... it was such a lie bc.
When I was a kid, the adults were like mythical beasts, the All Powerful. To be Obeyed and indulged but never crossed. They knew everything and could dictate everything. Challenging their all encompassing reign was simply the stuff of legends. A mere mortal like me couldn't dream of doing more than sulking privately. The only ones who dared poke the dragon were the wild ones, running away from home for hours, hours!, and not just the few allotted time slots where I pretend did. I distinctly remember promising fealty to the authority, and never questioning it. It never occurred to me to think of the status quo as cyclic.
I spent 21 years in awe of it, and then started shrugging it off slowly. But never once did I relate or see myself as one of them. I kept looking for signs of them among my peers. It was a surreal journey to be honest. A couple of friends got married when we hit 24 and I thought, okay maybe this is it! These are the mighty among us, ones who can conceptualize of a duality. My largest concerns around that time were how to locate and secure stuff or wine or both. Clearly not worthy aims when you think about these creatures who wanted to embrace a life long hood of sorts. I tip toed around them, trying to understand it and unveil some form of profoundness in their existence that I could learn from. There was a distinct feeling of being an outsider back then. It always intensified when I witnessed decision making that went with the accepted norm. I simultaneously hated and loved the fact that I could never do it. I'd never been good at pretending to feel differently than I do internally. The problem was... how I felt internally just never seemed to overlap with what the crowd wanted. There was no bucket I could safely slot myself into, and have the comfort of numbers. I didn't fully relate to the corporate jugglers who were out to make you marvel at their tricks. Neither could I relate completely to the creators who were so immersed in their craft that they allowed the craft to craft them. I wasn't a skank, but I also didn't look at guys and see babies. I guess it was hard for me to give myself up easily to anything. Existing within this dichotomy was interesting.
A couple years passed by, life came in with its own demands. Careers went on as usual. 'I build a product, I started this venture, I owned the PnL, I got the best valuation, blah blah blah.' It started sinking in that we were slowly nearing that point where the authority in us should rise. Maybe social media was delaying it. The folks who got married early were jaded, the ones who were trying to make a serious commitment also had reservations or obligations. We all kept up pretenses ofcourse, but this wasn't how I'd imagined it to be. People were still making the same choices they had been making. They just looked a bit older while they did it, and rationalized it better. Shouldn't we just know by now? The OG authority was also cracking, I could see the flaws in them and their life. It was heartbreaking, and nothing really made sense. That was the final frontier for the illusion to just come crashing down.
And today I read a bunch of musings from other people. Both younger and older. It was the kind of writing that made you sense the writer's need for privacy and underlined their distaste for the limelight.
And if you were careful, and you read between the lines, you could tell that they nurtured a giant hard on for themselves. It wasn't lewd, nor was it tame. It wasn't even very conspicuous, to be fair to everyone. But it did exist. I see the same literary boners in mine. All of them had some core themes in common: Life, love, ambition, nostalgia, anger and a magnetic pull for the past. Like coins from the same mint, same design but just slightly different production years. These are the themes that bind us, whether we acknowledge it or not. The biggest thing they reveal to me is that everyone is just stuck in the limbo of life. People who seem sorted at first glance can often be people who don't spare too many thoughts for the why of their existence.
I think I've finally identified a unifying thought that made sense. Everything is fucking arbitrary, we just pretend like it isn't.
I remember this old quote by Jobs: 'When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.'
People keep saying he was one smart cookie, so I am going to assume this is true.
When I was a kid, the adults were like mythical beasts, the All Powerful. To be Obeyed and indulged but never crossed. They knew everything and could dictate everything. Challenging their all encompassing reign was simply the stuff of legends. A mere mortal like me couldn't dream of doing more than sulking privately. The only ones who dared poke the dragon were the wild ones, running away from home for hours, hours!, and not just the few allotted time slots where I pretend did. I distinctly remember promising fealty to the authority, and never questioning it. It never occurred to me to think of the status quo as cyclic.
I spent 21 years in awe of it, and then started shrugging it off slowly. But never once did I relate or see myself as one of them. I kept looking for signs of them among my peers. It was a surreal journey to be honest. A couple of friends got married when we hit 24 and I thought, okay maybe this is it! These are the mighty among us, ones who can conceptualize of a duality. My largest concerns around that time were how to locate and secure stuff or wine or both. Clearly not worthy aims when you think about these creatures who wanted to embrace a life long hood of sorts. I tip toed around them, trying to understand it and unveil some form of profoundness in their existence that I could learn from. There was a distinct feeling of being an outsider back then. It always intensified when I witnessed decision making that went with the accepted norm. I simultaneously hated and loved the fact that I could never do it. I'd never been good at pretending to feel differently than I do internally. The problem was... how I felt internally just never seemed to overlap with what the crowd wanted. There was no bucket I could safely slot myself into, and have the comfort of numbers. I didn't fully relate to the corporate jugglers who were out to make you marvel at their tricks. Neither could I relate completely to the creators who were so immersed in their craft that they allowed the craft to craft them. I wasn't a skank, but I also didn't look at guys and see babies. I guess it was hard for me to give myself up easily to anything. Existing within this dichotomy was interesting.
A couple years passed by, life came in with its own demands. Careers went on as usual. 'I build a product, I started this venture, I owned the PnL, I got the best valuation, blah blah blah.' It started sinking in that we were slowly nearing that point where the authority in us should rise. Maybe social media was delaying it. The folks who got married early were jaded, the ones who were trying to make a serious commitment also had reservations or obligations. We all kept up pretenses ofcourse, but this wasn't how I'd imagined it to be. People were still making the same choices they had been making. They just looked a bit older while they did it, and rationalized it better. Shouldn't we just know by now? The OG authority was also cracking, I could see the flaws in them and their life. It was heartbreaking, and nothing really made sense. That was the final frontier for the illusion to just come crashing down.
And today I read a bunch of musings from other people. Both younger and older. It was the kind of writing that made you sense the writer's need for privacy and underlined their distaste for the limelight.
And if you were careful, and you read between the lines, you could tell that they nurtured a giant hard on for themselves. It wasn't lewd, nor was it tame. It wasn't even very conspicuous, to be fair to everyone. But it did exist. I see the same literary boners in mine. All of them had some core themes in common: Life, love, ambition, nostalgia, anger and a magnetic pull for the past. Like coins from the same mint, same design but just slightly different production years. These are the themes that bind us, whether we acknowledge it or not. The biggest thing they reveal to me is that everyone is just stuck in the limbo of life. People who seem sorted at first glance can often be people who don't spare too many thoughts for the why of their existence.
I think I've finally identified a unifying thought that made sense. Everything is fucking arbitrary, we just pretend like it isn't.
I remember this old quote by Jobs: 'When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.'
People keep saying he was one smart cookie, so I am going to assume this is true.
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