Wisdom tells me I am nothing; Love tells me I’m everything

Being loved is a gift so rare it defies probability.

Out of 8 billion people, only a handful truly love you. Not admire you. Not follow you. Not know your name. Love you. They see you clearly and fall in love with your flaws. In a world abundant with information and relationships, it's rare for intimacy to flourish.

This isn’t poetic exaggeration—it’s mathematics. Social science research shows most people name only 3–5 individuals as their true inner circle. Less than a handful. And if that doesn’t make you feel like the rarest diamond in existence, nothing ever will.

Admiration is cheap. Attention is noisy. Love is expensive. It demands presence, patience, and staying power. True connection—like wisdom—cannot be manufactured or scaled. Both resist shortcuts and reveal what matters most.

The moment you lock eyes with someone who loves you back—that might be the closest we get to heaven. Most people never realize how holy that is until many years later.

Consider this: While love and connection are rare enough, even basic skills like literacy are not universal. 739 million adults worldwide still can’t read or write. They’ll never receive a love letter. Never annotate a book that changed them. Never leave written proof that they existed. The fact that you can read these words, connect through them, and be loved across distance and time—it's a rare privilege.

How many times has someone written your name on a piece of paper?

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Many years ago, I ended up in a room full of people I admired. They talked carefully, chose words with precision, and were comfortable sharing information from books they’ve read. I felt dumb nodding all the time without saying a word. I had a tense smile on my face and felt in a place I didn’t belong.

That discomfort became a splinter in my mind. I didn’t want to dominate the room—I just wanted to be part of it. So I decided to do what they did: read (to catch up).

I bought a Kindle and forced myself into a daily reading habit. It was brutal at first. Starting is always the hardest part. But once the habit was locked-in, it stopped feeling forced. Reading became something I was, not something I did.

This shift alone moved me into a statistical minority. Recent surveys show that only 1 in 5 adults reads ten books in a year. Fewer than half of adults worldwide finish a book each year. In other words, making reading part of your identity isn’t just personal growth—it’s moving you into the 1% (reading non-fiction for the most part). I read 24 books in 2025 alone.

Years later, I’d read enough to return to that room and feel like a peer instead of an imposter.

But something was different. The people I admired had changed—surely I had. I stopped being impressed by how much people knew and started watching how they acted when things went wrong. How they listened. How they handled uncertainty. How little they needed to prove.

I began valuing wisdom over knowledge.

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Wisdom doesn’t announce itself. It shows up quietly.

Here’s the paradox: among people who do read, the average is 12–14 books per year, but the median is only 4–5. A small group of voracious readers pulls the average up while most read just a few. You can be in the minority that reads heavily and still lack wisdom entirely.

Plenty of people have consumed many books but lack the judgment to apply what they know. They might talk about concepts, but they don’t act on them. Thinking is safer than doing. You can think forever without risking anything.

Knowledge without action creates the illusion of progress. Wisdom only appears when decisions carry consequences.

As reading became part of me, I encountered this quote:

“Knowledge is easy to pass on, but wisdom can only be acquired by you.”

Wisdom can’t be downloaded to your Kindle. It comes from within, but it requires effort to surface. For me, that effort was writing—moving from consuming ideas to creating them.

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Writing is a different beast entirely.

When I decided to improve my writing, I realized how easy reading actually was. I used to fear reading ten books a year. Now that's nothing to me.

Reading was loud and intimidating until realize it is not that hard. Writing is the next frontier. Not because it’s impossible, but because it reveals parts of you you didn't like.

Writing doesn’t let you hide behind vague thoughts. It forces you to choose words, and words demand commitment. It exposes contradictions you didn’t know you had. It shows you what you actually believe, not what you wish you believed.

Reading fills the mind. Writing interrogates it. It’s much more uncomfortable and painful.

The statistics tell the story: while nearly half of adults read at least one book, the fraction who write in a way that leaves a permanent trace is microscopic. Traditionally published authors represent a thousandth of a percent of the population. Even with self-publishing, writers remain well under one percent. Estimates suggest fewer than 5% of people write regularly, and only a fraction publish publicly.

Most people live inside other people’s ideas. Few are willing to sit alone with their own thoughts long enough to shape them.

Reading is cool. But you know what’s cooler? Writing.

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I’ve spent twenty years writing for computers. Now I’m writing for people.

AI is better at writing code. It has all the knowledge—it’s read more books than any person ever will. But it doesn’t have wisdom. At least not yet. Maybe never.

I’ve watched AI progress at a staggering pace, and I’ve realized something: it’s driving the cost of intelligence toward zero. Microsoft bet that computing costs would drop exponentially in 1974. The same thing is happening with intelligence in 2026.

Global literacy has climbed to about 86% for people over 15, but the cost of accessing information has fallen even faster. AI systems trained on massive amounts of text can now retrieve and synthesize knowledge on demand. The marginal cost of “having the right fact” is approaching zero.

Being the person with the most knowledge is no longer valuable. AI has already claimed that role.

Does this mean reading is pointless? No. It means knowledge alone is no longer special—AI offers it instantly. What now matters is wisdom: judgment, discernment, and accountability. That distinction is the new advantage.

When intelligence becomes cheap, knowing things stops being impressive. What remains is judgment, responsibility, taste. Wisdom becomes visible only when intelligence is cheap.

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Wisdom isn’t acquired through accumulation. It’s acquired through exposure. By choosing responsibility over comfort. Creation over consumption. Action over endless preparation.

In a world in which intelligence is free, wisdom is the only thing that increases in value.

It costs time. Attention. Courage.

And the willingness to take risks.