A famous actor dies. A founder we admired passes in an accident. A singer overdoses. Overnight, our feeds become memorial walls: black-and-white portraits, “gone too soon,” a carousel of greatest hits. People say they’re heartbroken. They say they’re shattered. They say they “can’t even.”

I don’t doubt the loss is real for those who knew the person. But for most of us, it isn’t. Not really. We didn’t share dinners, inside jokes, or hospital hallways. What we share is proximity to fame and a platform that rewards visible feeling. So we perform a feeling that isn’t ours to perform.

When the internet stormed with Liam Payne’s death last year, I put a broadcast telling people I didn’t know him, and to my surprise that offended few people.

This isn’t cruelty. It’s culture. We live inside an economy where displayed sentiment is a social currency. Grief has become a dialect everyone is expected to speak.

And I don’t have any problem with people showing grief and care for their favourite people, what I do have a problem with is this pressure of performance.

Parasocial grief, reputational rewards

Two old human systems collide online:

1. Parasocial attachment — we “know” public figures through relentless exposure, so our brains tag them as familiar.

2. Reputational heuristics — in tribes, broadcasting care signals that you’re safe to be around.

Put them together and you get what looks like empathy at scale. But it often isn’t empathy; it’s audience management. The timeline places a subtle tax on silence—“so you don’t care?”—and offers a rebate for saying the right things on cue.

And I did post about it but she couldn’t see it for some reason, but most people would comply. Not because they feel it, but because the social math is obvious.

You not posting a story = you must be supportive of what happened

That’s low IQ behaviour.

There is a word for this: performed empathy. It’s what happens when caring becomes a spectacle rather than a relationship.

The circle you actually care about

If we’re honest, most of us carry a small, concentric map of obligation. In the inner ring: parents, siblings, partners, the tiny set of people whose birthdays you remember without a calendar. Farther out: friends-who-are-family. Beyond that: acquaintances, colleagues, strangers with good stories, strangers with tragic stories, the crowd.

My own map is ordinary: my parents, my brother and his family; my future wife and her family. That’s the circle I truly care for. Outside it, my compassion is abstract. I can wish the world well and still refuse to pretend that the death of someone I never met has rearranged my interior life.

That refusal makes people uneasy, because we’ve confused honesty with callousness. But bounded care is not cruelty. It’s an admission of scale. Human attention is finite; real empathy is metabolically expensive. You can’t be present for everyone. If you attempt it, you end up present for no one.

Compassion fatigue, compassion theater

Psychology has long observed two relevant glitches in our moral hardware:

• Compassion collapse — we feel deeply for one identifiable person, then less as the numbers rise.

• Identifiable-victim effect — a single vivid story elicits aid more than a statistic ever could.

Platforms invert both. They present us with countless identifiable tragedies. The result is fatigue and, eventually, theater: we replay the performative rituals of grief because the real thing would burn us out.

The performance isn’t harmless. A feed full of “devastated” for people you never knew cheapens the language you will need when your father is sick, your friend calls from the ER, your partner stares at the floor and says, “It’s cancer.” The moral account is finite. Spend it on spectacle and there’s less left for the kitchen table.

“I know how you feel” (You don’t.)

Daniel Sloss writes about the death of his little sister and the parade of well-meaning people who told his family, “I know how you feel.” They didn’t. They couldn’t. He wasn’t angry that they cared; he was angry that they pretended to occupy a room they had never entered.

That line should be retired. No one knows how you feel, not even the version of you who felt something similar last year. Grief is specific. It’s shaped by private histories and dumb little details—what time the phone rang, what you were cooking when the doctor called, the half-finished text on a lock screen. To say “I understand” is to claim access to someone else’s interior furniture. You don’t live there.

Better words exist. “I’m here.” “I don’t know what to say.” “I can take tomorrow off and be with you.”

Empathy is not a sentence; it’s a service.

Why public figures pull us into counterfeit mourning

There’s a reason celebrity deaths keep extracting statements from people who barely followed the work.

• Familiarity without responsibility. You “knew” them, but they never needed you at 2 a.m.

• Safe belonging. Mourning together feels like community with no ongoing cost.

• Narrative coherence. A neat story (genius, tragedy, cautionary tale) provides a stage for your identity: “I value art,” “I support mental health,” “I stand against drugs.”

The performance isn’t only cynical. It’s also clumsy longing: we want to belong to something bigger and to feel like good people. But goodness measured in captions is a weak currency. When everything is made public, the public act replaces the private duty.

The ethics of indifference (properly understood)

“I don’t care what’s happening out there” is easy to caricature. So let’s define terms.

• Indifference to spectacle is not indifference to people.

• Local duty outranks global display.

• Honest silence beats dishonest sentiment.

If your friend loses a parent, your job is not to post; it’s to knock on their door with food and empty time. If a famous stranger dies, your job is to decide whether this story genuinely changed you—or whether you are about to counterfeit a feeling because the room expects a performance. If it’s the latter, close the app.

A useful rule: If you couldn’t write the person a letter full of specifics, you don’t get to write a eulogy for the feed.

What to say (and what to stop saying)

Retire

• “I know exactly how you feel.”

• “Everything happens for a reason.”

• The instant carousel of borrowed quotes.

Use instead

• “I’m here for the boring parts—laundry, rides, phone calls.”

• “I don’t have words, but I can stay on the line.”

• “Would it help if I handled [specific task] this week?”

Presence is heavier than prose. Choose the weight.

The public square vs. the kitchen table

The public square wants signals; the kitchen table wants shoulders. The square is loud, fast, and scalable; the table is quiet, slow, and small. A civilization that confuses the two will always mistake seen empathy for useful empathy.

If what you truly care about is your parents, your brother and his family, and the family you’re going to build—then live like it. Design your calendar around them. Allocate your attention like a budget. Refuse to outsource love to captions.

You don’t owe the timeline a performance. You owe your people a life.

