Headed home

My five week turned almost two month trip (thanks Iceland) has come to an end.

I'm headed home.  I have plans.  I have ideas.  I have... many of the same old thoughts.  But they are not so bad - they've kept me some company over the last few years.  But a bit anxious, a bit depressed company.

This is the other half of the bookend.  What lies outside of the bookends?  I can feel some of my thoughts drifting effortlessly back into the same traps.  I've made many plans to identify and pick apart each trap, turning myself into a philosophical superhuman, a sort of Rorty meets Anthony Robbins (the speaker, not the author). 

I read out here.  I can still read.  Like a racehorse.  I still love it.  One of the orphans told me boarding school is easy as long as you like to read - otherwise it is hard and you'll get in trouble.  A good life philosophy, that. 

Everybody asks, why are you going back?  You clearly don't want to.  There is a lot of work available to foreigners here.  And so on.  What is my answer?  I have none.  I'd just like to get my affairs in order, I suppose.  Karen would laugh at that - she's never had a plan, and now finds herself a well-paid videographer in Kampala, Uganda.  Well done my friend.  Well done.

Do what you love.  That's the beginning and end of it.  God gave us some weird-ass interests.  Go for it.  Embrace who you are (or who you want to be), and try to make it work.  Save the machievallian planning shit for the short-term, not the long term.  Otherwise you end up like China: powerful but without reason. 

Save the world.  There are people living an entirely different level of life because they are fighting for something the believe in.  That's the beginning and end of it, as well.  Two armies squared off at the beginning of the Rwandan civil war: but the generals already knew who would win, because one side were killing for killing's sake, and the other had a proper vision of the future. 

Watch the bankers squirm.  There's little moral rhyme or reason in industry.  Pick your interest, Adam, and go at it.  You don't have to be rich to be intelligent, passionate, and influential.  It may come or it may not... there are other types of riches.  Cliche, but true.  You will feed yourself and family.  Your children can learn many things from you that money from other pursuits cannot buy.  Hopefully.  Also, marry rich.

I'm alive.  I survived the trip, and I'm headed home.  May I carry much back.

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