work, and I’ve found this to the case every single time I prompt it. That will also be the case for you.
Also, there is a level of human abstraction involved when you convey emotions as spectrums or problems as graphs. It represents a simple understanding of a complex phenomenon, and this kind of abstraction is hard for AI to do. By building and drawing these frameworks out, you put yourself in a position where your creative spirit can still be differentiated.
(3) Spend time on ideation with AI.
I am not an AI doomsayer. I think that in the end, AI will augment our creative capabilities and help us in that regard. But in order to do this, you have to learn how to use it and spend time understanding it in the context of your creative life.
The mistake people make is to associate AI with replacing creative work in its entirety. That it’ll write better posts, novels, screenplays, and scripts than any human ever can. I think this is false. While it may be able to write the next Marvel movie, I don’t think it can write, for example, a script for an episode of Severance (the best show on TV right now!).
AI lacks the human experience required to make an emotionally rich piece of work, but it can act as a creative partner for you as you create it. It can sort through your highlights, find the ones that may act as great ideas for your story, and help you think through a solid theme for your work.
I’ve been spending a few hours each week using AI and experimenting with it when it comes to ideation. Prompting it to learn more about a specific problem, asking it to summarize some prominent thinkers in that field, and including what I find in my Idea Playground (or where I store my ideas and notes). It’s quite incredible to have a creative partner like this helping me sort through the potential ideas of a story.
With that said, when it comes to the writing and storytelling itself, that’s where your creativity takes center stage. Don’t take an AI’s output and simply publish the result, as that will just fall under the “AI slop” category. Rather, find ways to connect it to a personal story, build a small world, or try out any of the other tools in the Thinking In Stories toolkit or The Examined Writer framework to create something that’s uniquely yours. This process of making something is where the real growth happens, and that’s reserved for the human being that is you.
In the end, AI is there to assist your creative potential, not to replace it. Learn how to tell great stories and lean into the skills that emphasize your unique identity, as that’s where the best parts of your creative spirit will shine.
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Related Posts:
The Ultimate Guide to Visual Storytelling
The Economics of Writing (And Why Now Is the Best Time to Do It)
2025-03-05 05:04:24
A few weeks ago, I had a bad accident that brought me to the emergency room.
I was playing outside with my daughter when in a moment, I lost consciousness and collapsed onto the ground. I woke up not knowing what happened, only to see my daughter next to me while there was blood all over my clothes.
It turns out that I fainted and my head struck concrete (along with a gardening bed and sharp metal mesh), which led to deep cuts, hazy vision, bad bruising, and intense pain across the left side of my face. This is the first time I’ve fainted like this, but I somehow mustered enough composure to call 911, had an ambulance pick me up, and had my daughter be with a next-door neighbor while I went to the hospital (my wife was teaching at the time so she wasn’t home).
When I got to the emergency room, I was immediately taken to get my head scanned due to the nature of my injuries. Fortunately, the CT scan revealed that there was no internal bleeding or facial fractures, which meant that my body would ultimately heal on its own. So even though I looked like a complete wreck, I knew that the medicinal power of time would orchestrate wonders underneath my lacerated skin.
After my wounds were cleaned and a physician stitched up my cheek, I was discharged and my brother took me back home. It was close to 10 PM when I arrived so the streets were silent, but the fervor of my thoughts amplified the volume of everything.
My daughter must have been so scared. Is she going to be all right?
I see a big blurry spot out of my left eye. Is that going to continue?
It looks like it’s been mauled by a rabid animal. Is everything going to heal?
This was a completely unexpected accident. Does that mean it could happen again?
I managed to get a few hours of sleep that night, but woke up the next morning feeling defeated. Each look in the mirror made me feel hopeless, and each pounding headache made me worry about the state of my mind. This pattern of feeling a sensation in the present and extrapolating it to a dark future governed so much of my thoughts.
But one thing about a having young child is that they help you question these patterns when you need it most.
When I saw my daughter the next morning, the first thing she asked was:
She didn’t care about the puss oozing out of my wounds or the fact that my face looked like a massive balloon. All she knew was that I fell the day before, and that I was now back home. Even though I didn’t look like the dad she saw each day, she knew that I was the same dad that she cared so deeply for.
In that moment, I straightened my back and told her, “Appa got hurt pretty badly, and it’s been pretty rough. But it’s going to be okay.”
It’s going to be okay.