A closing honesty

There are countless horrors in the world, and many deserve action. But an endless, ambient concern for everything is not action; it’s paralysis dressed as virtue. You have one life. That can’t be it.

Reserve your grief for the rooms you inhabit. Reserve your language for the moments that require it. Reserve your energy for building what only you can build.

Let the feed mourn the famous. You have a kitchen table to show up at.

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Past piece you might like:

The private act of reflection has become a public signal.

Our desire to show others our lives has grown greater than our desire to live them. As Daniel Kahneman once wrote:

“The Instagram generation experiences the present moment as an anticipated memory.” (h/t Gurwinder Bhogal.)

We no longer simply read or think. We anticipate the moment others will see that we’re doing it.

i. the aesthetic of intellect

Scroll through social media and you’ll find the visual grammar of modern thought: a black coffee beside a Moleskine, Meditations cracked open at just the right page, a MacBook glowing with an essay draft in serif font.

It’s not deceitful, the person is reading, is thinking. But it’s also a form of branding. The image isn’t just proof of activity; it’s proof of identity. It says: I am thoughtful, disciplined, curious, one of the good ones.

We’ve built an aesthetic of intellect, a kind of “mind minimalism” where even our curiosity must look clean. The messy, private, slow work of learning has been replaced by its photogenic outline.

Sociologist Erving Goffman called this impression management, our instinct to perform versions of ourselves for others. But in the internet age, that instinct has been industrialized. We no longer perform depth occasionally; we live inside that performance.

ii. depth as display

In the same way that fitness influencers document their workouts, thinkers now document their attention. The morning routines, journaling habits, book stacks, and quote dumps, these are the new intellectual equivalents of gym selfies.

It’s not about vanity; it’s about belonging. Each post reassures us that we’re still part of the conversation, still “keeping up” with the thinkers we admire. But the moment thinking becomes public-facing, it begins to deform. The question shifts from What do I really believe? to What looks intelligent?

The market for looking intelligent is vast. Stoic quotes, Nietzsche fragments, Zen aphorisms, pre-digested pieces of wisdom that fit neatly into squares and carousels. The algorithms reward recognizability over originality, clarity over confusion.

And so, what we call “depth” online is often the absence of resistance. The most popular ideas are the ones that ask nothing of you.

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iii. the illusion of learning

We’ve all done it: highlighted a brilliant line on Kindle, saved it to Readwise, felt a little jolt of satisfaction, as though the act of collecting wisdom were the same as understanding it.

But understanding is slow, and the modern mind is optimized for speed.

Cognitive psychologists describe this as the illusion of explanatory depth, our tendency to believe we understand something deeply until we’re asked to explain it. You can quote Seneca all day, but the moment someone asks what he meant, you realize how thin your comprehension really is.

The internet amplifies that illusion. We have thousands of notes, highlights, and snippets, a fossil record of thoughts we never fully absorbed. We confuse possession of ideas with possession by ideas.

Saving replaces sitting. Consumption replaces contemplation.
We are surrounded by wisdom, but starved of integration.

iv. knowledge as belonging

Underneath it all is something deeply human: the need to belong.

We join intellectual tribes the way our ancestors joined villages, through shared symbols, heroes, and language. The productivity tribe has its tools: Roam, Obsidian, second-brain diagrams. The philosophy tribe has its canon: Marcus, Seneca, Naval, Nietzsche. The rationalists have their own dialect of Bayesian precision.

Each group is comforting because it offers a map of meaning, and a shortcut to identity. But tribal thinking comes at a cost: it prizes familiarity over truth.
Quote Seneca, and you’re applauded. Misinterpret him in an original way, and you’re ignored.

The irony is that we form these communities to think, but end up thinking less. We start to curate beliefs the way we curate playlists, chosen for mood, not for accuracy.

Depth, once a measure of inner transformation, becomes a badge of cultural affiliation.

v. the attention economy and the poverty of thought

In 1969, Herbert Simon foresaw this:

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

Today that poverty is our default condition. Every moment is a competition for mental bandwidth, podcasts, newsletters, threads, summaries, thinkpieces. We treat attention like a muscle to be constantly exercised, not a space to be occasionally emptied.

But thinking requires emptiness. It requires boredom, confusion, stillness, moments where your brain isn’t optimizing for output. Real thought doesn’t happen when you’re consuming; it happens when you’re stuck.

Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations not as a book, but as a private exercise, a series of nightly notes to himself while he was at war, ruling an empire, and watching people he loved die. There were no readers in mind, no audience, no performance. Just a man trying to reason his way through chaos.

He’d write in tents, on campaign, in the quiet after battle, reminders to stay calm, to accept what he couldn’t control, to live with virtue. The sentences are short because he was speaking to himself.

That’s why Meditations endures. It isn’t a book written for others; it’s a record of someone thinking alone.

The internet gives us information faster than we can metabolize it. And because friction doesn’t photograph well, we skip digestion entirely. We distribute before we understand. We share before we’ve sat with it. We perform thought before we’ve proven it.

vi. the cost of private thought

That’s what Proof of Thought means to me.

In crypto, proof of work ensures that every coin represents effort, time, energy, computation. Thought works the same way. An idea only becomes yours after you’ve paid for it, with attention, confusion, and risk.

If you never misunderstood an idea, never wrestled with it, never felt it rearranging your worldview, then it isn’t yours yet. It’s someone else’s thought wearing your voice.

Real thinking is costly precisely because it’s lonely. There’s no applause in the middle of a paragraph you don’t understand. There’s no validation in rereading a dense page until it finally clicks. But those invisible moments, the ones no one sees, are where wisdom takes root.

We’re so used to proof of audience that we’ve forgotten the value of proof of effort.

vii. a quiet rebellion

So maybe the solution isn’t to log off, but to slow down.
To read something and not highlight it. To resist the urge to summarize or share. To let ideas ferment quietly until they stop sounding borrowed.

Think privately.
Share selectively.

Let some thoughts stay unpolished long enough to grow patina — the intellectual kind that comes from time and use, not filters and fonts.

