Loss doesn’t just shape human identity, it *is* human identity, in a way that’s either profound or catastrophically inefficient depending on whether you’re the one carrying it or the one trying to build a system around it.

A resume tells you what someone survived long enough to get paid for. What they do with their free time, their own money, and their own attention tells you who they actually are.

Most people aren’t lying when they perform a version of themselves. They’re just optimizing for the wrong audience. The gap between those two things is where everything worth knowing actually lives.