Lucas Almássy
2022 - 2023
My first semesters at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design were difficult in ways I didn’t expect. I felt I was losing my inner compass. As a young student, I found refuge in taking quick notes to recenter. The following is a collection of those notes I wrote in off-handed moments and late nights to remind myself of the foundations I live by, giving me the courage to think independently, critically, and outside the box. It’s my hope that sharing these personal notes might help others in whatever small way possible.
The past holds back the growth of the present.
Offer your skills to a purpose.
Breathe. Life is fragile and delicate. Time is invaluable. Stretch. Breathe. Imagine. Accept responsibility. Be certain of your character. Protest. Channel needs to be designed. Heaven is under your mother’s feet. Read to fall asleep. Write constantly your future goals and past mistakes. Follow your heart. Push away fear. Lean back and make room for the unexpected.
You needn’t bear the weight of the world, just do what you can with those around you. Do not use language as a mask. Settle on the truth, the fact of the matter
Give words an impact. Wash away guilt by resisting what tempts you. Be both sharp and blunt. Learn to fail. Fail to learn. Create without waste. Accept faults. Include all forms of life.
Build rapport about interests and aims even if you might think it won’t immediately be received with great agreement to the one you’re speaking to.
Be attentive to the goodness of others and uplift them in conversation. Address others by their name with respect.
Cut to the heart of the matter. Sleep early. Wake early. Confide. Respond genuinely and appropriately to the present soul. Slow down and be insightful.
Transform dialogue into action.
Act and promise with resolve. Cure with intricacy. Work relaxed and upright. Channel passion away from stress and strain
Cure addiction to control, success, judgement, domination, and consumption. Say as much as you can out loud to progress your thought processes. Sit back against the chair.
Demand thoughtful language from yourself. Address people in the eye and tell them what they need to hear. Appreciate, Criticize, then Appreciate again. Don’t dim down, speak up.
There’s no use in hiding. Use the night as moments of solitary unlearning. Confront fears. Re-assess values
Re-organize lifestyle. Put everything on the table. Be outspoken. Practice before you preach.
Be steadfast. Don’t give into satisfying every immediate gratification, use this subsequent myopic longing to progress towards goals much higher.
Everything we do between waking up and falling asleep matters. Don’t ever think it doesn’t.
You are enough as you are right now in this very moment. Accept yourself as you are
If what I say or make intends to do anything at all. It’s to help situate and encourage independence and creativity. It is to formulate the conditions for long-term happiness and personal fulfillment.
The only way past your existing set of thoughts, is through them. Enter the rooms, engage in conversations that scare you, say the things that are taboo, tear down all monuments to past relics of greatness, and preserve who you always were along the way.
Address real people in every element of expression. Be honest and deliberate about what others need to hear.
Set the standard by example.
Let only a few thoughts seep in and then snap this text shut and enjoy life the way you were always meant to.
Every human mind is a universe unto itself.
Drop every pre-conception about every group of people. We are all the same, seeking fulfillment, purpose, and resonance.
Unfortunately, honesty can produce terrible tragedies, but lying just postpones it. It only gets worse; the pressure will build. The truth will have to come out.
The goal: to be old in age but with the spirit of a child.
Identity is formed by socialization and a fitting of one’s desires with the rest of the community.
Words aren’t helpful when repeated without vigor or timing.
Humans self-regulate as much as their peers do, but great people self-regulate only as much as they believe to be ethical.
We have a responsibility to be inclusive, especially when others are too afraid to include themselves.
Imagination can often be stifled by the products of industry. A pen and paper go a long way.
Constructive criticism is a daily practice.
Be firm but fair. Honest.
Don’t seek acknowledgement from anyone but yourself. People need to be told how to help.
Uncover history for the sake of a more aware culture. Use those around you to help. Use language until you can’t anymore.
Most creativity is a yearning for social, human connection, for something not here anymore, or for something not yet.
I seek to raise everyone continuously. Because all deserve acknowledgement but few hand it out.
I’ve finally the time to be my best self: still, pious, careful, loving, and attentive. These are elements of an aesthetic I am looking for.
You know what needs to happen, stop ignoring your instinct.
When we stand up and act out what we think is right from wrong, we are balancing each other out. Finding logic in the differences of emotional opinions.
You were never obligated to be normal, don’t pretend that you are.
Solving problems of the past by predicting those of the future.
Be wary of those parts of yourself that want to turn what must be continual, gradual growth into a flip of switch.
But even being better is difficult when it means better than others. So be only better than your past self. And often the right thing to do is to pray or simply talk to someone about how you feel.
We are doing just fine. We are all so young. So much to learn. All we are responsible for is preserving our minds and bodies for a long, healthy, fulfilling life. Yet, we want so much for ourselves, friends, and family.
We want the best and we strive.
If we must depend on anything at all, it is our ability to close our eyes and imagine entire worlds of possibility. Wishing for freedom of expression and freedom from desires, the burdens of insipid ideology, the freedom to pursue our conception of lasting happiness.
Our minds operate at speeds incomprehensible to the conversations we try to engage in. Speech is a prolonged moment of clarity.
Let’s dig deep into the past, reach as far back as we can for memories and dreams that can help us understand what we must do and more importantly what we must not do tomorrow.
Conversation is the upward spiraling of a single logic that we agree to improvisationally formulate in unison.
A good person recognizes that competition is essential to life but the one leading the competition knows truly that there’s no one to compete with but the person they were yesterday.
Those with humility are unafraid of being humiliated. Embarrassment is the experience of the one who doesn’t confide in their peers and doesn’t face their own truth head on.
Erasing the fear of embarrassment by sharpening the blade of self-awareness.
The one who is holding up the flimsy facades of arrogance will always end up in ruin.
The silence in human interaction is the reverberating of the isometric quality of life. When we don’t speak, we are weighing options, we are actively equalizing.
The people I admire, and respect are those that give the most respect back to everyone they know. It takes bravery.
The fear of honesty takes over everyone and muddles their expression.
A pair of eyes capable of contact with another and a mouth that believes in the words it utters moves the greatest of people. Link sight with speech as often as you can.
Don’t limit who you are because you want to impress people with the things you do. Language can either be a lens by which to see the truth more clearly or a mask that conceals and distorts further.
Language as a pair of glasses or binoculars, amplifying one’s inner crisis in order that it may be engaged with by others.
Thoughtful self-expression can be the agent of change and be the change in-itself at the same time.
Friends as daily collaborators, that is harmony
We let the past measures of success push us into schooling, we let false images of professionalism push us into dry work environments, and we let another’s fear of expression paralyze our own truth.
We yearn for honesty and freedom from fear.
The work of art is a site of inter and intrapersonal engagement. It is not just a mark of achievement, it’s a prompt for further and continual personal growth.
Daily creative practice for all is my hope for everyone that needs it.
After fabricating successful automations of hard labor, we all ought to make use of our time with our creative passion.
The feeling of failure comes those who don’t see lessons hidden in plain sight.
We all ought to be outside more. We all ought to play sports with each other, make music together, dance, gather, cook, get to know one another, and change our interests constantly, like children.
The past holds back the growth of the present.