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April 29, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
35:38
Please Don't Disappear!
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Well, good morning, everybody.
It's a little before my Sunday morning show, and I had a haunting thought yesterday.
A series of thoughts that I wanted to share with you to frighten you if this is your path.
It's really important.
So yesterday, I went to a dress-up festival with Izzy for the day, which was a blast.
And...
At one point, we got an apple strudel at this festival, and Izzy went off to go and get a knife to cut it in two, because, you know, we don't really do much sugar, so it was a nice strudel, but we thought we'd cut it in two,
and have half each.
So, when she was off getting the, it was supposed to be a knife, she came back with two forks and we just muscled it, but when she was off, And I was sitting alone in this festival.
You know, I looked around as I do.
And I have fairly recently, over the last year or two, sort of aged out of being noticed that much.
You know, when I was younger, I would get noticed a little bit more, for whatever reason, you know, just there's a sort of social consideration or whatever it is, right?
And so I'm noticed less, which is interesting because I get to observe people.
Without much reciprocity, which is more anthropological and interesting.
And, of course, I get more than enough love, care, and attention from friends and family, so I don't need any particular attention from strangers.
But I was looking around, and I saw a guy, you know, probably in his 50s, sitting alone, and he had that, you know, Eleanor Rigby air of isolation around him.
And I was sitting there, and, of course, nobody was looking at me, And I thought I had this sort of flash, you know, this alternate life path.
The road not taken, thank God.
And the alternate life path is...
So I'm going to be 59 this year.
And the alternate life path was, if I had come to this festival alone, nobody would care.
Nobody would chat with me, unless they wanted to sell me something.
There were some booths around and all.
So...
Nobody would chat with me.
Nobody would be interested in me.
People would just glance past me.
And I got a real sense, deep, you know, visceral sense of just how easy it is to disappear.
To disappear.
It is scary easy to slip off the radar, to despawn, to go to the back rooms, to go to the nether, to disappear from society.
I mean, at 58, like, I'm too old to be noticed in the sort of, you know, romantic way and, you know, in this kind of social situation.
If I was old and wealthy and powerful, then maybe I'd be able to offer people jobs or opportunities and maybe I'd get attention that way.
But I just got a real sense, like, you can vanish from the world.
You can vanish from society if you don't.
Make plans to avoid that.
There's an inevitable disintegration of your social presence if you live a life of solitude.
And this is kind of a new thing in the world.
Because, of course, in the past, people would stay in the same locations, right?
In a village.
And even if you didn't get married or have kids or whatever, for whatever reason, you would still have places to go on Michael Mass on Christmas, maybe Thanksgiving, New Year's Eve.
And there would be, you know, nieces and nephews, birthday parties, there would be so-and-so's anniversary, there would be, you know, you'd have this fairly continual, you'd have a church, and you'd have a fairly continual flow of social engagements coming out of your family,
even if you didn't have a family, you'd be part of a family, and you would work with people you had probably grown up with, you know, in the fields or wherever, right?
So there was sort of a...
Protection or a hedge against this kind of disappearing.
And I saw this guy sitting, eating alone, dressed up, and I saw just how easy and possible it is to have no one who cares for you and no one who wants to care for you because you don't provide any profit or value.
To people.
Now, I know the term profit is complicated when it comes to relationships, but I may certainly tell you this from my standpoint.
I am perhaps obsessed.
It's the wrong word, but it's certainly not the opposite.
I am fairly obsessed with ensuring that I provide value to people.
Call-in shows, in live streams, in this conversation, I am.
And in my personal relationships, I'm fairly obsessed with providing value to people.
Have people over, make sure they have a good time.
Games, you know, I'm setting up a pickleball, get-togethers with friends.
I'm fairly obsessed with providing value.
I want to make sure my wife, you know, I'll ask her almost every day, did you feel loved today?
Did you feel treasured and respected?
Right?
And it's just, I'm fairly obsessed with providing value to people.
And, I mean, you could say, well, that just comes from a state of insecurity.
They should love you for who you are.
Nope.
