I explained that I felt like I never had independent thoughts of my own, I just took what other people said and applied it to new situations or meshed it with other ideas I’d heard. And then I told her that I felt like most other people weren’t really having unique thoughts either, they were all doing the same thing as me . .

“I can smell that kind of ambition. It’s not about making the world better, it’s about using marvelous potential and intelligence to . . .” She paused to think. “To feel like they matter. I won’t work with people like that, because if they don’t think they matter despite being some of the most successful, important, influential people on earth,

I know that life is not about actually satisfying the want; it’s about using it.

Even as we have had more and better tools for connection, we spend more time alone and we take every tool we can get to distract ourselves from that loneliness. Too often, those tools are chemical, but we all have our addictions that protect us from the empty irritation of loneliness.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that. Why does Peter Petrawicki get to choose how to release Altus? Who gives the CEO of Twitter the right to say what can and can’t be said on that platform? Most people who have power, they don’t have it for reasons, they just have it.”

“What I want to say is that, often, restraint is far more remarkable than action.

“Carl’s right, that’s what power is. It’s just ability and desire without restriction. What restriction does Carl have, aside from their random rules and the laws of physics. They have the power because they have the power. That’s how power has always been.”

“Mama, do you know how messed up I am?” I asked, fingers covered in dirt. “Honey,” she said, her big, worried eyes seeing all the way in, “you’re just as messed up as you should be.”

The truest strength is shouldering the burden of care.”