The Right to Be Misunderstood: Building the Future Before Its Time

A Philosophical Wednesday Reflection

When I joined Affinidi, Glenn brought several foundational pillars that helped shape our direction. Among the many valuable insights he shared, one statement resonated deeply with me: you need to have the right to be misunderstood.

It sounds simple—almost trivial. But the implications run deep, especially when you're building something that challenges the mainstream.

The Challenge of Being Early

We've been focused on self-sovereign identity, democratizing data, and returning data ownership to users. These aren't new concepts—they've existed for decades. Yet adoption remains stubbornly low. When you're building something outside the mainstream, people simply don't get it. And that's where you need to give yourself permission: the permission to not be understood by the majority.

You need to find your early adopters and move forward, even when it drives you crazy. Even when people tell you what you're saying doesn't make sense, that it will never work, that it's destined to fail.

The Doubt and the Energy Drain

This creates a mentally challenging space. You start doubting yourself: Am I really doing the right thing? The temptation is strong to chase after skeptics, to educate them, to explain until they finally understand. But this wastes precious energy.

I've been creating content for a long time, and I know this: share something publicly, and people will misinterpret it anyway. Not everyone, but enough. They might think it's not good enough. It might collide with their ego or conflict with their own ideas. We can't know for certain. But if you spend your energy on such resistance, you'll have less energy for what truly matters: making your idea happen.

Sometimes you just need to make a deal with yourself: you have the right to be misunderstood. You even have the right to be misunderstood by the majority of people.

The Validation Problem

But how do you validate your ideas? Validation remains important—maybe your idea is a hallucination after all. You still need to hear other voices and take them into account. The key is not letting these voices drive you completely off course.

I've worked in the self-sovereign identity space and still struggle with adoption. I built privacy-focused AI when nobody was talking about it, when most people said it wasn't feasible, wasn't possible, that nobody actually needed private AI. That's still a big discussion today.

In the space of memory systems, I'm experimenting with unconventional methods to represent knowledge. I face enormous resistance from the community—resistance to even exploring these directions and terms. The approaches look alien and scary to people accustomed to traditional methods. But that shouldn't stop me. Maybe I'm wrong—I don't know. Time will show.

Hardware Mindset in a Software World

My background is in hardware engineering. My master's degree taught me that the problem you're solving defines the algorithms, not vice versa. You cannot be tool-driven. Sometimes you face problems so different they require you to build your own tools. In hardware, this is day-to-day work. We do it constantly.

In software, it's more complicated because you're building on foundations others have already constructed. The mentalities differ significantly.

Survival and Mental Health

During your journey, it's crucial for your mental health and survival to give yourself permission to be misunderstood by others. This simple rule has helped me move forward through years of resistance and skepticism.

When you're building the future before its time arrives, being misunderstood isn't a failure—it's often a sign you're onto something truly novel. The question isn't whether people understand you now. The question is whether you're solving the right problem, even if it's not yet the right time.

And sometimes, that distinction makes all the difference.