When I write in my personal journal, I always feel a sting knowing that noone will read my words. Accepting that part of this is vanity, I must add that I am also just not the kind of person who gains much from thought and feelings unheard. It is important to me though that I share my thoughts and my feelings with people I can trust. This has been difficult. That is partly why I stopped writing on these types of note pages; I felt that either I was failing in getting my message across, that others were failing in understanding that message, that people were purposely distorting what had been expressed, or that I was suffering from some unrecognized neurosis that was resulting in mounds and mounds of written bullshit. As of late, however, I feel I have met a number of people who deserve more consideration than I have given them, and more respect than I have treated them with. So, I am writing again in one of these blog-type, public forums in recognition of both my own cynicism, and my doubts over its validity as it is directed at both myself and others. 

That’s really not what this is about though in particular. That is an offshoot of a deeper network of roots reaching across a landscape of mixed soil– some patches dry and hard and other patches just plain mushy. What an abrupt subject change. What I am saying is that the relationship between myself and my environment, inclusive of others, is, of course, a kind of branch system sustained by a network of roots, a trunk, leaves. Soil dry and hard, as well as soil overly saturated, are both challenges for any system of roots to take hold in, and I guess that’s really what I want to write about here. In understanding how I got to this place, the place I am in now, I want to try to create an understanding of underlying causes, and to do this I will utilize the metaphor I have just begun.

A plant needs some basic things. It needs water, sunlight, and soil rich enough by which to be sustained. If conditions are right– if the air is the right temperature and carries the right amount of moisture; if the soil is of minerals and vitamins the seedling can become of, while containing a certain level of agua; if sunlight is upon that seedling for the proper durations each day– that seedling will develop. Roots sprouting into the ground, collecting nutrients, creating a foundation for what we eventually see, will act in this way only if these conditions are met sufficiently. If not, the seedling will not sprout. If it does, it will not survive for the amount of time or in the manner for which it had the potential. 

Accepting that we are creatures of a considerably higher complexity, I do not intend to ignore that our skillset enables us to survive in circumstances ungeared toward our natures. There still, of course, remains a window within which we can maintain life. On the outer limits of this window exist those persons we all despise– criminals of all kinds seemingly lacking in a certan essential aspect of humanity, surviving in a manner reflective of circumstances unsuitable for a full development. Granted, some people fail to achieve maturity due to a circumstance of their own nature– but in accepting that most people are born with the potential to achieve maturity, that nothing within them will serve as obstructions to the things required to achieve this maturity, it is only logical to conclude that most persons with seemingly inhuman tendencies arrive at this state due to external circumstances, although I do mean to include circumstances within and without in my previous sentence. It is true that we are of a volition that goes beyond any other creature on the planet, but how we utilize this volition rests on how we develop, which rests on the circumstances of our development.

Our soils are the families we are born into. The minerals and vitamins in those soils are the emotional nutrients that exist within the members of our families– their values, their beliefs, their memes. The water we need is love. Water with too much sugar, love too sweet, will breakdown our roots and our innards just as water too salty, love too bitter, will dry us up and make us brittle. Both extremes create frailty. Neither is conducive to a full, healthy development.

The sunshine we need is the hope we are allowed by those closest to us. As we grow, we grow toward light just as plants do. Only our light consists of the sense of our future prosperity provided us by our realities. This includes our sense of our ability to achieve this end, and goes beyond family and into the larger social networks into which we are born– our neighborhoods, schools, and governments. Family, of course, has the most intimate impact on our lives’ light or darkness. Sometimes, there is enough light in the world without the family to cause one to grow away from home. Sometimes, there is enough light inside the family to create a near full development in the face of a darker, broader social network. In either case, without light, a plant will dwindle. In a long enough span of time without light, it will die. 

Some people grow into radiant, complete, fully matured human beings. It is easy to spot these people. If not one of these people, it is natural to have a desire to destroy these people, to emulate these people. They have gotten clean water, sweet and bitter when necessary. They have received strength providing minerals and vitamins from the soil– values inclusive of ideas to do with personal integrity, honesty, respect for life without and within, and approriate self-defense. They have gotten all the sunlight they have needed. Their network provided them with a place toward which they could grow and become.

This is not some sad story I am telling. If nothing else, all I am trying to create is an understanding of context when it comes to people and the self.

I am not a fool, or a particularly brave soul, but I have enough sense to struggle for more light, to cultivate the soil in which my roots have been formed, to search for clean water. It has been my understanding that those responsible for the conditions of one’s development resent this very much. How could they not? It has been my experience also that people of superior developmental circumstance have great difficulty in, and little reason for, understanding those that struggle. I guess this brings me to my point, although I was not sure what my point was until just now.

There is a stratum of people who really know what I am talking about. They have moved away from the conditions out of which they became, and struggle to sustain themselves in environments from which they do not know how to meet their needs. The light is too bright, it blinds them. The vitamins and minerals are too nourishing, their systems are unfit to process them. The love is tastless, and it confuses them. These people are my brethren, and I have mistreated them. I have seen them as my most fierce competition, as threats to my survival, and as those most important to neglect and defeat. The truth is, these people are the only ones capable of understanding what I go through, as I am one of the few who can truly understand them.

We know what it is like to be stuck between, to fight, to be confused, to not make sense, to know something in our hearts we can’t explain, to continue even when we feel most blighted, to yearn and suffer the pangs of those yearnings, to work to get out of bed knowing what awaits, to manipulate even though we hate ourselves for it, to be so far from where we want to be, to not know where we want to be outside a faint image we maintain with all our mite inside, to be afraid, to feel inauthentic, unseen, and unwanted. We are the ones that know. The sensitivity that picks all the things that hurt us so readily while remaining numb to the things that could make us most happy, the delicate network in place that creates for us the nourishment we utilize out of the most bizarre substances– these common traits make us connected whether we like it or not. We don’t want to be around others like us, because our goal is to achieve an end that will mean an environment that does not require from us what we each must do now to survive. As we spot each other, it can feel like being forced to recognize our own respective plights, when all we want is to focus on our goals, end our senses of being inbetween, and become a part of a system better suited to our natural needs. 

This is what I am guilty of, at any rate. I don’t believe in apology, because I think understanding serves to accomplish the same thing while accomplishing much more. What I will say is I hope those who I want to understand this, read and do. What I will do is work to become more accepting of others like me, because of our unique abilities to understand each other, and help eachother reach our respective ends. Even if the faint visions that drive us are of different compositions, our desires to reach a better place are common, and barring irreconcilable contrasts, we can respect the challenges of our respective pursuits, and offer a reprieve from a constant sense of being misunderstood and inbetween, while helping to reinforce our drives to continue, and persevere.