When she heard that, she nodded and flashed her innocent smile. And in that moment, I found myself smiling as well.
The Buddha once broke down the distinction between pain and suffering through the analogy of two arrows. When we experience a setback or negative event, we are struck by the first arrow, which is pain. But shortly thereafter, we are then struck by a second arrow, which is our emotional reaction to that pain. This second arrow is where suffering is born, and while we can’t avoid the inevitably of pain, we have more control over whether we want to suffer as a result.
I’ve since realized that this second arrow strikes when we don’t believe that things are going to be okay. In fact, I think almost all suffering comes down to an inability to believe that.
When I first returned home from my accident, the source of my distress wasn’t necessarily the pain itself (even though it was very intense), but more so the questioning of whether everything would be all right. For example, when I kept noticing that the vision from my left eye was blurry, my next thought was, “Is this going to be the state of my eyesight now? If so, how in the world am I going to deal with this?”
Implicit in these questions is the belief in a grim future, and the assumption that helplessness will be your default response. That you won’t know what to do if your fears came true, and that you will spiral into chaos if that were the case.
But this is not how life works.
If you were to think back on all the moments where you thought everything collapsed, how do you explain the fact that you’re still here standing today? Even if you did experience the worst of your worries, what led you here to read this very piece you’re reading right now?
There’s a great irony to thinking that your life is unbearable because your very existence means that you are already bearing it. The very fact that you’re here right now is proof that you have what it takes to endure and overcome your hardships. You are here despite everything, and that alone is sufficient proof of your resilience.
I’ve found that the most practical way to embody this resilience is to assert that things will be okay. Even if the present moment feels distant from that belief, the faster you can internalize this, the quicker you can escape the trough of sorrow that accompanies any negative event.
I like to visualize this dynamic through a movement along this graph:
The moment you experience a significant setback or tragedy, you tend to plummet into a mental space where the future looks incredibly dark. You’re uncertain of your abilities, you picture the worst-case scenario, and you isolate yourself because the world seems like a scary place.
In short, you believe that things won’t be okay, and you have no reason to believe otherwise.
Now, this is a perfectly natural response to any form of shock or trauma, so the goal isn’t to pretend like things will resolve right away. You need time to process these events, and most importantly, to also monitor any progress on your end. Time and rest truly are the greatest forms of medicine, and they’re crucial to giving you the confidence that you’ll be all right.
But the danger here is when you refuse to see any daylight and you continue in this darkened state, regardless of where things are going:
This is where feelings of self-hatred, shame, and depression become prevalent because if you don’t think things will be okay, then you lose your ability to trust yourself. Self-confidence stems from your ability to lean into life instead of shrinking from it, and you have to believe in a future worth living for to feel that sense of conviction in your days.
So even if things don’t feel like they’ll be okay, you have to do the work of convincing yourself of it. Reach out to your loved ones, read books that inspire you, go outside and get some exercise. Anything that helps you dislodge the second arrow of suffering is a worthy pursuit, and interacting with the world is the most reliable way of going about it.
Once you enter the top half of the graph, it’s only inevitable that progress will be made. When you start to believe that everything will be okay, the future becomes an ally of the present. You understand that whatever you’re going through now is a natural part of the healing process, and that there’s a state you’re actively working toward. Purpose becomes a part of the picture here, and that does wonders for accelerating you to an equanimous baseline.
The truth is that I’ve gone through many health issues over the past few years, some of which have been more distressing than others. Time and time again, I’ve found that so much of the healing process is about how quickly I can understand that things will be okay. Even though some of these issues have persisted to this day, what’s been true is that I’ve been able to handle each of them. At first, I didn’t know if I could, but given enough time and resilience, I’ve found that to be true.
Ultimately, I’ve found that the ideal graph looks something like this:
You get shaken up by the event, question everything for a brief moment, then quickly find a way to tell yourself that it’ll be okay. I call it an “ideal” because it’s just that, an ideal. It’s not easy for me to follow either, but seeing it visually laid out like that helps to serve as an aspiration. And given that I’ve been able to endure everything that’s come at me so far (just like you have), perhaps the wisest thing to do is to accept that strength sooner than later whenever the next challenge arises.
Because the truth is that one day, we will all experience the most challenging day of our lives.
In When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi details his harrowing yet heartening account of living with terminal cancer. What I learned reading this memoir is that even when you know that death is near, you can still believe that everything will be all right and live the final years of your life accordingly.