My last essay was about learning to let objects age, then The Performance of Depth is about letting ideas age, to let them bruise and breathe until they belong to you.

Because proof of thought is not how fast you can express an idea, but how long you’re willing to live with it.

References & Inspirations

• Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky — Prospect Theory; the psychology of perception and recall.

• Herbert Simon — “Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World” (1969).

• Erving Goffman — The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

• Illusion of Explanatory Depth — Rozenblit & Keil, Yale University (2002).

• Gurwinder Bhogal — essays on simulated wisdom and performative intellect.

• Naval Ravikant — “Play long-term games with long-term people.” (A line that, ironically, can only be lived, not posted.)

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My father sold his old car when he purchased a new one, the plastic wrap on the music player of the old car was still on. I wonder if the new owner of the old car would pull it off.

Why do otherwise sane people live like curators, guarding “mint condition” at the cost of ease?

I think there’s a hidden ideology here—equal parts psychology, economics, and cultural hygiene. Below are seven lenses that, together, make the case that “don’t let it age” isn’t just a quirk; it’s a system.

1) Loss beats love (and why “newness” becomes an insurance policy)

Behavioral economics gave us two ideas that sit under much of this: loss aversion and the endowment effect. Loss aversion says that a loss hurts more than an equivalent gain feels good. The endowment effect says we value things more because they’re ours, which makes parting with value (a scratch, a ding) feel like a personal loss. Kahneman, Tversky, and Thaler ran the canonical experiments on both phenomena; they found we consistently overvalue what we possess and overreact to potential losses. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Cases, films, films on films: they’re not merely accessories; they’re anti-loss rituals. If a phone’s resale price will drop Rs. 10,000 for a cracked back glass, protecting it is a rational hedge filtered through irrational valuation. We call it “care,” but it’s also a way to mute the pain curve built into our nervous systems.

2) Cleanliness is not next to godliness, it’s next to order

Anthropologist Mary Douglas famously defined dirt as “matter out of place.” Dirt offends because it breaks categories; it signals disorder. In that frame, an oily MacBook keyboard isn’t just worn—it’s category-confused, neither “new” nor authentically “old.” It’s a glitch in the taxonomy. Plastic films, microfiber cloths, and weekly isopropyl sprays restore our objects to their assigned category: pristine. (Wikipedia)

We are hygiene maximalists in our aesthetic lives. Not because microbes threaten us, but because disorder threatens our mental picture of how things ought to be.

3) The status signal of up-to-dateness

The modern consumer’s peacock tail is “latest, unscratched, unyellowed.” A year into ownership, patina on a phone doesn’t read as “stories,” it reads as “laggard.” The object doubles as a status billboard, and status wants sharp edges and no noise. Even when we don’t intend to flex, we’re fluent in the dialect. The pristine thing whispers: I keep up.

Ironically, the market rewards this: listings with “like new,” “NIB,” or “mint” language command premiums, while even small dings tax the price.

Collectors are notorious for valuing pristine boxes more than the thing inside them.

In other categories—coins, ceramics—“cleaned” or “restored” can actually reduce value because originality is the currency; elsewhere, patina pays. Condition is never neutral. (SaleHoo)

4) Industrial design made fragility fashionable

For twenty years, designers have pushed glass, gloss, piano blacks, mirrored plastics—surfaces that photograph well but bruise instantly. The material palette itself coerces care. You wouldn’t baby a brushed-canvas ThinkPad from 2009; you instinctively baby a mirror-finish slab.

Which one are you more likely to clean with a microfiber cloth +isopropyl solution?

There’s a second force: sealedness. As products got harder to repair, the stakes of a scratch went up. You can’t replace just the shell; the whole sandwich is fused. The more irreparable the thing, the more we tent it like a field hospital.

5) Objects as the extended self

Marketing scholar Russell Belk argued that possessions are part of the “extended self.” If that’s true, then a scuff isn’t damage to a tool; it’s a blemish on the border of the self. And because selves, in the social web era, are permanently on stage, the pressure to keep the surface unmarked is high. (JSTOR)

This also explains a puzzle: we’ll obsess over micro-scratches on a phone but tolerate a chipped mug at home. One object sits at the frontier of presentation (pulled out dozens of times a day, photographed against your fingers); the other lives in a private ritual, safe from social optics. Boundary dictates care.

6) The IKEA effect (or, why we’ll baby what we built)

There’s a countercurrent: when we put labor into an object, we value it more. That’s the IKEA effect, participants who folded their own slightly wonky origami priced it closer to expert-made pieces than impartial observers did. Effort glues ownership to identity, which changes how we interpret wear: my scratches can read as authorship. (ScienceDirect)

But many modern objects actively prevent authorship. You can customize a car, but most people don’t. You can’t open your iPhone without voiding its soul. The less we can shape a thing, the more “damage” feels like pure loss, not personal inscription. When authorship is low, protection is high.

7) The minority report: cultures that love patina

There are islands where the opposite ideology rules. Wabi-sabi in Japanese aesthetics celebrates the imperfect and the impermanent, cracked bowls repaired with gold (kintsugi), tea utensils treasured because they carry small signs of time. In the denim world, a pair of raws becomes yours through fades and whiskers; leather goods “come alive” once they darken and scuff. These cultures read age as a story, not a stain. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Patina communities argue that, with the right materials, use adds value. A wallet darkens, softens, and literally fits your life. “Patina enhances; wear and tear destroys,” as one leather maker puts it—a distinction industrial design rarely teaches us to see. (Tanner Bates)

The important move is not “ruin your things.” It’s to realize there are two grammars of value: pristine-value (unmarked originality) and patina-value (storied authenticity). Different categories reward different grammars. Phones prize pristine; heritage boots prize patina. Confusion between grammars is what drives anxiety.