No, no, no, no.
You're loved for who you are when you're a baby and you're a toddler and a little kid.
As you age, and certainly when you become an adult, nobody loves you for who you are.
They love you for the value you provide.
I mean, if there's a restaurant that gives you terrible food and bad service and expensive prices, Do you just go to the restaurant because you love the restaurant for what it is?
No.
What it is, is what it provides.
What it is, is the value it gives to you.
And in relationships, I'm fairly obsessed with providing value.
I mean, and as I've mentioned, sort of post-deplatforming in the last four and a half years, this summer is going to be half a decade, right?
So, I am still obsessed with providing value.
I'm just obsessed with providing value for the future.
To the future, right?
It is the future.
Since the present as a whole doesn't want the value that I have to offer, I will provide that value to the future.
And it was interesting because I did a live stream call-in yesterday, and I think it was called Why Do People Bully Me?
And in that live stream, I did talk about how, to a fault, I try to help people.
To provide value.
And for me, the provision of value is a great self-protection.
Because I work so hard to provide value to people, I have no susceptibility to being exploited.
Because if people don't provide value to me, but I'm providing value to them, it's like generosity, right?
If you're generous with like, you know, if I have friends, meet new people, then, you know, we're too old to haggle on who ordered the Diet Coke and who had dessert.
We don't haggle on that, so I'll pay for the dinner and then see if they offer next time.
And if they don't offer next time, then we don't have the same values as far as generosity goes.
So it's not of particular interest to me to pursue.
So generosity and the provision of value is a great protection because then you really notice when people are selfish and don't provide value.
And to be honest, I can't remember the last time where people I've met and liked Have not done the reciprocal thing, because it's the kind of thing that happens as you...
I honestly can't remember the last time this would have happened.
So, I was thinking about how do people despawn?
How do they vanish?
How do they slide off this conveyor belt into the infinite void of self-regard that characterizes people who spend way too much time alone?
Well, of course, there's moving around, there's...
Career, family, restlessness, people are moving all over the place.
And so, this is one of the beautiful things about marriage is you really cast your lots with each other.
And wherever you go, you go together.
And that's not the case with friends.
Friends have higher priorities than spending time together.
The higher priorities are moving for work.
And pursuing career stuff, maybe going for education if it's needed, and getting married and having kids, right?
But when you're married, there's no higher priority than each other.
And that's not the case with friends.
Friends will come and go.
And I've had some friends I've had for decades.
Oh, no, actually, just one.
Just one.
Just one I've had since I was in my early 20s.
Man, that's a long-ass time, man.
That's a long-ass time.
That's almost 40 years.
So, when you're young, you have, you know, a built-in social life, right?
You socialize with friends at school, you have siblings usually, friends in the neighborhood, and you get all of that.
And you have your primary school friends, junior high friends, high school friends, and you'll often switch and change friend groups.
I mean, certainly that was the case for me.
I could be thought of as a tiny bit of a social climber.
Or you could say that I'm just trying to find a level that matches me.
But I was constantly seeking to upgrade the quality of friendships.
Because when you get a sense that friends aren't progressing, like, you know, you all start off fairly immature, you get a sense that friends aren't progressing, then you're going to have more in common with the friends who are progressing, if that makes sense.
So, and of course, if you start to have some success, In the world, you want to have people around who are reasonably successful, and that doesn't necessarily mean materially successful, but just successful in terms of manifesting ambitions.
It could be writing novels and getting them published, even if you don't make much money from that, at least you're doing that, pursuing that, and achieving something.
But people fall away.
And if you stay single, people fall away primarily because they get married and have kids.
And of course, when you get married and have kids, you have Less and less in common with your single friends.
Your primary relationship is with your wife or your husband, and then when you have kids, you have this incredible joy and massive time-consumption series of angels called children, so you have less and less in common.
It's almost unfair to ask your friends to have as much fascination and devotion and affection for your children as you do.
But nonetheless, it is something that you kind of deep down expect.
Maybe not the same level, but there really does have to be, wow, that's the coolest.
