Flâneur & Humility

There's a paradox in writing about humility—the moment you believe you've achieved it, you haven't. Genuinely humble people rarely discuss their humility; instead, their actions demonstrate it naturally.

San Francisco's culture infected me with unearned confidence and performative arrogance. I became "a wrapper around Twitter," parroting jargon like "agentic interfaces" and "let's double-click on that" without genuine understanding. This gradually eroded my childhood curiosity about the world.

A contrasting experience in New York shifted my perspective. There, I discovered that ambition and humility coexist peacefully. I became a "flâneur"—wandering without agenda, observing humanity, taking notes. The subway became my teacher: this is humility. This is what it looks like. It looks like waiting.

Ambition and Humility

You can be ambitious and humble at the same time. They're not opposites. One is about what you want. The other is about how you carry yourself while wanting it.

Self-awareness is the foundation for change. The remedy involves stepping back, taking time off, and protecting the curiosity you possessed before ambition corrupted it.

Stay humble. Protect your curiosity. Take the subway with everyone else. Write it down.