Sublime

Life is vivid and changing and real and unpredictable.

He was a wind chime in human form, dangling dorkily from the glorious tree of higher education.

that I didn’t have the capability to recognize what was preventing me from feeling happy in the first place

great fiction and poetry address core universal human issues.

And it made me a little heartbroken to be newly aware of what’s possible but absent from the world I regularly live in.

As the final act in this little exercise, circle the two words repeated three times—I am—and consider them. What if the deeper sense of self we seek is closer to these two words alone? In crafting the story of our lives, we lose sight of this powerful alternative: just being.

Genius, he argues, tends to happen in community, not isolation.

Only by being useful or talented, and receiving external recognition, would I achieve personhood. I couldn’t imagine a world where I was a worthwhile person by dint of mere existence; I felt like I needed to earn it and prove it every day.