You want your friends to get to know your kids and to enjoy their company and so on, right?
Otherwise, you just have less and less in common.
And when you do take on the fairly awesome and primordial responsibilities of marriage and children, and, you know, you are responsible for keeping a series of tiny death maggot human beings alive, well, To be frank, which is, I guess, kind of unnecessary.
I'm always pretty frank.
Can I be frank with you?
You can be anyone you want with me.
Well, when you couple into marriage and parenthood, fatherhood, and you are responsible for providing and protecting and so on, then the concerns of your single friends just start to become less important to you.
You know, if you've been...
Up all night with a sick child, hoping for the best, but fearing the worst.
And then your friend says, your single friend says, yeah, I went out with this girl, and you know, it seemed to be going well, but she kind of ghosted me, and like all the stuff that would be interesting and maybe dramatic in your early mid-twenties, when you are a parent, it just becomes like, yeah, okay.
Yeah, that's tough.
You know, I've just been trying to keep a sick kid this side of the deep earth, but...
You tell me about your frustrations with your boss being snippy with you in a meeting.
The concerns, the cares, the responsibilities, they just widen.
And it's not like you don't have respect for stuff.
It's just a different level.
It's just a different level.
So, when you're single, your friends move, your friends get married, they move to the suburbs, and a lot of single people are in the city and don't necessarily have cars, so it's tough to get to the suburbs.
And so things just diminish, and your lives widen, and then what?
And then what?
Well, you can try and meet new people dating.
Maybe that works out, maybe it doesn't.
Usually it doesn't.
But you can vanish.
I'm telling you, these days in particular, you can vanish.
And so I was thinking, you know, like in this flash of thought and deep sorrow yesterday.
Looking at this guy and imagining myself in his shoes, you know, it's another path, roadless taken, right?
Imagining myself in his shoes.
Well, if I was there at this festival alone, I could chat with some vendors and they'd be happy to chat with me, but of course, they would want me to buy something and they would have to move on to other customers.
I could, if there's some shows, maybe I could participate in those shows a little bit.
What else?
I could chat with a few people here and there.
But I couldn't spend the day with anyone, right?
Because, I mean, you know, you've got a couple of friends, you're going to a festival, do you want some older guy to join you for the day?
No.
I'm here with my friends, and the time and investment that you need to spend getting to know someone is subtracted from the time you're spending with your friends, right?
So there's a net negative in spending time to get to know someone.
So, let's say that some guy wants to join you on your day at the beach, right?
Like, you're playing some volleyball, you're in your 20s or 30s, and then some guy in his 50s joins you for volleyball.
I mean, that's probably fine, right?
But then he wants to hang out with you all day.
Well, it's a drag.
It's a negative.
Because, oh, what do you do?
And, oh, where do you live?
And, oh, what are you doing here?
And, when did you like...
It's just...
You're just throwing groceries down a well because you're investing time in a relationship that's not going to go anywhere.
And subtracting time from the relationships you already have with your friends at the beach.
Now, of course, if you're a young guy and you're there with your friends and then some young woman who's reasonably attractive wants to come and play volleyball, then maybe you'll chat with her for the day because there's an opportunity to invest in a relationship that can pay off with, you know, dating and marriage and maybe all that kind of good stuff,
right?
But what is the future?
If you're in your 20s or 30s and you're male, what is the future with A guy in his 50s who wants to hang out with you for the day.
And there's no future.
And so there's this resistance.
You can't attach to anyone later in life.
You just can't.
And I remember many years ago I went on a vacation on my own to the Dominican Republic for two weeks.
It was lovely.
It was just lovely.
I read.
I played endless beach volleyball.
This is when I was a big...
Speaking of Jung, Carl Gustav Jung and Friedrich Nietzsche and so on.
But I did end up hanging out with some people I played volleyball with.
But, you know, I'm pretty easy to hang out with.
I'm pretty funny.
So we had a good time.
But, yeah, never really saw them again.
Well, never did see them again.
But you get older, man.
What's the point of investing in you?
Trying to build...
