Some people want to live their lives miserable, it defines them. Often people who’ve been through trauma. Letting go of that feels like surrendering who they are.
I feel like talking about identity at this point is kicking a dead horse. I’ve done so very much writing here, writing emails, early morning chatter over coffee, late night chatter at a cafe or bar. The subject may very well deserve it. We talked this morning about elbow macaroni + tomatoes, about “chop suey”, about pants, and the city versus the country. I’m really buying into taking the financial market concept of survivorship bias that we took to open source, and taking it into identity as well. Perhaps some days you just have to get through, because distractions keep the demons at bay, or you feel you have a duty to do so. I do feel that as relatively entitled human beings that our personal growth is our responsibility. I think our ability to make a meaningful impact on the world requires honest introspection, and as part of that we can’t allow ourselves to justify keeping part of ourselves around only because it has survived.