Anxiety

Reflecting on the landscape of my past mistakes, I’ve noticed a consistent pattern: moments when my ego seized the controls and steered me off course. The abstract concept of “staying humble” sounds straightforward until we’re faced with real-world situations that challenge our self-image. Only when something valuable slips away do we fully grasp what humility might have preserved.

Our evolutionary heritage presents a fascinating paradox. The human brain—an exquisitely calibrated survival instrument refined across countless generations—evolved within environments of scarcity and perpetual threat. This remarkable organ, optimized for detecting danger and navigating scarcity, now operates in contexts radically different from those that shaped it. We’ve engineered a world of unprecedented material abundance where many of us, particularly in developed economies, enjoy comforts unimaginable to our ancestors or even to recent generations. Consider that widespread indoor plumbing—a convenience we now consider fundamental—became standard in American homes only during the late 1800s, a mere eyeblink in our evolutionary timeline.