Social relationships in your 50s after a life of solitude is like trying to save for your retirement five years before your retirement.
When you don't have much money, it's really not a good investment.
And then what happens, of course, like we have these amazing imaginations.
I mean, I mean, you've seen this.
I mean, I have a fairly singular imagination in terms of analogies and storytelling and so on.
But even if you say, well, you know, Steph's a little bit unique in this way.
Okay, but when you have listened to me, And I can only think of one or two exceptions in like 20 years almost.
When you listen to me do role-playing with people, and I say, okay, well, you play your mother-in-law, I'll be you, or whatever it is, right?
And sometimes it can be twice removed.
You play your father-in-law, I'll play your wife, blah, blah, blah.
They just do it.
They step into it.
They commit.
Sometimes their accent even changes.
So you can say, oh, but Steph's got a fairly unique imagination.
Okay, maybe, but the degree of imagination that the average person has.
It's truly spectacular.
It's incredible.
So, why do we have such incredibly vivid imaginations?
We have these amazing dreams at night, and we daydream, and we abstract, and we argue with ourselves, and we think about things, we fantasize about things.
Why do we have these crazy imaginations?
Because we daydream, and we outsource our reality processing to those around us.
Right, so we may daydream about being a famous singer, and we may sing in the shower and think we sound great, but at some point, you know, other people will hear us sing, and if we share our daydream to become a famous singer, they might say, you know, it's nice, but I don't think it's,
like, professional caliber.
Or, you know, we daydream of becoming a famous writer, and we write a bunch of stuff, and then we share it with friends, and they're like, it's good.
And that doesn't mean our friends are right.
They could have their own motives and so on.
But we have eyes in the front of our head and we rely on our spouses to check the moles on our back because we can't see them very well.
I mean, we evolved prior to mirrors, right?
So, because we have the reality checks of those around us, we can afford to have these incredibly florid and sometimes half-psychotic imaginations, right?
Like, you can daydream.
About, I've done this, you know, this has happened to me, right?
You daydream about, you know, falling into a tiger pit, right?
And your heart rate goes up and your fight or flight rate gets released.
Like, our bodies don't always know the steep difference between imagination and reality.
Which is good, right?
Creativity and progress and tools, they all come from imagination.
So we have this amazing ability to imagine things, to fantasize, to daydream.
And that is kept in check and evolves out of the reality processing we share with others.
So, if I think, you know, I've taken a bunch of judo classes and I think I'm a judo expert, and I can daydream about being Bruce Lee, but then if I enter a competition and lose really early on, that's a reality check.
Right?
If I think I'm really, really great at business, and yet I don't progress in my career, That is a reality check that comes from, in this case, an economic, but nonetheless, a social situation.
If I think I'm really good at golf, right?
And I go and play golf and I lose.
And then that's a reality check, right?
So interacting with others blunts the vanity, right?
Interacting because we daydream and, you know, daydreaming about how great we can be and all this kind of stuff.
Daydreaming about how great we can be and all the things we can achieve is great.
You know, the root of ambition is daydreaming and fantasy.
But we need to have the social checks of reality to compare what we believe our potential to be with our actual potential.
And, of course, one of the things that blends potential is this sort of secret life of Walter Mitty stuff, which is a famous story about a guy who's henpecked by his wife daydreaming about being a hero everywhere.
It is easy to take refuge in fantasy Instead of reality, right?
So you daydream that you are a real success and your body will sometimes give you the endorphins or the happiness as if you had actually succeeded, right?
Like people who pick up inconsequential digital trinkets in video games feel like they're really achieving something, right?
In the same way that, I don't know, masturbation makes you feel like you're impregnating a woman and having a baby, right?
So we can easily take refuge in In fantasy rather than actual success.
And then the problem with that, of course, is that which is supposed to drive our ambitions ends up castrating and thwarting them, right?
That's not good.
So, we need the reality check of people just for basic reality.
Basic reality is the Russell Crowe thing in A Beautiful Mind.
He thinks he sees talking to someone, he says to someone else, do you see that person, right?
We sort of check this, right?
