I was reading Bob Dylan’s autobiography “Chronicles Vol. 1” & a part sparked me to think of how the world normalises falseness. He roughly said that the world often asks us to live out what is essentially ‘a lie’. Here are my thoughts that sprouted from that literary spark. They flowed very quickly, I might add – so I assume they must have been percolating quietly for a while prior to writing (or should I say ‘keyboard placking’?).

I felt very old at the beginning of my life & this didn’t faze itself out until age 27. When I was young, I felt like an old man amongst babies. I just never felt “in the right place” through childhood. From about 30 I almost suddenly felt more and more child-like. Attempts to negate this failed miserably – If I tried to be “mature” I found life wouldn’t allow it. I could do well at work & be ignored for promotion. If I sounded rational in conversation, I was hated for it. If I acted “mature” to women they became uninterested romantically.

Then as I became over 37 no matter what I did, I could not curry favour with any “normal” person. I had grown tired of the “lose-lose” realities of being or trying to be just like everyone else. By age 40 I had realized the ‘not fitting in’ problem was in fact most likely to just be life itself as a human being in modern times.

I realized at this point in Homo Sapien’s low level of spiritual awareness, the point is to systemically not allow for any individual to feel comfortable. Under our terrible system of existing – you are supposed to feel uncomfortable. The world has an invisible arm guiding you to live life as some kind of ‘living lie’. You pretend that you are on top of your life – both its emotional & practical hemispheres – and you trot this line out in social gatherings.

The truth that this whole thing (from my Westerner viewpoint at least) is a system to create a total farce is a sacrilegious thing you can’t say 99% of the population. The ‘World’ has its Game, it forces you to be born into it, it hides the rules from you – & your happiness means it loses the ‘Game’.

I found the key to survival is to be happy to be an outsider. You have to see the people who are propping up this wilful insane asylum as some kind of spectres to be avoided in confidant yet non-violent fashion. This for me has thus allowed a mostly solitary a world of personal interests, books music art and when I’m really lucky – honest insightful interesting conversations with those who are my spiritual kin.

The ‘World’ doesn’t like such behaviour & cannot handle itself being rejected. The ‘World’ will send its evil angels to hold you to task & to renounce your hermit like refusal to engage & embrace its false premises. The more and more you find solace and success in rejecting the “World” the more spiteful its ‘evil angels’ are.

I guess at that point we are supposed to follow Christs maxim – ‘resist not evil’, ‘turn the other cheek’ etc, but I must admit to thinking I can cut these demons off entirely. This is probably because I still have much to learn about the World & it’s dark ways.

I have learnt at least one thing for sure from my life: Survival, Decency, Health & Sanity is the highest ‘Success’ you can have – & you have to follow the path less taken to achieve it. I am also pretty sure you wife/husband/friends won’t ever do this for you – more likely they will be the fog covering the winding ice laden road to the town your supposed to live in.

I think you have to get used to your own company & deeper thoughts to reach a breakthrough in how to deal with ‘the world’. If you can’t ever get 1 minute away from the hordes of unwitting & witting demons that constantly surround us – you’ll never find the salvation your spirit needs.

The trick is to not listen to that voice in your head that chastises you for being unsociable, an outsider, a loser, a snob, annoying or just plain ‘bad’ for disobeying the ‘Worlds’ crazy, stress filled, unfulfillable-by design diktats.

You have to keep believing your contrariness is definitely the right track – I think a sign of this is your former materialist ways & bank balance worries shrink out of the range of your mental radar.

In closing, even the best ‘world avoider’ must admit to my following lines I will describe as realpolitik poetic truism. – that is simply a paraphrase of Bob Dylan’s famous “you can please some of the people, some of the time…” lyrical quip:

You can avoid some of the people some of the time – you can avoid all of the people some of the time – but you can’t avoid all of the people all of the time.

– Essay by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com