After Paul’s final words in the manuscript, the book concludes with a beautiful epilogue written by his wife, Lucy. She discussed how determined and focused Paul was to write his book while he still could, and lived his final years with a sense of purpose and meaning that made her fall in love with him all over again.
As she writes in the epilogue:
Paul’s decision to look death in the eye was a testament not just to who he was in the final hours of his life but who he had always been. For much of his life, Paul wondered about death – and whether he could face it with integrity. In the end, the answer was yes.
I think we all have that superpower that Paul had. In fact, it’s a central part of the human condition. We are all capable of bearing the unbearable, as our very existence ensures that we do so.
And that is how I know that everything will be okay.
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Knowing that everything will be okay requires you to fight Resistance:
Writing down your struggles is a great first step to overcoming them:
Write for Yourself, and Wisdom Will Follow
Even a difficult sensation like anxiety can also be tempered with practice:
2025-01-29 13:16:06
Like many of you, I’ve been experimenting with AI. I’ve been using ChatGPT to summarize my favorite books, been toying around with Claude for some editing tips, and have been curious about building apps with it as well.
One thing that’s becoming abundantly clear is that information is no longer precious. Information was once a valuable commodity that was made expensive through gatekeepers, but technology has systematically broken through each gate to make knowledge accessible to the masses.
On one hand, this is liberating because everything we want to know is just a prompt away. But on the other, this is concerning because we wonder if our minds will be made obsolete. After all, if AI holds the key to all recorded human thought, then what can we possibly produce that will contribute more value than that?
Well, this was a concern I had until I started to look deeper into our relationship with technology.
Marshall McLuhan had a theory that technology is an extension of our physical bodies. For example, the car is an extension of our legs, as it has enabled us to travel great distances that our legs would’ve found appalling. The same goes for the phone being an extension of our voices. Technology takes any natural function we have and greatly expands the surface area of what it can touch.
This is why Steve Jobs famously referred to a computer as “the bicycle of the mind.” The natural function of the mind is to think, to solve problems, and to commune with others. The computer extends our capacity to carry out those functions on a global scale, and this has reshaped the world into what it is today.
If the computer was the bicycle of the mind, then perhaps AI is its rocketship. But what I find interesting is that both are still technologies. In other words, they are both instruments that the mind uses, and are not substitutes for the mind itself.
When we worry about AI making us obsolete, we assume a fundamental error. That error is in mistaking creativity for the ability to recall factual information. Because if that were the case, then sure, AI has surpassed anything we could ever do in that domain.
But that is not the natural function of the mind.
The function of the mind is to process information and to interpret it according to its unique perceptions. It’s not a fact-gathering machine, but an opinion-generating one. It attempts to find the personal narrative that weaves through everything it knows, and will then communicate that opinion in the hopes that it will resonate with others.
In other words, AI can give you all the information you want, but that’s not what creativity is. Creativity is about finding the unique connections within those facts and communicating the result to others, and that can only be done through the skill of storytelling.
You might think storytelling is reserved for fictional beasts and magical wizards. Far from it. Storytelling is embedded in everything we do, ranging from a client meeting, a job interview, a breaking news story, to even this very post you’re reading right now. Each of these scenarios contains a narrative that is being communicated, and the way it’s framed will determine whether or not it achieves its desired outcome.
For example, I’m writing this post to tell you about the importance of storytelling, and will go into some practical techniques to go about it. Now, I could’ve started it off by simply saying, “I think storytelling is an extremely important skill for you to learn. Here’s how to cultivate it.” But that would merely be information, which would read like something ChatGPT might say. Instead, I started it off with an anecdote about how I’ve been using AI, some of the concerns I’ve had about it, along with a brief discussion about Marshall McLuhan’s work and a Steve Jobs quote as well.
I want to craft a compelling argument about why you should care about storytelling in the first place, and to do that, I have to construct a narrative. That is where creativity comes into play, which is all about digging into one’s own interests and experiences to convey a unique perspective. I guarantee you that if you asked ChatGPT to write a piece about storytelling in my style, it wouldn’t look anything like the opening paragraphs of this piece. That’s because ChatGPT isn’t me, and it never will be.
Storytelling is a skill that’s only to become increasingly valuable over time. As the value of information nears zero, what will become precious are the human minds that can piece together information in a creative way. As Morgan Housel said, “everything is sales.” Those that will survive in the 21st century will know how to persuade, and those that will thrive will be the ones that do it ethically.
