Runway

From most of the social signals I've perceived over decades, it is fairly clear to me that I belong to a minority segment, working hard to fit at the confluence of different views of life.

The majority of what I see around me is... actually, I don't think I will find a general classifying statement, but I can simplify with examples. Moving somewhere relaxed, a country where time stands still. Enough money to never have to work again. Traveling the world, vacations as often as you want. Enough safety and order around you that nothing needs to be stressed about. A whole life organized around family, as if nothing else could ever matter more. If these sit at the top of your interests, that captures the difference easily, because to me they typically resonate worse than being told I will have to serve jail time.

We can call that list a majority concept. From most standpoints it is hard to argue with its rationale. Quite often, those who master elements of it get there through careers, sequential and incremental growth, rigorous financial planning, savings, and a disciplined life with well calculated or constrained risk along the way. And that list carries a history of generations who probably had even stronger reasons to want those things.

I have often tried to be in that category, and I failed every time I tried, whether pushed by others or at my own initiative. I gave it many tries, and was told over time it will get better, you will see. Enough decades later, I failed at it consistently, sometimes in spectacular ways. I am the kind of person who is terrified of every one of those examples. Each gives me the feeling of being locked toward an end, of being denied runway to what life means to me. Not only do the goals not make me feel good, the steps to get to them have almost always been a problem for me.

The family point could feel aggressive, perhaps. What I question is not being there for someone who needs you the most. It is the status we hand to the bloodline itself, as if it came with a privilege that should never be examined, as if blood were a reliable guide for the mind and the soul. In my experience it rarely is. The people who shifted something in me, who answered what I was searching for, almost never arrived through blood. And the way many families actually live around that status, the obligations, the rituals, the expectations nobody chose, often looks more dysfunctional than sacred.

I am sharing this route of thoughts because once in a while I come across others who don't land in that mainstream concept, and as with everything that is a minority, it may help to know there are others out there too.

The "other concept," the one that includes me, I wouldn't define as the opposite of the first. I'm not even sure complementary is the right word. Every day I wake up, my mind's eye sees roads with complex or hard to read signs, problematic destinations, one way doors, milestones, and some sort of order in a chaos that I am wired into and determined to keep pushing through.

I feel at home there. That place almost always comes with frustration, lack of resources, not getting what I want, and pressure from most of the people around me, for not spending enough time with them or not aligning with what they want.

From another perspective, I noticed also that the two concepts view death quite differently. In most cases, those in the majority concept do not talk about it, although neither side is at peace with it. To me it matters a lot how you view death. I derive a lot from hearing what death is to you, what it is in your daily life. Are you working backwards from it, do you leave it to the gods, do you interpret it. Me, I don't believe in it.

And it's interesting how well we intersect. Those who struggle to reach their goals inside the main concept get chewed up and tormented by life, and that makes them appear to blend in with those of us in the second concept, who live that way at all times, whatever the outcome of our goals and ambitions. But once their goals are reached, the difference comes back. They depart the zone, while the minority simply stays, and readjusts to absorb the perceived checkmark as a minor event.

It sometimes brings to mind the Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran, who, as I read him, saw human consciousness as fundamentally a wound, where only pain makes the world move and pleasure is a weak side effect with short lived impact.

To be clear, I respectfully don't agree with him in a broad sense. It is too dark for me. There are times when the first concept works for me too, when I am so exhausted and unable to make progress my own way that a short vacation comes to the rescue. But I see it as a stop within my main journey, which may have stalled and needs a different type of energy for a while, after which I can't wait to resume.

So where I am really going with this is an acknowledgement, for those who don't find their core in the first concept, or who tried and failed to belong in it. There is a different reality, and it coexists just fine.

I need to feel. The main concept would say of course, everyone does, but inside that model I go blind to feeling. I need to feel the burn of fighting through, the tension, the push back. It's the only way I can keep my sanity and a modicum of understanding of this world, when that resonates like a hand holding mine from the unknown. I seek it. It is the oxygen I am built on.

I grew to enjoy the full spectrum of human emotion. I enjoy dealing with the sting of jealousy, betrayal, lies, greed. In fact, if you're trying to sting me, I may want you closer. It gives me a sense of satisfied curiosity. I am fascinated by observing or interacting with people who have a deep drive for something, possibly with a level of danger behind them, whether or not it's justifiable in some generic way. I also fall for the chance of making someone else happy, seeing them land on an unexpected positive emotion, seeing their reaction when whatever goal or problem they had gets solved. The range, the unpredictable wave of what we humans can trigger ourselves to feel, is worth every moment of being around, for me.

I'm not offering any of this as advice. I don't see advice working for anyone, really. What advice almost always fails at is the difference in context between the giver and the receiver, and in that sense the outcome is usually an interpretation, not much different than an opinion that asked to be listened to. Everyone has a purpose that works for them, and mine looks like this. I redress myself when I come out unpolished, but I don't pivot who I am without tested inputs.

What I choose and act on today is the result, it's where I need to be, not a planned destination ahead. Planning long term goals while at the mercy of the laws of physics, in a fragile organic shell, feels to me like gambling with futility. I don't expect my best things to say and do to come in my last minutes. I'll be weak then, and you don't shine well when you're weak, if you get a chance at all. I look for the sprinkles along the way, deaf to wins or losses.