Why Surrounding Yourself with Smarter People Won’t Set You Free But Finding the Brave Ones Will

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“If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.” — Jean-Paul Sartre.

Don’t surround yourself with ‘smarter’ people. They tend to be clingy know-it-alls, with every fact and figure filed away — ready to pounce on your casual ignorance like it’s some kind of moral failing. What you should do is surround yourself with people who are free in ways you’re not. They might not be able to recite Nietzsche over a cup of coffee, but they could teach you how to let go, breathe, and avoid winding up in a straitjacket.

Free people bring a kind of chaos and release that the supposedly “smarter” ones simply can’t. They can teach you how to walk away from expectations, how to say no without justifying every inch of it, and how to be alive. You’ll watch them and think, “How are they doing that?” Well, they aren’t bogged down with the endless calculations and neurotic second-guessing that “smart” people do. Freedom, in its true form, is about having the nerve to not care sometimes.