He first tasted the Atlantic’s cold salt on his tongue when smuggled in the hold of a Haitian cargo sloop. That night, the slave traders never saw them slip overboard and tumble like shadows into the black water, the youngest clinging to the mother’s back, the father’s hands webbed with wounds from cutting the ropes. The family’s first American sunrise was a fever dream: the Carolina dawn, pale and shivering, an inlet so still it seemed to hold its breath.

A year later, after a furtive existence hunting and gathering among the mangroves outside the small fishing village of Coral Cove, a simple act—one that anyone would do—changed their lives a simple act for over a century to come. The local gentry all knew the story—though none told it quite the same way. Some say the parents bartered their lives for a single pearl, others, who know, insist it was the rescue of a colonist’s child from the grip of mangrove roots, the child blue-faced and limp, prying her loose and breathing life back into her lungs.

The truth, as always, is tangled and feral: a transaction, and a pact that delivered the family from the block to the briny edges of freedom. That act of kindness led a grateful colonial family to “purchase” his parents and the child for a percentage of their fishing spoils and three hogs, raised and slaughtered each year. The slave family had paperwork protecting them from slave hunters and they built a cabin of sod, metal scraps and driftwood along the edge of the mangroves. The arrangement worked well for the colonial family with abolitionist sympathies; they had the best seafood and pork on their dining tables year-round. Over time, a genuine friendship grew between the families continuing for generations lasting until and after emancipation.

CHAPTER ONE

1710 North Carolina Coast

With salt-crusted clothes and skin burnished dark by Caribbean sun he slips between the tangled roots of mangroves and moves with stealth borne of years of experience. The frayed edges of his once-white shirt flutter against skin scarred by rope burns and old battles. His bandana, faded from indigo to the color of twilight, clings damply to his neck while his tar-stained seaman’s hat shields watchful eyes. Each step is calculated—a hunter’s tread that barely disturbs the brackish water around his ankles. He held his breath when passing within earshot of his family’s dwelling, the smoke from their kitchen fire carrying familiar spices that made his stomach clench with longing. He dared not approach them, for Governor Spotswood’s men have posted broadsides bearing crude renderings of his Captain’s bearded face in every port from Norfolk to Nassau.

The weight of reality pressed on him like the humid air. The golden age of privateering has ended with the stroke of a quill in some distant European palace. Those precious letters of marque—documents that transformed piracy into patriotic duty—would no longer protect men like him who had made their living seizing Spanish galleons heavy with Peruvian silver and Mexican gold destined for royal coffers across the Atlantic.

Also gone were the days when Blackbeard’s black flag struck terror into the hearts of merchant captains, when the mere whisper of his name sent men scrambling to hide their gold, tobacco, and women. Benoitz Jackson—now known only as “Benjie”—had witnessed the pirate king’s ruthlessness firsthand after being recruited from the docks of Coral Cove. His calloused hands still smelled of fish guts when Blackbeard himself clasped his shoulder and promised him riches beyond imagination.

The blood and grog-soaked democracy of Blackbeard’s ship had seduced him completely. While the royal navies flogged men to death for minor infractions, Blackbeard let his crew vote on targets and split the spoils fairly—though God helped any man who challenged him in battle. Three years of cutlass fights and cannon fire had hardened the once-naive young fisherman into a man whose eyes never fully closed, even in sleep.

Benjie’s value to the crew transcended mere loyalty and his ability to fight. His fingers could read the stars like Braille on the blackest nights, guiding them through treacherous waters that had claimed dozens of naval vessels.

It began as Blackbeard had once pressed a ruby-hilted dagger to Benjie’s throat, drawing blood while whispering that he’d kill him before letting the Crown’s men learn his secret passages through Coral Cove’s deadly maze of reefs. The youth who became known as Benjie, stood firm. Not belligerent but not quaking as so many others had done. Blackbeard smiled, held the boy firmly, but removed the dagger. “Not afraid, huh?”

“Oh, plenty O’ fear, uh sir, but showing it don’t help.” “Right you are,” said Blackbeard as he pointed to a nearby log along the shore of Coral Cove.

Blackbeard smiled, “Sit with me.”

That encounter began a years-long friendship between the boy and the fearsome captain.

Benjie’s heart hammered against his ribs as he crept through the dense mangroves, the weight of Blackbeard’s final payout heavy in the large leather pouch tucked inside his salt-stained shirt. The gold —Spanish doubloons and English sovereigns and large bits of smelted, raw gold—pressed against his skin with each careful step through the sucking mud. Sweat trickled down his neck as he glanced over his shoulder, imagining redcoats lurking behind every twisted trunk. He couldn’t risk his family knowing about this treasure; the Governor’s men had ways of extracting information that turned his stomach cold. The thought of his mother’s weathered face contorted in pain, or his young sister being threatened because of his pirate connections, drove him deeper into the shadowy tangle of roots and vines.

He went deep into the mangroves, finding that childhood hiding spot where he’d once played innocent games. Games pretending to be a privateer, honorably serving the crown.

Now braced in the mangroves, his trembling hands worked sail-repair needles through canvas, creating a secret pouch in his seabag. When he joined the crew, he purchased a new seabag with his first allotment of booty. Many on the crew used cheap cotton bags for their belongings and stash. The booty they held rarely lasted longer than shore leave in the next port.

