This letter took a long time to draft, because its subject is more sensitive than anything I've wanted to share before. I went through several weeks of emotional darkness — getting really sick, sleepless, uncomfortable — just to pull out a structure for what needed to be written down.

It continues the letters from my YouTube community, and it's a topic I kept skipping. Partly because it's exactly what school, family, and the system never put on the agenda. Partly because it only starts to make sense after real life has knocked you around for a while. If you're young, some of this may feel harsh, even wrong, and that's fair; it took me years to accept it too. Oddly, the people who need it most are often the most educated. We're trained to understand theories, systems, and textbooks, and almost never trained to read people.

In one of my community notes in 2025, I laid out the basics of what I call cognitive awakening — three criteria, a golden triangle:

1. Cognition of human nature
2. Strategies to convey knowledge
3. Spiritual energy guidance

At the time, it came to me only as a basic structure. I hadn't defined it clearly enough; it worked on the surface, and it deserves a fuller explanation. The third point is the one people misread most. By spiritual energy guidance, I don't mean anything magical. I mean intuition, and paying attention to what keeps happening around you. Signals show up, again and again, until they point to an answer. I can only share the signals I read; you'll have your own. No magic.

To be transparent: every concept here comes from my own experience and from what I've observed in online communities. My interpretation can be biased — I read the context through my own understanding. At the same time, that's exactly what makes it worth anything. From where I stand, I grew up in a middle-class family, and I was so nurtured by that environment that I overlooked things I should have seen. Whatever class or education you come from, if you've landed on this page, it's because something here makes sense to you. At a certain stage of life, you start looking for an explanation of what things, events, and people actually mean. The reality I'm writing down is my own vision of this world. If you come from a different social position, it may not match what you've lived. Find the group that can name your experience accurately and help define the purpose of your journey.

The biggest and hardest topic I've skipped is human nature. It's rough territory, because no book really defines it — and I'm not going to define it either. I'll only name it through personal experience and lessons learned. My conclusions are bounded by the limits of my own knowledge. The point isn't to convince you the world is a mess (maybe it is?). It's for those who are sinking in their own timeline, feeling miserable, looking for resonance — and, most importantly, looking to rise above it. And rising above it starts with seeing clearly what it is.

Sometimes all we need to know is that the water is 1.2 metres deep. Once we see that, it's our choice to stop drowning in our heads, find our footing, and walk out.

I hope this writing comforts you rather than lectures you. It comes from someone humble, who knows exactly what it feels like to suffocate under problems no one else can see.

It may only mean something to a specific group of people: those who've lived through some career, romantic, and family life. Those with an academic background, who think logically and need to know WHY about everything. WHY, WHY, WHY. That one word comes to me every single day, with every single problem, with every single person. While everyone else gets hands-on doing what they're told, I keep asking until it makes sense. It's become both my biggest problem and my biggest treasure.

The people above want a soldier who follows. The people above the above want someone who doesn't follow, someone who points out the problems. So I've always been liked and promoted by the above-the-above, and always pushed down by the above. The world may be an oyster, but prying it open has cost me — mentally, I've broken plenty of arms and legs over the years chasing my WHYs. And I've come to one conclusion:

There is no bottom to the darkness of human nature. Don't dwell in it. Rise above it.

If you've read my community notes, you know the one concept I come back to constantly: your goal and your purpose. That is the key to rising, and rising means filtering out whoever keeps steering you away from your own life. I say this as someone who carried plenty of shit in her pocket for years, telling herself it was just part of life. It isn't. Every day, notice who and what actually nurtures you, and keep them close. The rest? Leave it where it belongs. Better still, spot it early, before it seeps in and starts to rot.

In the last quarter of 2026, I'll begin organising these thoughts and putting them into words. I'm human — I still lose my composure when I dig out hard lessons, and I know how painful it is to describe them face to face. Some of them still hurt to unwrap, even years later. Knowing all this, I wanted to offer you an easier way to reach me for an opinion.

Introducing The Pen Friend.

If you're better at organising your thoughts in writing, you don't need to schedule a call. Write it down — in English or Chinese — and I'll reply with a letter within 7 days. All you need to do is tell your story around one concern; the more detail you recall, the more context I'll have for my reply. A written reply is something you can read back and forth, think through clearly, and take your time to digest. You'll find everything else on the product page, including guidance on how to write your letter.

If one concern has been sitting with you for a while, write it down.