Been reading a lot of Paul Graham recently. He basically founded a startup that helps found startups. It’s a domino effect for small businesses basically.

Mesh that with some Gary Vee and Naval Ravikant and I’ve got a theory for business swirling around in my head. Mesh that business with Russ, Taylor Swift and Bo Burnham, entertainers who figured out how to make it, and you’ve got a recipe for entertainers that combined the art with the business and figured out how to profit.

Haven’t myself yet created a business nor become an entertainer, but you’re supposed to share what you learn, so I guess here goes it.

Humans aren’t 2 dimensional beings. We don’t fit nicely into lines and neatly cut out boxes on a page.

“You say A is white, and B is black. It is color then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet with a fairer skin than your own.”

Lincoln

We’re incredibly dynamic. We move and shift and sway interests between these… boxes. Climbers aren’t just climbers. Authors aren’t just authors. They enjoy baking and running and maybe juggling too.

I once heard the quote “Don’t be the best, be the only”, which seriously resonated with me.

Modern society is merely the brain child of some generation that came before. The boxes we currently reside in only exist because someone somewhere had some wack idea.

• Cycling to work is considered eccentric, but 200 yrs ago cars didn’t even exist.
• Reading is for nerds but the printing press was invented in 1440.
• Sleeping early is for grandpas but lightbulbs weren’t even around until 1879.

All of the things that we’re building upon, all the things that we use to function… was created by some nut job a few hundred years ago.

Cartons of milk, rubber shoes, and plastic lenses we put inside our eyeballs to see better were merely just byproducts of some rando making stuff.

And then we take it upon ourselves to group each other into buckets:

• Engineer
• American
• Caucasian
• Nutjob
  (That last one describes me the best)

We’re human, we want answers and we want them now. So we use this tool of language to group people, and sometimes that means shaving down nuance.

We want things simple and we want to quickly convey ideas.
So we group people.

We create an Us and we create a Them.
You are either the same as me or you are different.

Unfortunately for the efficiency of communication, we are nuanced. As my old Psych teacher so beautifully seared in to my brain “everything is on a spectrum”. It’s one of the greatest beauties about America – we pride ourselves on individuality.

Nothing is black and white. Everything is a shade of grey.

And the tricky part about being human is that we want to belong. And belonging means buckets. So the more nicely we can fit ourselves in to a bucket, to more we feel that we do belong.

I am, however, convinced that few of us fit that neatly into each category. It’s one of the delicate things about every single controversial topic – sexuality, religion, abortion, politics. It’s far easier to categories that person as a Democrat or that guy as Republican.

When in reality, the answer lies somewhere much more nuanced. There’s far more grey area to humans than human language gives us credit for.

It’s the same thing that makes relationships so complicated. We would have a term for the all encompassing ‘Situationship’ if we were black and white.

But as I hinted before, I think that’s one of the things about America I’m most grateful for. Because we started off with a smattering of European mixed with native mixed with African mixed with Native American blood and then immigrated from across the entire world… we’re inherently more messy.

That gives us a leg up from much of the rest of the world. Inherently we started with blurred lines and messy origins, and we figured out how to get along anyways.

So where the heck am I going with all this. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that most of us don’t fit in to nice neat boxes. They’re a nice way to describe a general approximation of someone, but the same way phone calls miss out on 55% of a meaning by missing body language, words capture only so much of a human’s essence.

Point being… doesn’t really fking matter what people think about you.

Far easier said than done, but I’m trying to articulate what most people miss. They don’t see the nuances of your personality. And so when they categorize you, or describe you, or expect you to behave a certain way… it doesn’t really matter because they don’t actually know what your heart desires.

“Don’t be the best, be the only”

“Gotta learn to speak yo’ truth and that’s just part of the process”

Joyner Lucas, Evolution

We aren’t cookie cutter cutouts. But nobody else knows who you are or what you want from this life. Only you know that.

“So misunderstood, but what’s a world without enigma”

Lil Wayne, 6 Foot 7 Foot

We owe ourselves heaps of reflection, because we don’t even know who the hell we are yet, how would anyone else?

It’s the beauty of creation.

Only you can create what you create. Each design, each invention, each thought is unique to you and you alone. Fingerprints are uniquely identifiable, as are our brains. We’ve each got a uniquely individual composition of Nature vs Nurture.

But if you live your whole life trying to be somebody else, or worse, shaving off parts of your personality to fit in… you’re in the wrong room.

“I’m sick of poundin’ a square peg in a round hole”
Eminem, Wicked Ways

And if we don’t continue to reinvent ourselves, we’re asking to remain in the box we’ve been put in.

“You deserve what you tolerate”

Unknown

It’s why I’ve been so fond of art in recent months – writing, painting, skating… it doesn’t really matter as long as there is personal growth. It’s the growth we crave.

“That he not busy being born Is busy dying”
Bob Dylan

But nobody can tell you who you are. Afterall, “There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” Thanks, Dr. Suess.

You’ve got to go out and explore. ‘You’ve got to treat your life like a startup‘ Arthur Brooks. I think the only way to do that is by experimenting.

It’s trying things, trying things, and trying more until we find something that we can’t shake. It’s experimenting until we find obsession… even if that obsession is a weird nuanced off shoot that people around you aren’t interested in.

It’s the most obvious argument for Intuition.

Anyways, I guess just do stuff you like is what I’m trying to say. Thanks for hearing me ramble.

Fast forward ~300 years and we’re still sorting it out as we go.