I think I'm a pretty good painter.
Have a look at my paintings and...
Tell me what you think.
Or, I think I'm a pretty good painter.
I'm going to take my paintings to an art gallery and try and get them to hang them.
Right?
All of this sort of stuff.
Right?
I think I'm a pretty good singer.
I'm going to enter into a karaoke competition and see how I do.
I think I'm a pretty good actor.
I'm going to go audition for a bunch of plays.
Right?
To check.
Vanity.
Vanity occurs when we resist empirical proof of our own perceived abilities.
Because nothing humbles you like putting your beliefs about yourself to the test.
You know, if you like to sing, you sing, you record yourself back, and I suppose a lot of times you're like, ooh, that's not quite as good as I thought it was, or that's not quite as pleasant as I thought it was, and so on, right?
As a singer, I make a pretty good philosopher.
So, when you live alone, you almost always pray, To delusional fantasies about your own abilities.
I mean, here's the funny thing.
I'd just be completely honest about this and all.
I mean, I know this is something that I was hesitant to talk about, but I'll talk about it, right?
Because, you know, might as well be honest.
It's too late now for closing the kimono.
But when I was younger, I mean, I've talked about this once before, but I'll give it another context.
So when I was younger, if there was some celebrity when I was single, right?
Some celebrity I liked.
I would hear she got married.
I'd be like, aw, aw.
You know, oh, Sandra Bullock got married?
Like, I'm going to meet Sandra Bullock.
She's going to fall in love with me.
Whatever it is, right?
Because she seems, like, very funny, although she has pretty bad taste in men.
But, and if she got divorced, I'd be like, ah, that's good.
Like, I'm going to meet her.
She's going to fall in love with me, get married.
Whatever, right?
But even more than that, right?
So, I would look at, you know, because I've always loved music and so on, right?
Although I don't have any particularly strong musical abilities in any way, shape, or form, but I've always loved music.
So I'd be like, you know, into sort of middle age.
I'd see some band and I'd be like, well, you know, I could still do it, maybe.
You know, I could just decide to quit.
Like, it was just daydreaming, right?
It was never anything I did seriously because I've tried learning a bunch of instruments in my life and I have no particular facility with that kind of stuff and all of that, right?
So...
But I'd be like, yeah, I could.
Yeah, whatever.
It's in the realm of possibility, right?
But of course, you know, I didn't really believe it.
Otherwise, I would have done it.
Like the stuff where I thought it was in the realm of possibility for me to do great and important work was in the realm of philosophy.
So really, as soon as I could find a way to make that sustainable, I locked in, as my daughter would say, and did it.
So we have these daydreams.
And we need people to give us...
Empirical feedback on our daydreams so we know whether they're realistic or vanity.
Right?
So, daydreams are usually about vanity.
And again, this is not a criticism.
They're just daydreams, right?
But I would daydream about things that would benefit me.
Oh, you know, if I was a famous actor, I'd make a lot of money and I'd be popular and I'd be in demand and that would serve my ego.
It would serve my vanity, right?
If I became a famous writer, I'd be in demand.
I'd have meetings.
People would really want to Talk to me and give me money, right?
So that would be, that was about me.
I wanted to be recognized.
It was ego feed, right?
Whereas with philosophy, I think what made it successful was, I was like, I never really thought about myself and I never really thought about, ooh, people are going to think I'm so smart.
I was like, this could really benefit the world.
This, like, what I'm good at could really benefit the world.
And so it was about the value that I could provide.
Rather than the ego boost I could get.
Lord knows you don't get into philosophy for an ego boost.
Because the world hates the truth.
It always has.
I don't think it always will, as peaceful parenting takes the fore.
So I actually succeeded when it was no longer about how it would feed my ego, but rather how I could help the world.
Because that's sustainable, right?
If it's about feeding the ego, then people would just feed you negative.
They'd just give you negative feedback.
And then you'll stop doing it.
But if it's about benefiting the world, as long as you are benefiting the world, and I know that I am, the negative feedback becomes pretty inconsequential.
