I Have Always Known I Am Not Like the Others

There was a time—back in high school—when I found myself resonating deeply with Zhuge Liang.

Not just admiring him, not just quoting his clever strategies in class debates，but recognizing something in him, something that felt uncannily familiar.

I would read of Guan Zhong, Le Yi, and I wouldn't just think, “They were great men.”I thought: “This is the kind of spirit I understand.”

Not because I was brilliant. Not because I had proof.

But because, somehow, my heart knew:

“I was not meant to walk the same path as everyone else.” 

But the world around me didn’t see it.

My parents didn’t understand me.

The villagers laughed when I spoke of military theory, of history, of systems.

They thought I was delusional, arrogant, unserious.

But even then, beneath the laughter, beneath the dismissal, I never believed them.

Instead, I turned inward.

I built a secret empire inside myself—one made of books, disciplines, lineages.

At first, it was military thought.

Then philosophy.

Then psychology.

Then finance.

Then the systems behind systems.

I don’t claim mastery. I’m not a prodigy.

But I can say, without shame:

I understand things many people around me do not.And I have always known that.

Not because I’m better.

But because I listen to something else—older, deeper, and not entirely mine.

Over time, I realized: it wasn't just Zhuge Liang I was remembering.

It was my own ancestors I was hearing.

I remembered my grandfather—his fairness, his courage, his brilliance, his compassion.

He had a way of seeing people that no school could teach.

He moved through the world like a moral compass.

I remembered my great-grandfather—an expansive, talented man who refused to be small.

He wasn’t famous, but he carried spiritual amplitude, and that lived in his presence.

And I remembered my great-great-grandfather,

who entered a plague-stricken region to help the sick,

and lost his life there.

He died not because he was foolish,

but because his love for the suffering was greater than his fear of death.

And behind them—generations of people who honored knowledge,

who respected the written word, who believed in perseverance over spectacle.

These are not bedtime stories.

These are not heroic fantasies.

These are my bloodline.

This is my spiritual DNA.

This is the reason I’ve never been able to lie down and forget myself.

The reason I’ve always returned, again and again, to the question:

What am I here to uphold?

I am not the smartest.

I am not the most accomplished.

But I carry a thread.

A thread woven by those before me who did not surrender to ignorance, cruelty, or silence.

And it is my task to not let that thread fray.

So when I say, “I’m not like the others,”

it is not arrogance.

It is memory.

It is grief.

It is responsibility.

And it is love.

I have spent years trying to explain myself to people who didn’t want to understand.

I no longer need to.

I am not here to be applauded.

I am not here to be agreeable.

I am here to be a continuation of something ancient and unbroken.

I am here to remember those who came before me not as myth—but as map.

And I am here, perhaps most of all, to honor this quiet truth:

I was never alone in my difference.

I was born carrying the voices of those who once walked with purpose.

And I will walk with purpose too.

If you’ve ever felt like you were “too serious,” “too thoughtful,” “too different”—perhaps you, too, are remembering someone whose spirit still breathes in you.

You do not have to explain yourself to those who forgot where they came from.

You are here to carry what they dropped，and build what they dreamed.