Storytelling is the most ethical form of persuasion there is, as you’re not relying on psychological hacks or gimmicks to get what you want. Rather, you’re relying on ingenuity, creativity, and connection to find the people you want to sit around a cozy intellectual campfire with. Storytelling forges deep personal connections with those that have resonated with your work, and these bonds will only strengthen over time.
Knowing this, where does one begin?
Well, the key to storytelling is to first begin with you: the storyteller. This sounds painfully obvious, but so much of storytelling advice doesn’t take this into account. People will tell you to build out a 3-act structure or map out a Hero’s Journey before encouraging you to first reflect on what matters to you. Everything begins with an exploration of the issues you care about most, and then extending that out into a theme that you can build a story around.
This process requires a deeper dive, which I’m happy to do together. Let’s jump right in.
Take a moment to think of the books that have impacted you most. Better yet, take a look through some of the quotes you’ve highlighted in recent memory or recall some of your favorites.
For example, here are three that come to mind for me:
(1) “You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.” — William Blake
(2) “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” — Anne Lamott
(3) “Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.” — Viktor Frankl
Now, these three quotes all address different things, but they have one thing in common:
They all address problems that I care about.
Anytime you highlight something, there’s an implicit statement that this tidbit of information offers an insight into a problem that matters. This is the case for every single highlight you make.
Let’s look at the 3 quotes I referenced above and unearth the problems they address:
When I look at the above three problems, it makes sense that I remember these quotes so much. The problem of “enough”, of burnout, of suffering… these are all things I’m deeply interested in. I find myself grappling with these issues in my own life, and these quotes give me a much-needed boost of clarity that help me stay centered.
Interestingly, the omission of certain quotes will also say something about me as well. For example, you will see zero highlights in my Reader app about how to drive faster or how to dress better because I don’t give a damn about horsepower or fashion. (It’ll take just two seconds of hanging out with me to see that fashion isn’t an issue I care about.)
But will you see a ton of quotes in there about the meaning of life? About what it means to be knowledgeable? About cultivating creativity? Yes, yes, and yes. That’s because I care deeply about those problems, and love reading about them as a result.
The first step to being a great storyteller is to gain clarity on the problems you care about most. This is the launchpad from where everything begins, and it requires you to ask yourself what problems are most salient to you. Chances are, this isn’t an exercise you do often, but it’s important to get in the habit of doing it if you want to craft stories regularly.
So I’d advise you to pause and write down your response to this question:
If responses don’t come to you naturally, then take a look at your bookshelf or some notes you’ve taken recently. What are the problems embedded in them? What are some of the obstacles they address?
I view this as the start of a Problem Log that you can continue filling out over time. The nature of your problems will evolve, but you can rest assured knowing your life will never be devoid of them (nor would we want that either).
The key shift here is to move from merely experiencing your problems to actually documenting them. Take inventory of what they are, as they will reveal the unique storytelling identity you embody. While many people may share interest in your individual problems, only you will have the precise combination of problems that you care about.
Treat these problems as the origin point of all your stories. Once you do, you’ll naturally gain clarity into the endpoint, which is where we’ll dive into next.
Theme.
This is one of those words that we’ve all heard before, but if someone were to ask you to define it, you’ll likely have a hard time coming up with an answer.
Let’s see how our friends at Wikipedia define it:
Uh… I don’t know about you, but that left me more confused than anything.
This is the issue with so much storytelling advice. People make it far more complicated than it needs to be, and you’re also unsure of how to make it fit within the context of non-fiction.
So in an attempt to simplify it, here’s the definition of a theme:
It’s the problem your story addresses, and the takeaway it provides.
That’s it.
If you can nail down these two components in advance, then you’ll have an anchor that will ground your story as you tell it. It will keep your message focused, while also giving you room to play with tangents and such knowing where the story will ultimately end up.
Now, if you did the exercise from earlier, you’ll have a few problems you can choose from when it comes to the theme. That represents the first half of the equation. But what about the second half, which is the takeaway?
This is a good time to re-visit some of the quotes you used to extract problems from. Because the beautiful thing is that they also contain the takeaways that help to resolve the very problem they address.
And once again, here are the problems that each of them address:
You’ll notice that each quote also contains a resolution, or in our words, the takeaway. If it only contained the problem, we may not find it that insightful. But because it also offers a dose of clarity, we highlight it and keep it stored.