So, when you're alone, one of the reasons why you become unsocializable with, if that makes sense, is because you drift further and further from reality and further and further from a realistic assessment of your own skills, gifts,
abilities.
You can daydream, you can fantasize.
And because you're alone and you don't share things with people, you don't get any honest or direct feedback.
And then what happens is you retreat into fantasy and don't test things.
Like I have a friend who had a friend many years ago.
He was a friend of mine for many decades.
And he became, he did a judo thing.
He would go and he was like an assistant teacher of introduction to judo.
And he thought he was like a really good judo guy.
And then he went into a competition.
And he got his knee crunched so badly he spent, you know, months in rehab.
Which would indicate a lack of skill, because I think you're supposed to fight and not get injured that badly, right?
And again, it could be bad luck and so on, but he never won a competition.
He never placed.
He never did particularly well at all.
So, I mean, it's a fine hobby, and I'm not saying to him, I never said to him, don't do judo.
I'd be just like, but you're not very good, right?
And that's fine, right?
I mean, When I enjoyed going to karaoke, people never said to me, don't do karaoke.
But they would say to me, you know, that's okay, right?
It's fine.
But, you know, not pro-singer level.
And I'm like, yeah, I agree, but I enjoy doing it.
It's fun.
And I got to practice performing, which was very helpful to me when I started to do speeches and so on.
And I got to work with my voice, which was very helpful because my voice is my instrument, he said rather pompously.
But, you know, it's kind of true, right?
So you drift in your self-assessment.
People think they're really attractive when they're not.
People think they're great at something when they're not.
And then you start to get this thwarted vanity, and then you start to blame the world for not recognizing your brilliance, and even though the world is giving you fairly objective feedback about your brilliance or lack thereof, your skills and abilities or lack thereof, and then you end up in these laughable positions where people think that useless analogies are a substitute for great business judgment,
right?
So, you know, they go to Elon Musk with Doge and says, well, you know, it really should be a scalper rather than a chainsaw.
Well, a scalpel is fine if you're taking out an appendix, but a scalpel won't cut down a bunch of trees.
So they think, well, it's surgery with a chainsaw.
It's like, but it's not surgery.
You have to cut down a bunch of trees really quickly because there's a fire spreading, so you need a chainsaw.
Anyway, so, and they think that they have better business judgment because they can come up with a useless analogy than the most successful businessman the world has ever seen.
I mean, that's like...
Me looking at Freddie Mercury at Live Aid and saying, amateur, I could do way better than that.
Yeah, it's widely recognized as the best concert in best live performance in history, at least for rock and pop.
Anyway, so then what happens is you end up with such a distorted view of yourself that people don't want to get to know you because getting to know you will require hacking through your delusions about yourself and trying to set you straight.
And that's the job for a mental health professional.
Not for a buddy.
So, I mean, I'm sure you've met older people who wax on about how great they are at things with no particular...
You know, it's the old thing about the guy at the end of the bar who's got a solution to all the world's problems.
And it's like, okay, well, if you have a solution to all the world's problems, why are you just a guy at the end of a bar mouthing off to people who don't have any power?
Right?
It is...
And so then what happens is people end up with their...
Vanities and delusions about themselves becoming cemented because of a lack of feedback.
They can just live in their own head and imagine themselves to be as great as they want.
And then what happens, of course, is that people meet them, and they wax eloquent about how great they are, and people are like, oh, forget this, like this.
I don't see it, and there's no evidence that supports it, and so I'm not going to get invested in trying to undo this guy's illusions, right?
I mean, this happened in the call yesterday.
And it was an interesting coincidence that the call happened yesterday on the Telegram livestream, and then I saw this guy at the festival.
Same day.
Ah, you know, the universe sometimes flicks your ear to have you pay attention to something.
So then people, you end up drifting off into your own delusions because you're not getting feedback from a social circle, you end up putting things to the test because you'd rather live in a fantasy of how great you are rather than put it to the test.
You know, like I always thought I was a good debater, and I was vice president of the debating club in my university and so on.
And so I'm eager to do debates.
