Sometimes something begins long before you notice it has begun.
Some people structure their lives in chapters. I have tended to do it in parts. Not because they are complete, but because they eventually make themselves noticeable.
Part 1: understanding myself.
Part 2: showing myself.
Part 3: optional.
Part 4: secret, probably for good reason.
Part 1 – Inner World.
I spent the first decades of my life mostly watching myself think. That sounds more intellectual than it actually was. In reality, it was a mixture of self-observation, excessive rumination, and a desperate attempt to obtain a user manual for my own psyche — one that, of course, does not exist. Apparently, it is not included. Or it is lying somewhere in the basement between old boxes and Christmas decorations, and I simply have not found it yet.
While other people were installing their social operating systems during this phase — friendships, relationships, a sense of timing — I was busy cataloguing inner states as if they were rare species of birds. That, too, is a form of competence. You do not get a medal for it, but later on you can explain with remarkable precision why you emotionally react to things that never actually happened.
Part 2 – Outer World.
How do you show yourself without immediately developing the urge to disappear again? Visibility, it turns out, is more difficult than advertising would have you believe. Perhaps it consists of compressing inner content into sentences before it diffuses back into obscurity. Perhaps it consists of informing other people in time that you exist. Perhaps it consists of not turning every conversation into a philosophical question internally before answering at all. Perhaps not.
The point is: I do not know how this works. But I have noticed by now that most people do not know either. They just pretend they do. That is reassuring.
Part 3 – Closeness (optional).
Part 3 remains optional, because it likely depends on the quality of Part 2. If it works, it might be about closeness — that curious phenomenon in which two people occupy the same emotional space without one of them immediately wanting to flee. If it fails, Part 3 will be replaced by an alternative module titled “Improved Humor and Suboptimal Life Choices.” This is also perfectly acceptable.
Part 4 – Future.
Part 4 remains under lock and key. Not for reasons of dramatic tension, but out of sheer ignorance. The future consistently refuses to provide spoilers. This is, frankly, impolite — but universal.
If everything goes well, I will look back at this text in a few decades and think:
“Oh dear. That was me, just starting to simulate the outer world for the first time.”
And then smile at the realization that life, in the end, consists almost entirely of wobbly prototypes that nobody ever officially releases — but everyone somehow keeps using.