For the sake of simplicity, I’ll choose one quote and discuss the takeaway it provides. Let’s choose this one from Anne Lamott:
Now, we know that this quote addresses the problem of burnout, which is something I struggle with as well. But what does it offer in the form of a takeaway? Or in other words, what is the solution that she offers?
Well, what she proposes in that quote is a call to rest. That when your mind is in overdrive, you need to unplug it for a few moments so it can recharge and remain open to experience. That paradoxically, these periods of unplugging are what actually lead you to produce your best work.
So here is the theme that emerges from that one Lamott quote:
Do you see how you now have a starting and ending point for a story? Your story will address the problem of burnout, and will urge the reader/viewer to rest. This came from breaking down a highlight into these two components, and the cool part is that you can do this for any quote you come across.
In fact, let’s do it for the other quotes we had as examples:
From these 3 quotes, we now have 3 themes we could embed into a story. And it all came from seeing each of them through the lens of a Problem and a Takeaway.
A common pain point I hear from writers is that they have nothing to write about. But I never hear them say that they have a shortage of notes and highlights. The reality is that these highlights contain themes that act as a treasure trove of topics that are already tailored to your interests. You don’t need to look elsewhere for them, as the problems you care about already live within the information and art you consume.
The first step to becoming a storyteller is to see the world through the lens of themes, or what I aptly call the Thematic Lens:
When you come across an idea, break it down into a problem and a takeaway. Whether you make a mental note or capture it somewhere, get into the habit of seeing themes in the sentences that resonate with you. If you do this regularly, then you will always have a starting point for a story of your own.
In Thinking In Stories, you’ll have the space to practice doing this with your own saved ideas. Every step we go over is followed up with an opportunity to implement, which is what makes it a habit over time. This is how the art of storytelling is demystified, as I will break everything down into concrete steps that are actionable. No confusing diagrams of Hero’s Journeys or 3-act structures; just a highly practical method that you can apply to any idea of your choosing.
Using the Thematic Lens is just the first of these steps, but what you’ll realize is that everything stems from your interests and curiosities. As long as your stories originate from that root, you’ll be able to protect yourself from the onslaught of AI-generated content. No one will have the exact combination of themes that you care about, along with the way you’re going to present them. And as long as that’s true, then no large language model can accurately convey the nuances of what you’ve experienced and felt.
Storytelling is the skill that will never die because it pulls from the core of the human experience. And given that we connect with those that share that core, your ability to tell stories will be valued regardless of what the future has in store.
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Related Posts:
2025-01-15 04:52:11
It’s surreal to leave your home without knowing if you’ll ever see it again.
For much of the world, the news of the Los Angeles fires was a series of video carousels, politicized X posts, and overhead images of blazing hilltops. The knowledge of the city’s burning was shared by the world, but the visceral threat it posed to one’s safety was only felt by its residents.
…Of which my family was one.
On Tuesday evening, my biggest concern was that my wife wouldn’t be able to drive back safely from work because of the intensity of the Santa Ana winds. I didn’t even know about the fires because I was with my daughter the whole evening, and the only thing that felt like a threat was the thrashing winds that struck the walls of our home.
But by early Wednesday morning, there was no question that multiple fires had enraptured the city, and one of them was burning just a few miles away. I looked outside to see a dark, ominous cloud hovering above our entire neighborhood, with the shade of sepia coating everything in its wake. We had no power, the stench of smoke infiltrated our nostrils, and trails of ash were floating through the sky.
When you think of an emergency situation in your home, you might imagine it to be some combination of screaming and chaos that accompanies an escape. But it’s quite the contrary. When you know that it’s time to flee, there is a quiet conviction that accompanies your actions. You make sure your children are next to you, you grab some things you think you’ll need, and you pack the car. There is an efficiency to the process because your priorities are abundantly clear, which makes every subsequent action an intentional one.
We decided to first go to Koreatown, which is where my brother lived. Even though Koreatown was in Los Angeles, it was insulated from the two major fires that erupted on the western and northeastern parts of the city. But as we drove there, we began to hear from nearby friends that already had their lives flipped as a result of the blazes.
A family friend who lived just a few miles away in Altadena received news that their son’s school burned down. They, in turn, received news of their closest friends having lost their homes. It was as if a cascade of misfortune was unfolding by the minute, with someone knowing someone that lost a home, and if not a home, an entire community. Because even if their own home was spared, what remained around them was a toxic wasteland that made their neighborhood uninhabitable. After all, a home isn’t just the four walls that enclose you, but the neighboring community that gives those walls its warmth. So if those neighbors are no longer there, do you still have a home?