I think I'm pretty good.
And so I'm eager to put it to the test.
And I did, you know, when I was younger, I entered singing competitions, and I did okay.
But, I mean, you then see the guys who get up and the men and women who get up who can really do it, and you're like, yeah, well, okay.
I remember watching a guy, I was in a singing competition, and I did okay.
I sort of placed it in the middle, but then there was a guy who got up and did like a...
Note-perfect rendition of a very difficult song to sing called Unchained Melody by the Righteous Brothers.
And, like, he even hit the falsetto effortlessly, and I'm like, oh, okay, so that guy's got the pipes, right?
I can make notes work, but I don't have notes work.
It's effortful, which means it's less pleasant to listen to and usually a little flat.
So, anyway.
So then when you meet people who are, you know, let's say you met my friend, who's now, gosh, he's 60?
Yeah, he's 61. So you met my friend who, you know, Kind of short, little tubby, and he tells you about how great he is at judo, and you're like, eh, okay, maybe it's a Mr. Miyagi thing that I just don't really see, but I don't, you know, I don't really get it, right?
And then, you know, maybe you go over to his place for a coffee, and you see that he has, like, no judo trophies anywhere.
You say, oh, where are your judo trophies?
Oh, I don't really enter competition, you know, it's not really what I'm in it for.
Or, you know, I entered competition, but it's all rigged.
You know, like this kind of stuff, right, where people explain their failures by...
Complaining about corruption within the systems, right?
And, you know, they just don't let people like me have a chance, right?
And then you're just like, okay, so maybe all of this is true, but the likelihood is he's just not very good at judo, but he believes that he is.
And then are you, you know, if this is just an acquaintance or someone you're just getting to know, are you really invested in them finding out the truth and you stripping away their illusions, you know, Stanley Kowalski style?
Are you there to do that?
Are you there to, you know, really say, I don't really see the proof.
And, right, they've obviously got decades invested in this delusion of themselves being the next Ginger or Bruce Lee or whatever.
And they're in their early 60s.
Like, are you really going to sit down and say, yeah, I don't see it.
Or are you going to sit there and say, okay, let me enter a competition.
I'll come and watch and see what the judges say.
Like, you're just not going to be invested in that.
So, particularly when you meet people middle-aged or later who are hardened into their own delusions about themselves, you just move on.
Because either then you have to nod and smile when they say things that appear absurd to you, or you have to fight them on their delusions, neither of which is fun.
It's not fun to nod and smile at people's delusions about themselves, and it's also not fun to take on people's delusions, because that's, you know, kind of the job of paid professionals.
And of course, if they wanted to take on their delusions, they would pay those professionals, and they don't, right?
So, this is how you vanish.
You need people around you to stay sane.
You need people around you to stay reality grounded.
When people believe in you for good reason and love you, you have an infinite jetpack of potential success.
If you retreat from people's judgments in order to hang on to your own delusions, you vanish from the world.
You have like an invisibility cloak.
People may, you know, they may sit with you and have lunch and talk about sports and the weather, but you're not going to be left.
Because we can only meet in reality and delusions isolate you from love, affection, connection, and...
Truth.
So, stay with people.
Challenge your own beliefs about yourself.
If you believe that you are great at something, put it to the test.
You think you're a great writer, write and publish.
You think you're a great actor, go audition for things.
You think you're great at business, go and do business.
You think that you're underappreciated at work, write up a bunch of proposals and bring them to your boss.
You think you're great at managing money, manage more money.
Put things to the test.
And that way, you avoid the trap of vanity.
You stay in the realm of humility, which means you get feedback, which means you get people who will give and take with you, facts, reality, and evidence, and you stay real, and you stay connected.
Do not vanish into your own vanity.
It's a great temptation, particularly for people who have some reasonable degrees of ability.
Put things to the test.
Stay with people.
Do not vanish.
Because, man, despawning is way easier than you think.
And there's no road back!
Freedomman.com slash donate.
Really appreciate it if you could help out the show.
Lots of love from up here.
I guess I'll talk to you soon in the live stream.
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