A working model: The Patina Quadrant

Consider two axes:

• Material trajectory: Improves with use ←→ Degrades with use

• Social exposure: Private ritual ←→ Public display

Why this got worse in the 2010s

Three shifts poured fuel on the pristine fire:

1. Always-on photography. The feed made surfaces public. Your phone is in more pictures than your face.

2. Sealed objects. If you can’t maintain or mod, you can only preserve.

3. Liquidity of resale. The second-hand market is a tap away; depreciation is visible and thus emotionally real. “Like new” becomes a cashable trait; every scratch rings the till. (Collectors and marketplaces codify the premium for condition; in other niches, patina commands a different premium, denim fades threads run “Fade of the Day” like sports highlights.) (SaleHoo)

If you want out of the cult of pristine, you don’t need to swing to nihilism. You can architect for graceful aging.

1) Choose patina-positive materials where you can. Full-grain leather, brass, solid wood, raw denim, stone. These reward exposure and time. They want stories. (The leather and denim literature is basically a love letter to time plus contact.) (carlfriedrik.com)

2) Put authorship back in. Stitch a steering-wheel wrap by hand. Customize your keyboard keycaps. The more labor invested, the more wear reads as authorship rather than damage. That’s the IKEA effect made constructive. (ScienceDirect)

3) Segregate grammars. Keep pristine rules for categories where condition is value (screens, optics); seek patina where function improves with use. Pin the rule to the quadrant, not to your personality.

4) Ritualize restoration, not concealment. Instead of a peel that never peels, learn to polish, condition, oil, and repair. Kintsugi is a metaphor, but also a method: mend to display the story. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

5) Get honest about risk math. Cases and PPF protect resale; sometimes that’s rational. But when the protection makes the thing worse to use (thick cases, glossy protectors that smear), you’re paying a hidden tax. Walk through the expected, value math with your own usage and resale horizon; don’t outsource it to your anxiety.

The deeper itch: entropy and immortality

The cosmetic war on aging is not confined to things. We fight time in our calendars, faces, and feeds. A pristine object hints at a bigger fantasy: I can pause entropy. Of course you can’t. But you can choose where you’d like your entropy to show up: hidden in foam and film, or visible as stories on the surface of your life.

Wabi-sabi’s invitation is modest: accept that the world is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete,” and then learn to see that as beauty. You do not have to adopt the whole aesthetic to borrow the stance. Start with one object you currently baby. Give it permission to age. Watch your mind change as it learns a new grammar of value. (Wikipedia)

If the cult of pristine is about fear, patina is about intimacy. A thing you have lived with long enough to scar—the thing you dared to use—cannot be “like new.” It can be something better: like you.

Further reading (a short shelf)

• Kahneman & Tversky on loss aversion and prospect theory; Kahneman, Knetsch & Thaler on the endowment effect. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

• Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger—dirt as “matter out of place.” (Wikipedia)

• Russell Belk on the “extended self” in consumer behavior. (JSTOR)

• Norton, Mochon & Ariely on the IKEA effect (and later replications/meta). (ScienceDirect)

• Wabi-sabi, Japanese aesthetics, and the cultural case for patina. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

• On patina cultures (leather, denim) as living counterexamples. (Heddels)

There’s a powerful phrase Naval once said that lodged itself in my mind like a seed:

“Become a truth-seeking missile.”

At first glance, it sounds poetic. But the deeper you think about it, the more you realize: this is a philosophy of life. A code. A strategy for not just success—but sanity in a world drowning in noise.

So what does it actually mean?

The World is Full of Illusions

We are born into a world of borrowed beliefs.

We inherit opinions from parents, pick up ideologies from school, mimic behaviours from peers, and then scroll through infinite feeds that tell us what to want, how to think, and who to be.

But here’s the catch: very little of that is actually real.

And reality matters. Because the more aligned your decisions are with truth—whether it's in business, relationships, health, or self-awareness—the fewer mistakes you make, the less you suffer, and the further you go.

Naval’s point is simple: most people are just guessing. They don’t test assumptions. They cling to beliefs because they’re convenient, popular, or comforting.

The truth-seeking missile does the opposite.

What It Means to Seek Truth

A missile doesn’t get distracted. It doesn't ask for permission. It doesn’t care who fired it. It simply homes in on its target.

To be a truth-seeking missile means:

• Letting go of ego. You stop trying to be right and start trying to get it right.

• Destroying sacred cows. You question everything—even the beliefs that have given you comfort or identity.

• Updating your mental software. When you find better information, you adopt it. No pride, no resistance.

• Valuing reality over reputation. You’d rather be misunderstood and right, than praised and wrong.

• Listening more than speaking. Because every conversation might hold a piece of truth you don’t yet have.

This is rare. Because it requires courage.

Why It’s Hard (But Worth It)

Seeking truth often means being the odd one out.

It means saying, “I don’t know,” when others pretend to.
It means breaking with the crowd.
It means leaving behind parts of yourself that no longer serve you.

But what you get in return is clarity. Precision. Power.

When you see reality as it is—not as you wish it to be—you make better decisions. You spot opportunities others miss. You build relationships rooted in honesty. You free yourself from self-deception, which is the heaviest chain of all.

In a world addicted to appearance, a commitment to truth is a superpower.

How to Practice It

You don’t have to renounce society or meditate in a cave to become a truth-seeker. But you do have to practice intellectual honesty like a daily ritual. Some tools that help:

• Ask "Why?" until it hurts. Why do I believe this? Where did it come from? What if the opposite were true?

• Surround yourself with smart dissenters. The best people are those who can tell you you’re wrong—and make you grateful for it.

• Avoid echo chambers. Whether it’s politics, fitness, or finance, curate your information diet across a spectrum.

• Read across disciplines. Truth isn’t limited to one field. Physics, philosophy, psychology—they all offer lenses to reality.

• Journal what you changed your mind about. If a month goes by and nothing’s changed, you might not be learning enough.

Final Thoughts

To be a truth-seeking missile is not to be cold or mechanical. It’s to be alive to the world.
To ask better questions. To embrace uncertainty. To let your mind evolve.

Most people are navigating life with broken compasses. They’re using outdated maps. They’re mistaking popularity for truth, and certainty for clarity.

