And there is no weight so heavy as a person who has decided your strength is a surface to rest on.

I want to dwell on that, because it is the mechanism at the heart of what happened to me, and I think it happens, in quieter forms, to a great many capable people who cannot understand why their competence keeps leaving them exhausted and alone.

When you are strong — genuinely strong, the kind of person who can carry things — the world does not reward you by lightening your load.

It rewards you by handing you more to carry.