I think to become a well-adjusted adult, not one who could buy groceries or hold a job, but to contribute to the world in meaningful ways, one had to learn to live in a world they disagreed with, and one that disagreed with them. That was the difficult part. Pretending you were living righteously was the easiest thing in the world.
When you believed the correct way for something to be was so and such, and someone told you they didn’t agree, you had to be okay with it. You had to be okay with the idea of there being no correct answers to the human experience, and if there was such an answer, you had to accept that you—one person alone—couldn’t find it.
Of course, that was easier said than done but you had to develop an ability for it. The ability of not only being able to see the world through the eyes of someone else, of not only being able to walk the streets as they did, but to know that sometimes, you couldn’t see how someone saw it or you couldn’t walk places they’ve dragged themselves out of. To accept that your life is utterly limited and your experience is bound by those limits.
If there was an answer to make a mark on the world, to lend a hand to everyone else, to lead so everyone could take a step together, it was in the acceptance of it all. It was in accepting that when all is said and done, for all your convictions and maxims, for all platitudes you preach, you couldn’t repeat your own life in the exact way it has panned out.
It was in the humility to accept all you had was instinct and all you had was an inkling, and somewhere between those two was your truth. Your truth was that you didn’t know anything at all. You never did.