But if you, quietly and consistently, aim yourself toward what’s real—without flinching—you’ll find something better than comfort.

You’ll find freedom.

Low agency people resent high agency individuals because their existence exposes an uncomfortable truth: low agency is often a choice, not merely an imposed circumstance.

We all encounter setbacks, frustrations, and genuine injustices in life. Yet, there’s an alluring comfort in attributing our unhappiness or lack of success entirely to external factors. Popular victim ideologies offer us neat scapegoats—“patriarchy,” “capitalism,” “genetics,” “trauma,” “race,” “society”—each conveniently becoming the “root cause” of all our problems. These ideologies aren’t wholly false; external forces genuinely impact our lives, shaping opportunities and imposing constraints. But obsessing exclusively over these externalities blinds us to the immense power we hold internally.

Consider this: every successful, fulfilled individual you’ve admired faced constraints. Some were born disadvantaged, struggled against societal biases, or navigated complex trauma. Yet, they overcame. How? They refused to anchor their identities entirely in victimhood. Instead, they took radical ownership of their circumstances, using personal agency as their primary tool for change.

The true root of persistent misery is rarely external challenges alone; it’s the decision to remain passive—to see oneself as a powerless victim rather than a capable agent. By externalising all blame, we surrender control, waiting passively for circumstances to change rather than actively pursuing improvement.

A far more effective strategy is to treat external problems—be they political, societal, economic, or personal—as immutable facts, as unchangeable as gravity itself. Acknowledge them, yes, but then immediately shift focus toward internal actions you can control. Develop strategies, build skills, foster meaningful connections, and create community resilience. When you take responsibility not just for yourself but for the welfare of those you care about, something profound occurs: you gradually create a life strong enough to withstand the very obstacles that once seemed insurmountable.

High-agency thinking isn’t merely optimism or naïveté; it’s strategic realism. It’s understanding that although external circumstances matter, internal responses matter even more. This mindset transforms obstacles into puzzles, limitations into creative constraints, and setbacks into valuable learning experiences. Over years—and often far sooner—you’ll notice your reality shift dramatically. Eventually, the external forces that once dominated your thinking cease to hold any significant influence.

The beauty of high agency and radical self-ownership is that it creates momentum. Responsibility breeds capability. Capability breeds confidence. Confidence breeds further action, fostering a self-sustaining cycle of growth and empowerment. Within a decade—or often even less—you and the community you build around yourself can exist as though the original problem never held power at all.

Ultimately, your agency is the most potent weapon against victimhood. By choosing responsibility and internal empowerment over blame and external helplessness, you reclaim your narrative, becoming not just resilient, but truly unstoppable.

There’s a poignant scene in Spike Jonze’s film “Her” where Joaquin Phoenix’s character discovers that the AI he loves is simultaneously in love with hundreds of other individuals. To the AI, this revelation holds no emotional tension—its capacity to love isn’t finite. But to Phoenix’s character, this is devastating precisely because humans inherently value things based on scarcity. We instinctively equate rarity with value. If love can be effortlessly multiplied and distributed infinitely, does it retain its meaning?

This same dynamic applies profoundly to the act of writing. Imagine receiving a handwritten letter from your favorite author or a revered figure. The emotional impact of knowing they chose to dedicate time and attention specifically to you is profound, precisely because their attention is scarce and therefore valuable. Compare that to receiving a generic response—copied, pasted, and sent to countless others. The latter holds little emotional weight, despite containing similar sentiments. Exclusivity, rooted in time and attention, magnifies emotional significance.

Writing, in this sense, isn’t merely the act of putting words on paper or typing them on a screen. It’s fundamentally about choice. Every word you write represents a decision—a decision to focus your finite attention here rather than elsewhere. When a writer chooses to dedicate their scarce resource—time—to crafting a particular set of sentences, they imbue that act with inherent value. This is why personalized notes, thoughtful essays, and carefully composed messages resonate deeply. They signify a deliberate and costly choice.

Consider that great writing often arises not from casual interest but from profound emotional investment. Good writing frequently borders on obsession; writers are compelled by curiosity, frustration, inspiration, or even obsession itself to articulate precisely what they feel must be expressed. The more significant the emotional charge, the higher the “cost” in terms of time, energy, and psychological investment. This costly signaling of emotional investment distinguishes powerful, resonant writing from casual, indifferent words.

Yet, today’s digital landscape threatens this connection between scarcity and meaning. As platforms reward frequency and quantity over thoughtfulness and depth, we risk diluting writing’s inherent value. The abundance of quickly churned-out content creates noise, obscuring the rare and precious signals of truly meaningful expression. Ironically, it is precisely the ease and abundance of modern communication that makes deliberate, thoughtful writing even more rare—and thus, more valuable.

Ultimately, writing’s power stems from scarcity—specifically, the scarcity of genuine emotional commitment and focused attention. Each thoughtfully composed sentence, carefully constructed paragraph, or deeply resonant essay signals something precious: that the writer cared enough to sacrifice other opportunities to bring these words into existence. Like authentic love, authentic writing derives its worth from what it costs us. It is the deliberate expenditure of our finite attention, driven by genuine care, that transforms mere words into meaningful human connection.

There’s a unique kind of pain—quiet, persistent, and deeply personal—that stems not from failure, rejection, or heartbreak, but from the undeniable awareness of our unfulfilled potential. This awareness doesn’t shout. It whispers. It gnaws quietly, reminding us subtly yet incessantly that we could be more, do more, achieve more.

This is the silent torment of wasted potential.

Society often paints vivid pictures of success—glossy highlight reels featuring groundbreaking innovations, bestselling authors, prodigious entrepreneurs, and globe-trotting influencers. These images saturate our timelines and, consciously or unconsciously, set standards for achievement. However, beneath the surface, the true struggle isn’t against societal standards but against our inner awareness: knowing we are capable of greatness yet choosing comfort over courage, familiarity over exploration, safety over risk.

