The past few emails have been fairly coherent and put together.

So let's ruin that today.

I'm getting a double-edged sword tattooed soon. I genuinely say the term every single day. It's not a great thing -- Sometimes I wish I could be more convicted in what I say.

But as an overthinker, everything is truly a double-edged sword. I can never just do.

Wake up yesterday, in a deep rut. Remember I have free will and a bit of cash and can just book a flight to somewhere cheap in LatAm. Maybe I'll do that for a week. But I'm not much of a traveler. Never have been. I think the cons outweigh the pros. Traveling always felt like running away to me. Anxiety ridden and skittish. Why can't you just build your ideal life here? Why does it have to be in Medellín? When I'm old and dying, I'll look back in regret for not spending time with my family, not making a difference in my community. But the worlds so big. There are so many places to go. SURELY I can't just stay whe-

That is the first 2 minutes of a 45 minute dialogue I had with myself... just over a flight and an AirBnB.

You see our problem here?

I've done a LOT of thinking over this the past few weeks - I've fortunately identified that this constant overthinking is likely the culprit of... well, most of the "bad."

I know you can relate.

We live in a world of INPUTS. And good inputs, at that.

Yeah, TikTok (RIP) and mainstream news and Netflix is pumping literal heaps of digital trash into our psyche 24/7... but most of us don't struggle with that. We're watching self help Youtubers, we're watching entrepreneurs and business gurus, we're reading really good books, brushing up on history and philosophy and "the greats"...

INPUTS.

We are doomed by too many good inputs. WTF are we supposed to pick?

At any given time I've got like 4 or 5 really great arguments being made against the same thing. What is the meaning of life? Is money a noble pursuit? Is AI good or bad?

NOISE.

No wonder we're constantly overthinking... we've been trained to!

The obvious answer is to limit inputs. No shit. I read 6 books last year that told me the same thing.

It's gotta be something deeper.

I think the real answer is...

You need to have an opinion.

I genuinely think most of us do not have opinions anymore.

We're cursed by always needing to be right. Instead of just "having" an opinion, we need to go battle test it. We need to post it on Twitter and duke it out. We need to hold it up beside great leaders and thinkers and see if they line up. We need to be sure it truly serves us and our mission.

Go ask the old guy playing chess outside your local cafe what he thinks about immigration.

Is his answer carefully thought out? Did he spend 4 hours yesterday debating it on Twitter?

Or did he use his OWN experience, his OWN beliefs, and come up with a good enough answer so you could fuck off and he could continue playing his game of chess?

We need to have a balance between self-awareness and having our own damn opinions.

I have the self-awareness to know that, in general, I am young, dumb, naive, definitely under-read, under-educated (dropped out), and inexperienced.

That means I know very well that, by conventional metrics, there are a TON of people who "know better than me."

Does that mean I should never hold any beliefs or opinions, because they're (in theory) likely to be wrong?

NO.

My unique experience, my unique insights, my own suffering and trials and hardships, my own joy and happiness and memories... THOSE are what make my opinion valuable.

It's why you're still reading this, no?

So, here's my answer to the question:

"How do we even KNOW what we KNOW? How do we KNOW what we KNOW is important?"

Pick a few, really deep core values. Shit you could lean on with all your weight.

Spend a lot of time thinking about those. Battle test THOSE.

Beliefs that you KNOW can't be "wrong" because they don't come from science or academia or other humans.

They come from YOU, somewhere way deep in your psyche. It's your genetic DNA. It's the collective knowledge we both share by birthright. It's God's wisdom that you're fortunate enough to tap into (hint: it's also in you).

It's statistically, the closest you could possibly be to being "right" in this moment.

Which is funny, because the worst people I know are the only ones concerned about being "right."

The rest are just worried about being a good person.

Stop trying to be right. Stop wasting your opportunity to EXPERIENCE life trying to justify it.

Neither of us knows shit anyway.

- RL