Series
About This Series
This story is about the gentle collapse of Wren, and I’m watching it all from a distance.
Wren is someone I’ve known for a few years now. the kind of person who doesn’t take up much space in a room. he’s older than me, a little more worn, a little more faithful, not just to God, but to the version of himself he’s been holding onto since long before I met him.
I’ve been part of multiple startups, almost always as a founding team member, rarely as a founder. I don’t think I’m proud of it, and I even if I’m slightly proud. the pride sits next to some hard lessons about startup culture: why those environments are genuinely useful when you’re early in figuring yourself out, and why at some point you have to stop defaulting to yes.
This note continues from Walking Contradictions: I Don’t Love Leadership , and from the weight of being trusted , where I got into why people kept pulling me into these things when I was never the one seeking them out. this piece is less about the leadership and more about what I saw once I was inside.
No matter how open, peaceful or loving you are, others can only connect with you at the depth they have reached within themselves.
This realization came to me at twenty one, and it was not gentle. it hurt to admit. I come from a spectrum of people who were never fully able to see others clearly , but I was not one of them. I was always good at analyzing people. I understood patterns, motives, insecurities. I even played the therapist role many times in my life, something I wrote about briefly here . understanding people was not magic. it is a basic human feature if you pay enough attention. the contradiction that confused me for years was this: I could understand almost everyone, yet I struggled to truly connect with them.
You don’t know about real loss, because that only occurs when you love something more than you love yourself. I doubt you’ve ever dared to love anybody that much.
Sean, Good Will Hunting (Park Bench Scene)
Learn to write, I’m dead serious about that, because… pick some hard problems and learn to write very, very carefully. when I say pay attention to the word, I mean that pick the right words, organize them into the right phrases and get your sentences straight. read and write everyday and see if you can discover what is true.
Jordan Peterson
Action Influences Thought and Not The Other Way Around.
Most self help books sell you the same idea in different packaging: fix your mind first, then your life will follow. cultivate the right thoughts. visualize the outcome. build the belief before you build anything else.
Indeed there is truth in that, thoughts do shape action, I agree. but there is a half of the equation that nobody talks about, the feedback running in the other direction. action shapes thought. and it does, faster, and more permanently, than thinking ever could.