Find the Others

You can never truly know whether people are going to be there for you when it really matters unless... you've really had it out with them before.

Until you've engaged in battle and argument and jockeying for position and whatnot. And it can even be explosive — I think in most cases it needs to be.

The Honeymoon Test

In the honeymoon when you've never had a fight with your loved one... you don't know how fragile they are. You don't know if and when they would actually sell you out — and for how much.

People say all of these things but you never know until they go down.

When everything's easy, people are easy-going. You don't get to see their true colors.

It's only when all four walls are caving in and shit is fucking hitting the fucking fan... That's when you see how committed a person actually is.

Battle It Out

Battle it out until you know for sure. And I mean battle it out — don't pussyfoot around. Get it over with. It's better to do it earlier.

Then you can actually build something that won't go to waste later.

It's interesting... People get together and build such beautiful things and then they eventually all come crashing down.

But if you can get a band of people together that aren't going anywhere — that are highly capable and even somewhat intelligent — you've got an authentic force to reckon with.

Especially if they know how to use technology to their advantage.

Authentic Performance

And most importantly: you have to be your most authentic and highest-state self around all people.

You cannot mask and fabricate a bullshit persona.

Speak your mind as you see fit and let the cards fall where they may. You don't need validation from any of these motherfuckers.

But you do need to provide value. And you need to stop draining the vitality out of other people.

The Foundation

That's the entire point.

And that's why most people's lives are all fucked up — because they cannot establish an authentic relationship with their own minds first and foremost, and then to everybody else around them.

So they have good days and bad days. And then they build something for a little while only to destroy it later.

I would say that's foolish.

It would be wise and intelligent to build a foundation that is unshakable first and foremost — and extend outward from there.

"Admit it. You aren't like them. You're not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the 'normal people' as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like 'Have a nice day' and 'Weather's awful today, eh?' you yearn inside to say forbidden things like 'Tell me something that makes you cry' or 'What do you think deja vu is for?' Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the alarm on your alarm clock) didn't exist, and everything around you changed? Find the others."
— Timothy Leary