The Fallacy of Self‑Sufficiency

Some people will tell you — quite loudly, usually — that they are enough. They need no one, thank you very much. Entirely self‑made. A closed circuit.

I, too, fancied myself an island at one time. A small, sturdy principality of one. I paid my own bills. Made my own tea. I even spoke aloud to myself in the supermarket queue, which was meant to prove something.

But late at night, when all the heroic independence had been done for the day, there it was — a sort of homesickness without a forwarding address. You know the feeling. You’re supposedly sovereign, but you still wish someone would knock.

Self‑sufficiency is a word that weighs a bit too much. It sounds like an insurance policy or a piece of camping equipment. It promises freedom, but only the kind you can fit in a box. Like eating an entire birthday cake alone — which, I confess, I’ve done.

Because the truth (and it arrives, as truths tend to, when you’ve just burned your toast) is that we are made of others. We are essentially a committee. You may pay your own rent, but who taught you to spell “rent”? Who showed you which way up to hold a fork? Even my most private thoughts come pre‑translated into a language I borrowed from someone else.

Even when you announce to the room that you don’t need anyone, you need someone to roll their eyes at you.

We’re stitched together by invisible strings, most of them tangled. We depend even as we swear we don’t. The silence you’re so proud of is full of everyone who walked through your mind to get you here.

Self‑sufficiency, then, is a dignified kind of delusion. Grand in theory. Utterly impractical in practice. It doesn’t keep the rain off, and it’s rubbish company when you’re ill.

Eventually — usually on a Tuesday, when the kettle’s broken — the illusion collapses. You realise you are a little bit of everyone and everyone is a little bit of you. This is mildly disappointing, of course. But also, strangely, a relief.

And your heart, having finally stopped its exhausting attempt to be a fortress, sits down quietly and asks for a biscuit.

And perhaps — perhaps then — you’re free enough to laugh at yourself. Which is, in its way, a beginning.

The Progressive Misreading of Silence

At 5, I entered rooms like a murmur. I was already listening for something behind the noise — something older than voices, softer than footsteps. “He’s such a well-behaved boy,” they said, smiling with relief. But what they mistook for virtue was only quiet intuition. I was not good. I was attuned. At 11, I had mastered the art of presence without weight. I could sit by the window for hours, watching the wind pass through the trees like thought through the body. “He’s quiet,” they would say — gently, but with a trace of discomfort. They couldn’t name the feeling of someone watching without need. At 17, I was called “mature.” But maturity is not a virtue — it is a scar. I had already seen the shape of endings before others saw beginnings. Friends came to me like tide to stone, hoping to be held. I held them, yes — but not always with words. Sometimes silence is the only honest offering. At 24, my stillness no longer charmed. The world asked for brightness, momentum, performa...

Clarity Begins Where Pretence Ends

At some quiet juncture, without spectacle or warning, the architecture of one’s life begins to feel misaligned. The roles once worn with ease grow heavy; the rhythm once followed now falters. In that stillness — where noise gives way to unease — emerges a longing not for more, but for truth. Not the polished kind offered by others, but the raw clarity that demands a reckoning with who we are, beneath all that we’ve built. At that point, we no longer seek applause, distraction, or even resolution. What we seek is clarity — elemental, grounding, liberating. But this clarity is not the kind that flatters. It is not decorative. It is not curated for display. It is the kind that requires dismantling illusions, reordering assumptions, and exposing the scaffolding that holds our being together. To know oneself is not a sentimental pursuit. It is an architectural one. Each insight is a cornerstone; each falsehood identified, a wall removed. We begin, not with grand gestures, but wi...

The Hyggelig Journey

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