am i afraid of depth?
the heaviness of infinite possibilities
in 2023, i wrote an essay about depth vs breadth exploring the concepts through the lens of euler’s identity: Becoming Euler’s Identity
i sought duality - like euler's identity unifying disparate concepts into beauty.
yet the narrative feels incomplete now. dominant narratives push for depth, for mastery through focus - drop everything, dive deep, specialize. we're told that's where greatness lives.
but being at the pool's edge tells a different story. they're not sitting there mourning abandoned interests. they've risen to a vista where breadth itself becomes depth, where scattered skills converge into something greater than singular mastery could achieve. where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
building gardening The Thing (my new company) in its earliest stages felt a lot like those blue bars stretching across the graph. is it complexity science? progress studies? structurally is it venture capital? R&D? nonprofit? research institute? and for a while that felt like failure - not committing enough, not focusing enough. just because it doesn’t look like something that already exists.
sitting in the discomfort of uncertainty allowed me to accept it for what it is. not as a collection of incomplete ideas, but as threads weaving together into something new. something that couldn't exist through depth alone.
isn’t that's what innovation really is - not the perfection of one path, but the unexpected harmonies when many paths converge.
<3
funnily enough, i’ve also written an essay called The Whole Is Greater Than The Sum of Its Parts.
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at this electric juncture in my life, i'm committing to 30 days of micro-essays – a variation of my earlier ‘50 days of writing’ from 2023. while most pieces will be personal reflections mapping this transformative period, others will explore and crystallize ideas surrounding my company. writing, after all, has always been my way of making sense of pivotal moments.
you can follow along in two ways: subscribe to this substack to receive each micro-essay as it's born, landing directly in your inbox. or, if you prefer a weekly rhythm, these pieces will find their way into my newsletter – a consolidated journey of the week's thoughts, revelations and musings. your choice, your rhythm.