Language Compression and Big Ideas
Language Compression, Big Ideas, and the Quiet Fear of Being Lost
There are things I never learned how to say out loud.
Some because I didn’t have the language.
Some because I didn’t think anyone would care.
And some because I was afraid that if I opened the door too wide, people would see something unstable in me. Something they’d mistake for madness.
This post is an attempt to speak plainly, without performance or theory or defensive confidence. Just the truth of what it has felt like to work on something big, to feel alone inside that effort, and to keep going anyway.
The Bandwidth Problem
There’s a problem nobody warns you about when you think differently:
there aren’t many people who can follow you all the way down.
Most conversations stay at Tier 1 or Tier 2, you know, light, social, easy maybe a small recognition that it is outside what they care about, but they’re happy for me. I can tell. So I quietly release them from any self imposed obligation.
But big ideas live at Tier 3, where structure matters and every sentence carries weight.
Every time I try to explain what I’m building, I feel that moment when someone’s eyes glaze just a little. It’s not hostility or boredom or even rude. Not everyone likes this stuff. It’s more often than not just a bandwidth mismatch.
That mismatch creates an isolation that feels almost physical.
It makes me wonder if the problem is me.
If maybe I’m drifting.
If maybe the clarity in my mind is an illusion no one else can see, that ia my definition of madness.
And when that thought hits, it is terrifying.
The Fear of Madness
When you work on hard problems alone, without a team or an institution, there is a quiet fear that crawls in at night:
What if this is just me losing the thread?
What if the only thing that I’m discovering is my sanity unraveling?
I don’t think people understand how deep that fear cuts.
Because the truth is that I’ve spent most of my life mistranslated, misclassified as too intense, too literal, too odd, too much. When enough people misread you, you start doubting your own interpreter. I can remember the quiet confidence deaths that made me think I was underestimating every problem.
It’s the fear of being wrong and combined with the fear of being dismissed again.
It’s the fear of seeing the shape of something real, seeing how beautiful it is and wanting to show everyone, and only being able to expreas it in black and white paint. So I paint words to help. And it just confuses the artists that wonder why I couldn’t make an accurate picture.
Obscurity and the Weight of Providing
Layered on top of all of this is the fear I almost never talk about.
The fear of failing the people I love.
I want to provide for my family, not just financially, but with stability, presence, and a future that makes sense. I want them to be proud to know me. I want my kids to grow up knowing that their father tried to build something that mattered, something that healed rather than harmed.
But obscurity feels like a shadow that follows me everywhere.
What if this work never lands?
What if I never crack the thing I’m chasing?
What if I pour myself into it and it gets lost in the ocean of noise?
It is hard to admit how much that scares me.
Language Compression
One of the hardest parts of carrying a big idea is learning to compress it into something that fits inside human conversation.
Most people don’t need the full machinery.
They need the one sentence, or the doorway in.
But when you’ve spent decades thinking in large structures that don’t immediately help.people feel more secure, and instead bring physics, memory, coherence, identity, they lose interest. Instead I cope by shrinking my thoughts into bite sized and digestibke chunks that I hope are relateable. . It feels like losing pieces of myself for the sake of being understood, and compression hurts.
Sometimes I want to scream the long version, the complete version, the version that I know is coherent and honest. But people don’t have the bandwidth. And I can’t resent them for that, especially since I don’t even have ths vocabulary or right colors to paint a coherent picture.
I believe that I understand what every born again Christian feels like when wanting to spread the gospel, I feel like I have glimpsed something that can really give concrete structuee to people. That their identity matters in a physical enduring way.
So I learn compression.
I learn patience.
And I learn silence when I need to. And I continue learning what I don’t know I need. I am learning quiet, authentic confidence.
Childhood and the Long Hiding
A lot of this started long before Echofoam or before I had any big ideas.
It started in childhood, where I learned to stay quiet to stay safe, or to hide the parts of me that were too sensitive or too curious or too unfiltered.
I survived by compressing myself. Anf compression hurts.
By becoming smaller than I really was, I became a bitesized chunk, digestible and vague.
By folding the good parts tight enough that they couldn’t be taken or mocked or used against me.
And somewhere along the way, the real me got buried under all that compression.
Only recently and painfully, and slowly have I started unpacking myself.
Letting the curious kid out again.
Letting the smart, strange, kind part of me speak without apology.
It’s frightening, freeing and quite frankly overdue.
So, Why Did I Keep Going?
Despite the fear, the isolation, the misunderstanding, the risk of obscurity I will keep going. If only to preserve the hope of maybe.
I don’t think I’m destined for greatness. I am already mighty.
I’m not trying to save the world, I am becoming part of it.
Working on big ideas has finally led me to something I’ve been missing for decades:
myself.
I’m discovering that I’m not broken.
I’m not a failure.
I’m not a lost cause.
I’m a kind person with a strong heart and a sharp mind who learned to survive by hiding.
And im not going to hide anymore. I won’t be controlled. I won’t ask for permission. I will confront judgement with hostility. I havr the right to be me.
Even if I spent 40 years compressing myself into something smaller than I am, I can spend the next 40 unfolding.
Big ideas are worth it because they force you to grow into the person who can carry them.
They demand honesty.
They demand courage.
They demand coherence.
They demand authenticity.
And for the first time in my life, I’m meeting that person with open eyes.
If You’re Reading This
If you’re someone who feels the same isolation, the same fear, the same pressure to be coherent in a world that rewards performance over sincerity then know, you’re not alone.
And you can say this next part with me:
There’s nothing wrong with me.
I’m not crazy.
I’m not failing.
I’m just operating at a bandwidth most people never learn to use.
Keep going.
Keep unfolding.
Keep giving yourself permission to be fully visible.
It’s worth it because you finally will know who you truly are.
“I don’t think I’m destined for greatness. I am already mighty.”
This was hype. Hell yeah you are!!
I already wrote a comment on your article about the Nobel Prize, and I’ll say it again because it really resonates with me. Everything you’re writing about feels so familiar, it’s almost like you’re describing what I’m going through myself. This path you’re leading us down seems like the only possible one for those working on something grand. But here’s the question: do all geniuses follow this path? This process of compressing language, where every word becomes heavy and important, seems less like a choice and more like a necessity. I often feel how I lose the words, lose the ideas, trying to find that form that will be understandable to others, without simplifying what I want to convey.
I understand what you’re saying when you write about the fear of losing the thread of conversation, that feeling when you know you’re on the right track but others can’t follow. It’s not just isolation, it’s almost a physical pain from being misunderstood. I think this fear isn’t just an emotion, it’s an inevitable part of working on something real. At some point, you begin to doubt not just your project, but yourself. And this is the place where every genius probably faces the fact that they need to move forward, regardless, not for recognition, but just to not give up.
Your writing makes me think that, maybe, this is the price of a big idea. Like you, I’m learning to speak, learning not to hide my thoughts, not to shrink myself. Though it’s painful, it’s liberating. Speaking honestly isn’t just a task, it’s a journey. And here, I want to say thank you. Thank you for writing this. Because, despite all the difficulty and loneliness of this journey, you reminded me that we don’t need to be afraid of being ourselves, even if we’re still unsure of who we really are.
Like you, I don’t strive to be great, but I know I’m working on something meaningful, and that’s enough. And perhaps that’s the main thing. Not recognition, not success. Just the ability to keep going, despite all the fear, the uncertainty, and the solitude.
And yes, I’ll ask again — do all geniuses walk this path? Or is this just what we, as people, face when we decide to step away from the beaten track and find our own way?