Goggins once said his biggest fear was dying and meeting the person he could’ve been — A fit, disciplined Navy SEAL and inspirational leader. And realising, “That’s not who I became.”

Consider the discomfort of waking up each day, realising that you’re living at a fraction of your capacity. Perhaps you’ve experienced moments of clarity—a passionate burst of creativity, a brilliant idea at 3 AM, a fleeting sensation of complete alignment. These glimpses hint at what life could feel like if you fully embraced your talents and ambitions. But then routine settles in. Days blur into weeks, weeks into months, and the realisation dawns that your potential remains untouched.

Why do we tolerate this silent torment? Often, it’s because the idea of potential feels boundless, vast, and daunting. To pursue it means facing uncertainty, the possibility of failure, and the vulnerability of being judged. Yet ironically, avoiding these challenges doesn’t shield us from pain; it deepens it. Knowing we could’ve been more and done more creates a specific kind of existential regret.

Author Steven Pressfield describes this internal battle vividly in his book, The War of Art: “Most of us have two lives. The life we live and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.” This Resistance manifests as procrastination, self-doubt, perfectionism, and fear. It’s precisely this Resistance that keeps our potential locked away, untouched and unexpressed.

But there is hope embedded within this awareness. Recognizing your wasted potential is already a crucial step forward. It signals not defeat, but an awakening—a call to action. The moment you acknowledge your inner torment, you reclaim agency over your narrative. You accept responsibility for bridging the gap between your current self and the self you aspire to be.

To overcome this silent torment, you don’t need grand gestures or dramatic shifts overnight. Instead, start small, yet decisively. Embrace imperfection. Allow yourself to fail. Pursue curiosity, not perfection. Make peace with discomfort. Each step forward, however tiny, diminishes the weight of regret and replaces it with the satisfaction of genuine effort.

Ultimately, the greatest tragedy isn’t failure or criticism. It’s the quiet tragedy of never trying—of living a life beneath your true capabilities, haunted by the question: “Who could I have been?” To avoid this deeper hell, you must choose courage over comfort, action over hesitation, and growth over stagnation.

Your potential isn’t merely a personal resource—it’s your unique gift to the world. Unleash it. Pursue it relentlessly. After all, a life fully explored, expressed, and realised isn’t free from struggle, but it is undoubtedly free from the quiet, unending torment of wasted potential.

-aniket

In today’s culture of self-discovery and solo healing, there’s a narrative that sounds wise—mature, even:

“I need to take time off from this relationship to work on myself. I’m doing this so I can be better… for you.”

It’s a line we’ve all heard—or maybe said—somewhere between a goodbye and a maybe. On the surface, it’s poetic. It dresses up heartbreak in the soft language of personal growth. But here’s the truth: you cannot reschedule love.

Love doesn’t sit quietly on the shelf while you figure yourself out. It doesn’t wait politely in a Google Calendar, ready to be resumed when you’ve meditated enough, journaled enough, or healed enough. Love demands presence. It demands choosing someone while you’re still messy, uncertain, unfinished.

The idea that we must completely “know ourselves” before we can love someone else is seductive—but wrong. The obsessive chase to understand every dark corner of your psyche often becomes a distraction. You can get so lost in the mirror of introspection that you forget the world outside needs you. More importantly—people need you.

We often talk about showing up as the “best version” of ourselves. But the truth is: your partner doesn’t only deserve the best parts of you. They don’t just want your highlight reel or the version of you who’s been through ten therapy sessions and a healing retreat in Bali. If they love you, they’re choosing all of you—the overthinker, the anxious, the moody, the parts still under construction.

And in return, they deserve to be chosen too.

Not after the healing.

Not once you’re emotionally flawless.

But now—in the becoming.

Because real love isn’t built on perfection. It’s built on patience. On holding space for each other. On learning to stay, even when it’s uncomfortable. Even when the version of you showing up today is carrying old wounds and unresolved chapters.

Growth doesn’t require disappearance. You don’t have to vanish to evolve. In fact, some of the deepest healing happens when someone sees you in your most unfiltered state—and stays. And you do the same for them.

At some point, the goal isn’t to become the most self-aware version of yourself—it’s to forget yourself entirely. That’s when you’re free. Free to fight for something bigger than your ego. Free to put someone else before your endless inner work. You fight for love. For meaning. For the things that tether you to life when your self-analysis tries to pull you away from it.

So the next time someone says they need to “work on themselves” and they’ll “come back when they’re ready,” know this:

They’re not pressing pause on love.

They’re letting it go.

And if you ever find yourself tempted to say those words—ask yourself what you’re really avoiding. Because maybe love isn’t something to delay until you’re perfect.

Maybe it’s the very thing that shapes you, breaks you, and builds you—while you’re still becoming.

You don’t reschedule love.

You grow inside it.

A fox gazes longingly at a beautiful bunch of grapes hanging from the high branch of a tree, his mouth watering. He jumps to reach them, but misses by a long way. He tries again and again, but each time it is in vain.

Sitting down he looks at the grapes in disgust. ‘What a fool I am,‘ he says, ‘wearing myself out to get a bunch of sour grapes that are not worth the effort.’

The moral of the fable is that many pretend to despise and belittle that which is beyond their reach.

This seems fair enough, though it is worth asking how our lives would feel if we didn’t play this mental trick on ourselves — we might not go in constant state of resentment because we can’t get the things we desire within the time that we set for ourselves.

The opposite phenomenon to sour grapes is often called ‘sweet lemons’, where we ‘decide’ to put a positive spin on a negative experience.

Both these mental tricks are types of ‘regret minimisation’ - given the chance, our brain will do its best to lessen any feelings of regret, though it does need a plausible alternative narrative to do this.

I wanted to emphasise on re-reading books in 2025, I picked up Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, that I first read when I was 18, it was a short read, just 160 pages.

I was obsessed with reading back then, I’d read a book a week, I understood a few, I learned from few, and I loved few. Reading Siddhartha at that time didn’t impress me much because I took it for a spiritual book, it wasn’t a spiritual book.

