I was an odd child. There really isn’t any argument about that. I was thoroughly bookish, introverted, and rather sensitive; I was raised as a homeschooler, a Christian, and (shockingly) a conservative. But I think my oddities go a bit deeper than all of that. I wanted to think about things deeply — to arrive at an understanding of a thought, and have a valuable perspective about it. Which resulted in me saying very strange things, for a child. Like long rambles to my older, very disinterested cousins about how adjectives are relative (until I realized that wasn’t entirely true, but it’s still a very interesting thought, and is an early version of a lot of thoughts that I’ll be rambling about later).
One thing led to another, and I grew into a vision of myself as a misunderstood genius, who, after great tribulation and struggle, would change the world. This is, of course, ridiculous — I discovered that after getting a firm dose of real world experience by getting a job and moving out in to the world on my own. I learned that my academic tendencies were not nearly so indicative of intelligence as I had assumed; I wasn’t going to magically be great at anything I tried; my perspective was not as all-knowing as I had hoped; and any kind of success I was going to find was going to have a lot more to do with hard work and self-discipline than any kind of quasi-messianic journey.
I would say that these discoveries bestowed me with a great deal of humility, but that would be very narcissistic and self-idealizing, and I’m working on that. But I had definitely swung to the opposite side of the metaphoric pendulum: If I am not really all that special, then I don’t have anything profound worth saying. I am not a great thinker, a genius, or supremely well-educated. I am young, and probably have less real-world experience than the vast majority of my peers. And I have a hard enough time getting a solid grasp of my own trains of thought — why would I try to convince other people of my own probably badly-thought-out theories of the universe?
But it is one of those theories that has made me reconsider.
You see, I believe that kernels of truth can be found everywhere. Every person has experiences that give them a unique perspective. When people develop ideas, they do so based on their experiences and perspectives, and these ideas are (at least to them) a rational interpretation of the experiential data that they have gathered. I am wise to listen carefully to other people’s perspectives, because if I can fully understand that way of thinking, I can gather another kernel of truth in my grand (see Narcissism above) quest to understand the universe.
Which, of course, does not in any way answer the question of why I’m writing this. But, hopefully, you will have realized where I’m going with these thoughts.
If kernels of truth are everywhere, and everyone has a unique perspective that can be valuable to those around them, then that has to mean that I have something to offer as well.
In brief, I want to write because I believe that I have something to say that will be valuable to someone else. I do not have to be some great thinker, a genius, or supremely well-educated to have a perspective worth hearing, worth considering. Because neither does anyone else. If there is something I can learn from anyone, then that also means that I have something of value to say.
I hope that my ramblings can be valuable to whoever is reading this, and that you, too, would enjoy a grand quest to understand the universe (narcissism not included).