Quoted By:
I think the reason a lot of powerful people have spoken of a prolonged depression in their youth, is because that depression eventually leads to the surreal sense of nihilism. This becomes tragic. They hate themselves, others, and the world as it is, but are told to adapt and accept by all around them. They soon accept, but they find it impossible to adapt. They are failures. When that nihilism appears at its strongest, a strange reaction begins. Like a mirror, soon, one finds themselves having an indomitable courage to achieve, something, anything, due to their total lack of inhibition. This strikingly new characteristic, leads one to do things which were repressed before, and because of this risen phoenix-like courage, and that momentary nihilistic glaze, that person sets out to achieve that something at their max capacity, at any cost. They become obsessed. They sleep less, eat less, comfort themselves less, and appear manic to the uninitiated, but that "mania" never subsides. They over time begin to look heroic, inhuman, they lack friends or family, and other's may ask, how did you find the ability to concentrate on these singular tasks, and become so successful? Why are you so different? How have you been able to achieve a whole, greater than the parts? What have you lost to achieve these feats? And that inquirer will always be stunned and disappointed, when told, "I had little left to lose besides pacifying comfort. I was nobody. I had nothing, and did not want what you have, I did not trust your motives, so I molded the world to my intention, hell to the losers." This is the common trait of great individuals.
