A person's life cannot be fully understood through self-reflection alone. You must constantly meet people, be stimulated by others, be offended, pushed into corners—you only then realize what kind of person you truly are. We always think of ourselves as complete individuals, only to later discover that most of our self-perception is a patchwork illusion. You believe you're kind until you encounter someone who doesn't respond as you expect. You think you're magnanimous until you meet someone who truly crosses your boundaries. You believe you don't care until a certain phrase hits exactly where you're most vulnerable. What truly breaks a person isn't the event itself, but when the event precisely strikes the part of yourself you're unwilling to admit exists.

The most skillful thing people do is to package their personal issues as others' problems. As long as you can blame others, there's no need to reflect on yourself. As long as you can throw your emotions out, you don't have to take responsibility. But reality is cruel— the more you are repeatedly hit by a certain type of person, the more it indicates you're still stuck in the same structure. So you'll find that the same incident is brushed off lightly by some, while others can't move past it in their entire lives. The difference isn't in the event itself, but whether there's a part of that person they dare not touch.

True growth isn't about becoming better at reasoning, but about realizing: emotions are not used to prove others have problems, but to expose where you're still unstable. When you finally admit: I get angry because I'm afraid of being ignored. I rebel because I dare not face the consequences. I cling because I lack security. At that moment, things begin to loosen. You'll gradually understand that relationships between people are never about who completes whom, nor about who saves whom. More often, it's just that the part of you that's stuck is pushed to the forefront, leaving you no choice but to face it. That's also why the more you avoid certain people, the more they tend to reappear in your life. The more you dislike certain situations, the more likely they are to replay in a different form. It's not fate targeting you; it's that one barrier you haven't overcome.

When you truly start to look inward, it's not about beautifying yourself but about willing to admit your cowardice, greed, dependence, and vanity. You'll find that the external world suddenly becomes much quieter—not because the world has improved, but because you no longer need others to confirm who you are. At this stage, your expectations of others will decrease, while your demands on yourself will increase. You won't rush to judge or to distance yourself. You allow relationships to exist but no longer rely on them to fill your gaps. Throughout life, it indeed takes countless people to slowly piece together a true self. But not because they are great, nor because they have a mission. It's simply because you must be repeatedly torn apart in relationships to stop deceiving yourself. When you stop viewing life as a performance to be treated and instead see it as a process of self-responsibility and deconstruction, you truly begin your journey. The remaining time is just about living this self steadily.