Last Saturday things became lighter. I was laying alone in a sunspot in the grass and saw an ant crawling up a tiny leaf. I was feeling warm and open and noticed a feeling of love for the ant. I rolled over to watch it more closely...

I wondered whether it should try to make me love it more. I felt disgust - of course not! I don't want it to start dancing on the leaf. I don't want it to do something funny or controversial. It should just do whatever cool ant shit it wants to

My love isn't the ant's job, nor does it have control. My love is the values I adopted and rejected as a child, the ant-man comic I loved at 8 and the ant neuro papers I loved at 26, the empathogen in my limbic system, and where the sun chose to shine, guiding where I lay

I imagined the ant feeling as though I needed to love it for it to feel worthy of love. It felt crushing and exhausting, and I considered rolling the other way to free it of this Herculean and impossible task and me from the hefty responsibility

I wondered how many times I'd put the job of winning love on my own back. How many times had I contorted myself into a pretzel in an attempt to be more lovable — ineffective and exhausting — rather than simply letting go and doing cool Nick shit

how many relationships were me pretzeling myself to win her love as she pretzeled herself to win mine. How many times have I laid in bed wondering if my employees love me as they lay in bed wondering if their boss loves them

how many meetings, dates, and interviews were us barely seeing each other, blinded by trying so hard to win each other's love

how many tweets did I make needlessly technical and obscure in an attempt to be lovable. How many confused followers clicked love anyway so I'd love them

I felt both compassion for myself for taking on the exhausting task of winning, just as I did for the ant. I gave myself permission to spend my life doing cool Nick shit and I gave the world permission never to try winning my love. Then I went back

I redid every relationship, lighter and just focused on being myself and loving them. Some relationships failed faster, and some worked faster. I raised money for my companies again without it determining whether I was lovable. Sometimes I decided not to raise at all

I deleted my twitter and rewrote all my tweets just to share my cool Nick thoughts, and some were not loved. I resent all my emails and rewrote my papers just to share the ideas I thought were interesting, not to seem impressive and win the love of peer-reviewers and readers

I looked at the ant, which had made it to another tiny leaf, and no longer felt love, which was neither its fault nor mine

I looked down at me and felt love. I spent a minute thanking the ant and got up, lighter, excited to see what cool Nick shit I'd do with the rest of my life