| >Founders need to take a hard look in the mirror and ask themselves why they're doing what they're doing I'm happy. The happiest I've ever been, in fact. I just graduated after a decade of fucking around and I have a job that I enjoy and that pays me fairly well. Tomorrow, I'm going to buy myself a motorcycle. I like my friends. Life is good. I've never been able to look in a mirror and honestly answer that question. Of all of the things I've ever felt insecure about, "why are you making the choices you are" tops the list. The biggest mental block I've ever experienced is trying to answer that question, and even as I write honestly about my struggles to do so I'm still not able to face it. The only explanation I've ever come up with is that I'm terrified of where that question might lead me. I'm afraid of losing the happiness I have, of somehow breaking the spell and being expelled from Mt Achievement to wallow in the shadows with the rest of the benighted. I'm worried that subjecting my actions and beliefs to rigorous analysis might somehow invalidate them, and with them the foundation of my happiness. It's a strange sort of cognitive dissonance, to at once kneel at the altar of skepticism and rationality, and also to shield my most cherished beliefs from same. To be aware of that dissonance, and yet be unwilling or unable to fix it, is stranger still. |