Nick Sylvester:

You can be open, and vulnerable, and ignorant, and admit to your ignorance, and try to understand your own wiring and ignorance, and come to terms with the fact that you are one complex motherfucker with complex and not exactly logical or objective reasons for liking and loving what you do, but nevertheless still liking and loving the things that you do, or you can be the person who points out that everyone is pretty fucking ignorant, nobody ever has a clue what they’re really doing on this earth, everybody’s reasons are all so screwy, and do so on a daily basis, as a way of masking your own ignorance and insignificance and vulnerability. You can try to know, and own the fact that there are things you do not know, or you can be knowing, and hide your own ignorance with sideways shots of been-there done-that familiarity.

Just finished reading this long post by Nick Sylvester over at Riff Market. It’s really good. The above chunk particularly grabbed me, mostly because (a) I think it’s probably true and (b) I have a distinct memory of sitting with my weed buddy after high school one day in my senior year and voicing pretty much this exact same thought, and I remember how we both thought I had totally nailed it, and how I felt like I had figured something really big out at a very young age. And you know, I think I did. I’ve gone back on that thinking many times since then, mostly by trying too hard to be cool, but these days it’s still sounding very wise. Getting older only reinforces it; time really does pass, you only have so long to make some peace with yourself and the world, and fucking with people (and yourself) doesn’t get you there. Thanks for the reminder, Nick.