But the whole point of re-reading books is that sometimes you aren’t ready for the book to be understood by you, but when it does it appears and you begin to flip the pages of it again and then you get it.

Reading Siddhartha again was a similar experience.

As I started reading, past first few chapters I was able to connect the dots and figure what might happen next in the book and No, it wasn’t because I’ve read it in the past but Siddhartha’s life trajectory looked a lot like ours.

My favorite quote from the book was:

When someone seeks," said Siddhartha, "then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.

Sometimes, we get caught up in aiming for goals that may be out of reach. We try to manage things we have no real control over and worry endlessly about what tomorrow might bring. In my own life, I’ve often felt pressured by those around me—my family, my friends—to fit a mold that never quite matched what truly makes me happy. Looking back, I realise much of that came from trying to satisfy others without stopping to figure out what I needed for myself.

What really speaks to me about this book is how it draws on important ideas from Eastern philosophy, yet presents them in a way that makes sense to someone raised with Western values. It feels like a bridge between ancient wisdom and modern thinking, and each time I pick it up, I come away with something new—especially as I move through different stages of life. Right now, Siddhartha reminds me that each of us is on a personal path, learning to find and appreciate what satisfies us in a deeper, more lasting way. I suspect that when I revisit it in a few years, I’ll notice insights I missed before.

I don’t want to sound overexcited or like I’m trying to convince anyone of anything. I just happened to love the book and would enjoy hearing from others who connected with it in a similar way. Let’s compare notes if you have.

The message of the book was, that everyone has to find their own way in order to achieve enlightenment. That is also why Siddhartha declines to become one of Buddha's disciples.

Wisdom can’t be taught. It can only be attained by experience and time.

-Aniket

When we hear “Fyodor Dostoyevsky,” it’s easy to picture long Russian novels, dreary settings, and complex, tormented characters. But there’s so much more to discover. Dostoyevsky’s works aren’t just novels; they’re invitations to wrestle with life’s biggest questions—about morality, faith, compassion, and what it really means to be human.

If you’ve been curious about exploring this literary giant or simply want to deepen your understanding, my new video will guide you through:

• The Turbulent World He Lived In
  Nineteenth-century Russia was brimming with social change, political upheaval, and existential debates—a backdrop that shaped every page Dostoyevsky wrote.

• His Unique Insight into Human Psychology
  Through characters like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky peels back the layers of conscience, guilt, and redemption in ways that still feel powerfully modern.

• Why Moral Complexity Matters
  His stories challenge easy labels of “good” and “evil,” reminding us we’re all capable of both—and that empathy often emerges from understanding this complexity.

• Timeless Relevance
  Despite carriages, candlelight, and old cobblestone streets, Dostoyevsky’s core questions—about suffering, faith, and free will—remain deeply relevant today.

In the video, I break down these elements and show how Dostoyevsky’s writing can transform the way you see yourself, others, and the broader world. It’s a look at why these timeless tales are still essential reading for anyone seeking to broaden their mind (and perhaps their heart).

Ready for a deeper dive into the human soul?
Watch the Video Here

I hope this short overview inspires you to pick up one of his novels—or at least check out why they continue to captivate readers a century and a half later. Happy reading (and watching)!

Stay curious,
Aniket

I think about the above tweet often, how things turn out when you truly put in the work, just for the obsession of it, without expecting anything in return. This blog post is about a project that I started with a stranger, that changed my life.

On 2nd May 2021, I was reading some wisdom of Naval on Twitter, I used to be more active on Instagram than any other platform (Still am)

I wondered why nobody has heard of Naval on Instagram, the How to get rich tweet is the most beautiful piece of writing I’ve ever witnessed.

That’s when the idea of starting Naval’s Archive came to my head, I partnered with a stranger who later became a friend and we went full in with it.

One of us used to source the best tweets, podcast appearances, clubhouse recordings and everything that there was related to Naval. The other would put it out there for the world in the best possible way, without gaming the algorithm or people.

Fast forward to today, we are at 243k.

Later we wanted to do the same for Naval’s account, so we decided to get in touch with Naval’s team and one thing led to another and we started working on his Instagram and Youtube account.

For most things in general that turned out to be great in my life, I didn’t ask anyone, “Shall I do this?”, “Is it a good idea to pursue this?”, “Would it work?”

I just went on with it because I believed in the work I was willing to put, and I think a lot of times we tend to not believe in the work we can put and get the results from them.

We didn’t optimise anything, we just posted consistently, we didn’t seek anyone’s help, no paid promotions, no gimmicks to make people like or follow the account more. We never asked anyone to follow us.

Authenticity with consistency will beat every algorithm every time

Can you imagine it took 3 years for it to give back? What would you do for 3 years knowing you wouldn’t ever get anything out of it?

We won

You don't know anyone at the party, so you don't want to go. You don't like something, so you haven't eaten it in years. This is your choice, of course, but don't kid yourself: it's also the flinch.

Your personality is not set in stone. You may think a morning coffee is the most enjoyable thing in the world, but it's really just a habit. Thirty days without it, and you would be fine. You would have evolved differently, but been just as happy. You can change what you want about yourself at any time. You see yourself as someone who can't write or play an instrument, who gives in to temptation or makes bad decisions, but that's really not you. It's not ingrained. It's not your personality. Your personality is something else, something deeper than just preferences, and these details on the surface, you can change anytime you like. If it is useful to do so, you must abandon your identity and start again. Sometimes, it's the only way.

There is absolutely NOTHING you can’t do, think about it; Nobody was born great, its their hunger and drive that made them great, alexander was just another man, it’s his sheer will that made him conquer eastern Mediterranean, Egypt, the Middle East, and parts of Asia in a remarkably short period of time.

You're just conditioned to think in limitations, locking yourself in a cage built from outdated societal expectations and your own self-doubt. the key to unlocking it lies in embracing chaos as your closest ally, reshaping it into a tool that carves out paths where none seemed to exist. Break the locks, harness the storm within you, and let it propel you into realms of possibility that defy conventional wisdom. only then will you truly transcend limits.