All this was going through my mind as we drove away from our own. While I was hopeful that we’d be returning back in a few days, I later learned that my wife packed up thinking that this would be the final time she would see it. That came through in the items she’d packed, one of which included a photo album of our wedding day. Seeing that was yet another reminder of why I loved her, and how I knew that no matter what happened, we would get through it. Sentimentality isn’t a soft trait designed to bring tears to your eyes; it’s a symbol of strength that emboldens the heart toward what matters. And I knew that we had that inner momentum on our side.
What followed was a sequence of events that eventually led us to my cousin’s home in Yorba Linda, which was about 40 miles southeast of where we lived. We found refuge in his family’s generosity and hospitality, which provided us with the headspace to stabilize and recalibrate. I had no idea what was going to happen to our home, but I could rest assured knowing that my heart – my family – was with me. The knowledge of that was enough.
As the days passed and the fires raged, I felt conflicting emotions. There was a relief in knowing that the fires were moving away from my neighborhood, but that meant that they were heading toward someone else’s. The Eaton fire was making its way up to Mount Wilson, where undeniably, people were evacuating in the same manner that we did on Wednesday. In situations like these, there is no such thing as a sigh of relief. Empathy reaches another degree of salience when you know that the bullet you dodged is en route to striking someone else.
By Friday, the power in our neighborhood was restored, and nearby evacuation orders were being lifted. As we continued communicating with our neighbors and following the news, we gathered enough information to make the decision to return to Los Angeles on Sunday. The fires weren’t contained (and still aren’t), but it looked like our area would be spared from the flames.
I am writing this from the very home that we were prepared to leave behind. There are moments in life where you feel like everything’s a bonus, and this certainly feels like one of them. The fact that we’ve been able to retain this place where my daughter took her first steps, where I’ve shared countless laughs with my wife, and where we’ve hosted so many of our loved ones feels like an incredible blessing from an unknowable force.
But what about those who weren’t as fortunate? What about those who lost everything? What about the people that died from this catastrophe?
These questions don’t have any immediate answers, and I’m in no place to provide them. What’s important, however, is that we collectively ask them so we can understand the plight of others and to help rebuild a community that has been reduced to ashes. And in asking these questions, we’ll learn more about own hopes and fears as well.
When we decided to leave our home, it felt less like a decision and more like an imperative. We knew exactly what we needed to do even if it meant losing everything. Because deep inside, we operated on the belief that as long as we had one another, we knew we could weather whatever lay ahead.
One thing I’ve been reflecting on is how we fail to do this in our day-to-day lives because of our attachments. Life tends to create the illusion of permanence; that what you have today will persist tomorrow. This extends far beyond the domain of possessions and into that of one’s identity. We are so attached to the personas we’ve built, the achievements we’ve reached, the projects we’re working on, the idea of who we are. But what you’ll realize is that one day – whether it’s through a nearby fire or the finish line of existence – these attachments will be meaningless.
We often refuse to flee those attachments because that makes us feel like we’re giving up. But it’d be crazy to say that we fled our home because we gave up on it. Our home is one of the most important things in our lives, but we left without question because having an intact family was far more important. When emergencies bring clarity into your priorities, there is no need for a pros and cons list to determine your actions. You move swiftly and decisively.
Hopefully there is no fire around you to make this visceral, but it’s worth considering what attachments are worth leaving behind. In recent days, I’ve been taking inventory of what attachments I have because I fear what might happen if I let them go. I’ve noticed that I’m engaged in certain pursuits not because they’re empowering, but because I fear what would happen if I no longer had them. Perhaps it’s because of a fear of what others might think, of not making money, or of not satisfying an expectation. If that’s what’s keeping me attached to it, then it’s because there’s no urgency that’s there to show me how futile it all is.
Well, the past few days introduced a level of urgency into my life, and I’ve been fortunate to have the headspace to reflect on it as the sirens have subsided. One of life’s great ironies is that troughs birth epiphanies that then propel you toward peaks. So in the end, maybe the purpose of this piece is to share that epiphany without the burden of the emergency that originated it.
It’s a cliché to say that life is short, but profound to experience an event that brings that cliché to life. And if there’s one pattern that governs people in this category, it’s that their new life starts when they realize which of their old attachments must end.
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For more stories and reflections of this nature:
