The Myth of Brilliance

There is a point in the ascent where the speed stops feeling like speed and starts feeling like genius. It’s the most dangerous part of the upward weather — not because it’s chaotic, but because it feels like truth. The chemistry sharpens everything: thoughts, senses, instincts, confidence. And in that sharpened state, it becomes easy to believe that the brightness is earned.

This is the myth of brilliance.

It begins quietly. A thought arrives with unusual clarity. A connection forms between two ideas that never touched before. A sentence appears in my mind fully formed, clean, precise, almost luminous. It feels like insight. It feels like revelation. It feels like the kind of intelligence I’ve been trying to access my whole life.

And for a moment — a brief, intoxicating moment — I believe it.

The upward weather is seductive because it doesn’t feel like distortion. It feels like potential finally unrestrained. It feels like the mind working at its highest setting. It feels like the version of myself I’ve always suspected was hiding underneath the exhaustion and the heaviness.

The brilliance feels real.

The brilliance is real.

But the context is not.

The chemistry creates a spotlight effect — everything illuminated looks profound, even when it’s ordinary. Every idea feels urgent. Every thought feels necessary. Every connection feels like a breakthrough. The mind becomes a hall of mirrors where everything reflects back as significance.

This is not delusion.

This is amplification.

The upward weather doesn’t invent brilliance. It magnifies it. It stretches it beyond its natural proportions until it becomes something unsustainable. Something that feels like destiny but is really velocity.

I can feel the shift in my thinking — the way my internal monologue becomes a stream instead of a sequence. The way I start narrating my own insights as if they’re revelations. The way I begin to trust the speed more than the substance.

This is where the myth takes root:

the belief that acceleration is mastery.

I start to mistake momentum for depth.

I start to mistake urgency for importance.

I start to mistake fluency for truth.

And because the ideas come so quickly, so cleanly, so confidently, it becomes easy to believe that I’m finally tapping into the mind I was meant to have all along.

But brilliance without grounding is just combustion.

The upward weather doesn’t care about sustainability. It doesn’t care about consequences. It doesn’t care about the version of me who will have to clean up the aftermath. It only cares about expansion — more ideas, more connections, more movement, more light.

The myth of brilliance is not that I’m not brilliant.

The myth is that brilliance is the point.

The truth is quieter:

clarity is the point.

discernment is the point.

sustainability is the point.

The upward weather gives me access to a kind of thinking that feels extraordinary, but it also strips away the filters that keep me tethered to what matters. It makes everything feel equally urgent, equally inspired, equally possible.

And that is where the danger lives — not in the ideas themselves, but in the inability to tell which ones are real and which ones are weather.

The ascent convinces me that I am unstoppable.

The truth is that I am accelerating.

The ascent convinces me that I am illuminated.

The truth is that I am overexposed.

The ascent convinces me that I am brilliant.

The truth is that I am bright.

And brightness, without grounding, burns.