Background

I'm on the the early train today. It's kind of a nice treat those days when I can head back a little early, even though I'm still working most of the trip. I didn't realize how much I would enjoy commuting on the train until I started my daily pattern.

It's so fascinating watching people, it's almost like visiting the airport there are people of all types and walks of life crammed together in a small space. It's interesting to watch people adjust to each other...it's almost like people settle themselves and just fade, changing from a view when they first step on to part of the overall picture. At each stop there is confusion and change and then the picture settles down for a moment.

In any case, to understand where I'm coming from and what I think, it's probably important to have a little background. I'm male, late 20s, single, once engaged but never married. I grew up in a very conservative wonderful family, in a very conservative narrow minded town. I was homeschooled and after high school, like every good homeschool boy should do, I started my own business. It was a technology business and its performance was exciting to me, but to be perfectly honesty, nothing that one could raise a family on. After several years I got tired of working hard for little money, no life and limited fulfillment, I joined the company where I now make a comfortable income in technology.

After some painful life changes in my early 20s, I started traveling extensively and really questioning the belief system in which I was raised. My this questioning was not out of rebellion per se, but rather that I had started to think. It's quite challenging to travel and keep a narrow mind. Culture seems an irresistible force to me, drawing my mind with the yearning to understand. It's like people who go to Africa thinking they can change it, when they are the ones who are changed.

This is such a bird's eye view, so many details skimmed over which I may revisit sometime. However I would like to concentrate for a while on the significant thought excursions which caused my change. I call them "thought excursions" because at the time, they were just a brief journey off my already straight an narrow path; my path did not really change until I had processed enough of them to made a conscious deviation from my life's course.

The train is approaching it's destination. I'll have to pickup later.

- The Reflected Man