Frederic Chopin - Concerto No. 1 in E-Minor, Op.11
Frederic Chopin - Ballade No.4 in F-Minor, Op.52
Sergei Rachmaninoff - Concerto No.2 in E-Minor, Op.18
Franz Liszt - Rigoletto Paraphrase S.434
Lemmas
What I've come to believe
Every (calculated and intentional) bet I make in my youth has a convex payoff. Being downside capped makes any leap a means for upside, so really, not taking the leap would be the mistake!
Early mistakes hard-code edge cases into your priors, so lessons compound...why dwell when you can just DO better?
You inevitably begin to emulate the few people you spend the most time with. Choose them deliberately and wisely!
Being driven by mimetic desires puts you on the road to complacency, whereas pursuing intrinsic goals and desires allows for fulfillment to accrue over time. I aspire to live by the latter.
Society today is strangely averse to recognizing privilege, weakness, and other unflattering inputs, but it's only benefical to (internally) acknowledge them before baking false assumptions into the next pursuit.
The West, as it was built (free markets, rule of law, earned merit), embodies an incredibly high-functioning civilizational stack, and is one of the few forgiving systems where (above) convex payoff is possible and available
Corollaries
What follows...
Fixed Points: what my taste converges to
Schizo Scherzos (prose): takes I ponder but can't yet defend