As I try to clear my head from the fires, S. gets me thinking.

Specifically, thinking about things that make me uneasy.

Before Southern California went up in flames, I was pondering how isolated I’ve allowed myself to become. Deep down inside, the objective, diagnostic part of my brain recognizes that this is extraordinarily unhealthy. And yet, I feel helpless to rectify things.

Without the deep, abstract ideas (that ultimately have no real meaning) to distract me, I’m left with this empty void.

At the least, it’s no longer dragging me down. It’s just there. This space-filling emptiness that’s almost like a tangible wall. I need to get to the other side of it somehow, but the solution continues to elude me.

For some reason, me and my sister got to talking about capitalism on the drive down from L.A. to S.D., as we drove past the burning hills of Irvine. And it occurred to me, no matter what you do, markets will always exist, simply because of the existence of two human impulses: desire, and the need to create. Economists might call it demand and supply, respectively, but it explains why Communism has always gone wrong. Besides the fact that human nature may not be basically benign, and that power corrupts, the problem with trying to control markets is that the path of least resistance is invariably to suppress these very human impulses. Communist governments are reduced to trying to get people to stop wanting stuff, and barring that, they try to get people to stop wanting to make stuff. By definition, you need a totalitarian government in order to try and accomplish that, and unless you actually destroy your people’s humanity, there’s just no way to eradicate these impulses.

And it struck me. Does my mind wander like this, and think about random topics deeply, for any good reason? (I has occurred to me that I may simply be insane, but this doesn’t really lead me to any practical course of action.) Is there something I am meant to accomplish in this life time? (The objective part of my brain say, no. The universe is governed mostly by Chance, and there is no such thing as Destiny™, at least, not in the way that human beings have personified her.)

For an long time, I’ve been preoccupied with the fear of dying without realizing my full potential, and the fear has occasionally become so overwhelming that I’ve freaked out. To the point where I’ve given up, and let my talents go fallow. Like that passage in one of the Gospels says not to do, I’ve spent a huge portion of my life hiding my light under a basket.

I mean, I could either let go of my overdeveloped sense of significance to the universe, or give up on being a chickenshit, and I think I either course could solve a lot of my problems. But for some reason, I’ve failed to make any headway on either road.

I am fated to remain In Between™, and perhaps condemned to inertia.