Seek answers.
Demand proof. Ask for explanations. Stand at the door of knowledge, banging loud enough to wake the neighbors because you want to learn. Don’t leave that door until wisdom sleepily lets you in. Thank him for his time. Ask him about everything. Come back again and again until it makes sense.
Make time for the things that matter to you. And make time for the things that matter to him too. He’s up anyway, let him put in a few of his own interests.
Struggle with doubts.
Wrestle with them in the thick fog of confusion. Memorize what they look like, what they feel like, what they sound like. Explore every possible side. Invite them into your home, sit them down in that chair in your mind that you don’t ever sit in because it makes you uncomfortable, and make them squirm. Don’t let those doubts go until you find the truth.
Doubt is like an aluminum foil ball. As you search and prod and question, it will start to smooth out until its sides are smooth. You’ll find a reflection of yourself in it. You won’t like it. Keep going anyway.
Never stop questioning.
When people push you away for your “nosiness” or your “intimidating stare” or the way your face looks when your earnestly seeking truth, march out of the room and straight up to the library doors. Don’t just get other people to do all of the searching and all of the answering. Go and find it for yourself.
Pour over books from every author and topic you can think of. They will tell you things you don’t like, ugly things, words that shoot right into the heart of your soul. Resist the urge to slam the covers closed, to spew accusations at the invisible authors. Remember you did ask for truth. Understand it will be difficult.
Keep going.
Keep searching. Keeping fighting until you find yourself standing in an empty room, the shelves now rid of every idea. It’s only you now—you and your wandering mind. This is where you make your decision. This is where you decide what is true. This is the part where you must decide who you are and which voices in the world you will believe. But this is not the most important part.
Those days you spent searching, shouting, debating, finding. Those were the days that mattered most. You looked contradictions in the eye and said “truth is in here somewhere.” You pulled apart paradoxes and weighed them against that voice in your soul urging you, urging you to keep going. You woke up day after day and didn’t stop asking. You sought advice. You sought truth. And you sought those through every single path you could think of. No Stone was left unturned, no book unread, no philosophy unconsidered, no belief unexplored. You didn’t stop when you got tired or frustrated. No, you kept going, never pausing at the “nice” and the “almost right” and the “good enough,” but instead tucked those bits into your pocket and kept going.
That’s what it takes to learn. That’s what it takes to define yourself, to truly know, to look at the world and say “I did all I could.” That’s what it means to have strength.