Wear your ambition like a second skin, act as if you are already where you want to be. The entirety of human knowledge is at your fingertips. there's no skill you can't master, no subject you can't learn, no boundary you can't push. break free, start today, and watch as the world molds itself around your will.

Forge your path by learning on the go, because every expert was once a beginner who just started. Don't wait for permission or perfect readiness. Dive in, get messy, make mistakes, and grow. Knowledge isn't just acquired in classrooms; it's built through experiences, failures, and the relentless pursuit of curiosity. The only limits that truly exist are the ones we impose on ourselves.

to greatness!

You’re a slut and a whore for the algorithm. I couldn’t do it anymore. You can never feed it enough. You start out making art, and hoping that the door will open.

You’re looking for that viral moment so it opens up the door and you can do the thing full time. But you start to compromise just to get the door to open: guessing what it wants, debasing yourself, alienating yourself. Until you’re not even in service to your art anymore.

You’re in service to the algorithm. Deep down every artist just wants to be seen. Everyone does. And that’s how it controls you. The algorithm makes you behave in a certain way, create in a certain way, in exchange for being seen.

And if something can change what you do, it can change who you are. And I didn’t sign up for that. I didn’t sign up to become a content creator. Art was supposed to be a way for me to be in search of, in service to, in community with. It was my ministry. Art was supposed to be my ministry.

Make art, not content

Content is the commodification of creativity. It's the piecemealing and packaging of art so that it can be delivered at regular intervals to satisfy the needs of the attention economy. In an era where media is forever abundant, content is what people create to show and remind others that they exist.

In my view, art and content are not synonymous. The purpose of art is to express oneself deeply, while the purpose of content is to garner attention quickly. Art follows a pace that is set internally, while content adheres to expectations that are set externally.

How to differentiate between content and art?

If you’ve to sit at your desk thinking about it, making spreadsheets to manage it, it’s content. If you wake up from bed and create it straight from your head, it’s art.

Most of this post was inspired by something I read.

In the hustle and bustle of our hyper-connected lives, are we losing the ability to truly read and immerse ourselves in the depth of well-crafted narratives? This question has been lingering on my mind for quite some time, and I've decided to tackle it head-on in my latest YouTube video.

Our attention spans seem to be shrinking, thanks in part to the continuous digital stimulation we receive. It's an era of bite-sized content, quick reads, and even quicker video clips. As a result, many of us find ourselves leaning towards book summary apps and condensed content platforms for our literary fix.

But is this trend robbing us of the joy of diving deep into a book, losing ourselves in its pages, living a thousand lives, and experiencing a myriad of emotions? Are we more in love with the idea of being 'readers' than with the act of reading itself?

In my latest video, I delve into these questions and more. I explore how the constant bombardment of content is affecting our reading habits, how society's perception of reading is shifting, and most importantly, how we can reclaim the lost art of reading.

Reading isn't a race to finish as many books as possible. It's about experiencing the journey that each book offers, about being transported to different worlds, about allowing ourselves to be transformed by the power of words.

Let's explore, let's dream, let's read. Let's not limit ourselves to one life when we have the chance to live a thousand.

You can watch the full video here.

I invite you to share your thoughts, experiences, and how you intend to reclaim the joy of reading.

As always, thank you for being a part of this journey. Let's make a difference, one page at a time.

Happy reading!

Dear reader

As we journey through life, we inevitably face moments of loss, change, and transformation. It is through these challenging times that we find ourselves rediscovering who we are and what we are capable of. Today, I want to share with you a deeply personal and emotional story - a story of loss, growth, and the freedom that comes from letting go.

It all began when I lost something that was dear to me. It was a cherished part of my identity, an anchor in the stormy sea of life. This loss shook me to the core, leaving me feeling vulnerable and uncertain about the future. But as time passed, I realized that what I initially perceived as a devastating blow had, in fact, set me free.

In the depths of despair, I found the strength to face my fears and explore the unknown. Through the process of grieving, I discovered that loss is not simply a void that leaves us empty but rather an opportunity to grow and evolve. It is a chance to shed the layers of who we once were, to make way for a new, more authentic version of ourselves.

As I embraced the freedom that came from losing something precious, I began to understand that life is not about clinging to things, people, or experiences but about learning to dance in the shifting sands of change. The more I let go, the more I discovered a sense of inner peace and resilience that had eluded me in the past.

Now, I stand before you as a testament to the transformative power of loss. I have emerged stronger, wiser, and more connected to my true self than ever before. I am no longer bound by the chains of fear and attachment, and I embrace each day with open arms, ready to face whatever life has in store.

So, dear friend, if you find yourself in the throes of loss or change, know that you are not alone. Embrace the freedom that comes from letting go, and trust that there is beauty waiting to be discovered on the other side. For it is in the darkest moments that we find the light within ourselves and the courage to step into a new, more fulfilling life.

May this message serve as a gentle reminder that you are strong, resilient, and capable of great transformation. And as always, remember that you have a community here that supports and cares for you.

Aniket

to greatness; with me, without me.

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In a Church-religion, "sin" is the breaking of church law. In a personal religion, "sin" is the breaking of a law that is related to self-development. The harboring of thoughts that degrade in any way is 'sinful.' Negatively speaking, the neglect of moral development is equally sinful. Hence the admonition: 'Neglect, not the gift that is within thee.' to simplify it to new English “Do not neglect the gift that is within you” What gift? The gift of life. The gift of intelligence. The gift of love. The gift of conscience. The gift of creating another life. What do you say of a person with a beautiful voice who neglects it? The gift of music, or of painting, or of speaking -- There are so many gifts given to people which are neglected.

The gifts that you hold, do not neglect them, give them to the world. Go to the edge of your craft to create, put in the work, put in the hours, and create something that’s meaningful, that adds something to your life and of those around you.

I’ll see you soon.

Until next time, smile.