The gems we find along the way

On finding moments of clarity, and learning to let them go.

"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

— Isaac Newton

Time and time again, I have this moment where I deep dive into a topic or problem that I don’t quite understand. And then, briefly, I’m able to distill the complexity of the problem into a certain mental picture, a certain perspective, that suddenly clears up the confusion, and a simple thought comes to light.

It really is a moment of creativity. A personal way to connect unrelated information and organize knowledge by constructing a simple picture that captures the essence of the problem. Those moments sometimes carry philosophical weight, but mostly they’re just about knowledge in math, logic, physics, tech. I love those moments. It feels like discovering something precious and true, in a world where information is often synthetic and empty. I refer to those simple thoughts and pictures as gems.

For quite some time, though, there was also a certain discomfort that came with these gems. What if I lose them? What if I find a gem, and a year later, I’ve forgotten all about it and can’t reconstruct it in full detail? An original gem changes as I spend time in other fields. Trying to reconstruct it in its original state, after months spent somewhere else, generates weight and effort, and it never quite works.

But growing older, I realized those gems are only for the moment. They can’t be conserved. I have this picture in my head: I walk along the ocean shore. I’m curious by nature, so I look around constantly and sometimes I find a gem lying in the sand. I pick it up. Inspect it. Study it. Enjoy its existence. And then I throw it back into the ocean.

I don’t collect the gems. I don’t need to keep them. They come to me, and then I let them go. I do grow with each of them, but I don’t need to keep them for that. I know that going forward I’ll find more of them, but each will be slightly different, and that’s okay. After all, our time here is ephemeral. Our thoughts are ephemeral. So are our gems.

Being able to let those gems go frees up the capacity to grow beyond my past understanding, always adapting, always adjusting. Keeping them all collected without letting go just overloads you. It keeps you busy caring about not losing any of them, instead of finding new ones and enjoying them with nothing else to carry. It’s ultimately also a meditation: letting go of your past, which for some people is close to the greatest skill possible.

The gems go back into the ocean. I keep walking along the shore.