On being interesting

Used to when I was young, I had dreams of being someone interesting, of doing amazing, daring things and living to tell about them.

Turns out I did those things, and did in fact live through them.

This isnโ€™t why I did them, but I thought itโ€™d make people like me more. Turns out I was right about that but it also turned out that it didnโ€™t matter.

Because those sort of experiences also separate you from people. Not to glorify myself, but when youโ€™ve seen things and done intense and dangerous things that most people really havenโ€™t experienced, it builds a wall over which most people just canโ€™t climb.

Iโ€™ve never been in combat thankfully, though I have been in some pretty hairy non-combat situations, and when in Homeland Brody finds that he can only talk to Carrie about himself and his life, I understood where he was coming from. Where they both were.

Luckily my current partner had no problem climbing over that wall, or we probably couldnโ€™t have stayed together for as long as we have.

But for most people, there is no path, and no stairs, no catapult, no hovercraft, no jetpack or anti-gravity device that gets them over. We are just from different worlds and I have nothing to say to them that theyโ€™d understand.