I finally found how to describe how the New Yorker and other outlets covered me:

I’m pointing to a brighter future. They keep looking at my hand.

The New Yorker wrote how I have dirt under my fingernails, which you get when you dig deep.

I can’t blame anyone. It’s no one else’s responsibility for me to be understood. My book should help change this outcome, where I can clarify and state more comprehensively what I’m trying to communicate.

I didn’t make up the analogy. I think I heard it from Buddhism. Some quote Gautama as saying “I am a finger pointing to the moon. Don’t look at me; look at the moon.” Some Buddhist teachers say “The teachings are like a finger pointing to the moon, don’t confuse the moon with the finger” and “don’t confuse the finger pointing at the moon with the moon.”

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