I was twenty, alone in a new country, trying to figure out how to build a life.
I was afraid of running out of money, afraid of failing at everything I had imagined for myself, afraid of becoming someone I wouldn’t respect.
If I couldn’t think for myself, I couldn’t make it. First principles thinking was survival.
I’d sit in a comfy chair in an empty café, drinking a double espresso.
I brought books on philosophy, physics, history, psychology, business, and every other topic I thought was essential.
I would read for an hour, letting the ideas stack up. Then I’d close the book, have lunch alone, and do the harder work: I would sit in silence and think about what I just read.
Life demands speed, and thinking from the ground up is slow, so I started relying on shortcuts. I leaned on the mental maps I had drawn back in that café.
Maybe that’s not all bad. Cached thinking is what wisdom eventually becomes.
The other night, driving in the car, my wife asked me a question and it deserved a real answer. I was tired, and my mind reached for a convention, a safe opinion I’ve held for years. I opened my mouth to say it then stopped.
She didn’t notice the pause. She was looking at the road. But I noticed.
That’s the thing about drifting. No one sees it but you if you’re lucky.
Maybe that kind of hunger belongs only to the young. But I know what waits if I don’t try. A quiet hardening.
At twenty, making space cost me nothing. I had all the time in the world.
I have to make space. Not because I have the answers, but because I want to feel as alive as I felt when I was asking more than I was answering.