But Benjie had a different vision. He sought the best seabag he could find. Not flashy, but strong and as waterproof as the combination of tightly woven waxed canvas, leather, and clever design could make it. The seabag served its purpose well and he kept it close for his years on Blackbeard’s crew.

He thought about providing for his family often during the tense moments before an attack and then after as he attended to wounded crew and made repairs to the ship. Those thoughts helped him keep his balance when the violence of his trade overwhelmed him.

Would this bounty protect his family or endanger them more? The King’s navies were ruthless—they’d killed men for much less than what jingled between his fingers. Sweat stung his eyes as mosquitoes feasted on his neck. A water moccasin slithered nearby, making him flinch, but paying him no mind. Hours passed as he sewed, then hesitated before each gold coin dropped inside. Blood money or freedom? He secured them tight so they’d make no sound, even if the seabag were tossed about, but couldn’t silence his own doubts.

He then created a waterproof hiding spot in the tangle of mangrove roots. His hands moved with practiced precision, first laying down broad palmetto leaves as a moisture barrier, then weaving dried sea grasses into a tight basket-like structure. He packed red clay soil around the edges, tamping it down with the heel of his palm just as his granddaddy had shown him years ago by moonlight. As former slaves, his family had developed an artistry in concealment—burying possessions, messages, even themselves when necessary. Benjie’s fingers remembered every lesson, working the materials until the cache became invisible, indistinguishable from the natural tangle of the coastal wilderness.

He circled the hide like a predator, scrutinizing every leaf, every shadow. He studied the marks left over the years by the highest tides. His heart hammered against his ribs. Perfect. Undetectable. When Blackbeard’s hunters finally gave up their bloodthirsty chase, he’d retrieve this treasure—his family’s salvation. Not for him the fleeting pleasures other pirates squandered their gold on; his dreams burned fiercer. This fortune would tear his bloodline free from poverty’s jaws forever. His father could retire from commercial fishing before he found an early death in that dangerous trade as so many had. His mother would never again bend her back for white men’s washing. His younger sisters would never have to sell their dignity for bread. He sensed the gold pulse in the earth like a buried heart.

Benjie’s weathered hands trembled slightly as he thought of Blackbeard—not hanging from a yardarm with crows pecking at his infamous beard as rumor had it, but alive, perhaps lounging beneath a palm tree on some distant shore beyond the reach of British cannons. The great captain’s disappearance for a few years would serve as effectively as his death; the King’s men and Virginia governor’s bloodhounds would eventually lose interest as wars and politics inevitably diverted their attention from the hunt for pirates. At least that was Benjie’s abiding hope.

Standing knee-deep in brackish water, Benjie recalled his final moments with Blackbeard—the captain’s coal-black eyes gleaming beneath heavy brows as they clasped forearms in farewell aboard Queen Anne’s Revenge. That was a month ago, before Benjie slipped away on a nearby island and hitched passage with salt-crusted fishermen who remembered him from his youth. He told them he had been working in Cuba on island transports and that he was on his way south to Mexico, hoping his hour with them would be soon forgotten.

He cast one final glance at the hiding place, memorizing every twisted tree and outcropping nearby, memorizing the unique pattern of the twisted natural sculpture that held his treasure. Then he melted into the dense mangrove forest, the humid air clinging to his skin as he set his course for Colombia, the taste of salt and freedom on his lips.

You have a feeling that a better life is out there? You are intrigued by articles about “Homes for a Dollar in Italy”, and “Living in a Tropical Paradise Without Income Taxes”. Articles you would have typically ignored. You begin to seek out publications that have indexes of the best places to live in the world. You read about countries with lower taxation, cost of living and inexpensive, excellent healthcare, a clean environment and investment opportunities not available to you now.

You may feel an emerging hope for a better life, but the realities of your day-to-day experiences suppress it. You experience competing mindsets. Make the best of what you have, dealing daily with the best of worst of your life today. It’s familiar, challenging but you believe, doable.

Or feed your emerging mindset that there may be a better life for you and those dear to you elsewhere. Exciting, potentially deeply rewarding, challenging, risky and time consuming.

Your thoughts about whether your life would be better abroad are persistent. You are not alone. Increasing numbers of Americans, Europeans and Canadians and many others hear that same call. Whether because of anxiety about job stress, retirement, social or political dissent, climate change or other reasons, you hope there is something better (perhaps much better) out there. You are bitten by the persistent mosquito that has been buzzing around in your head.

This series of articles focuses on the process of exploring living abroad, Scratching the itch from the relocation mosquito bite. This process is borne of our lived personal experience, not a checklist from a “Best Places to Retire”, or “Counties with the Lowest Cost of Living” article.

Frequently, the same things that keep you from exploring a life abroad are the same things that keep that dream alive. The first article in this series, “Putting the Mosquito to Rest”, addressed an approach to creating a vison of your best life, placing that vison in the context of moving abroad and determining if your vision compels you to act rather than simply daydream.

This requires your candid look at the things in your life that you can or wish to leave behind and those that you must have in your new vision of life. If you have not read the first article, “Putting the Mosquito to Rest”, focusing on creating that vision of your best life, I suggest you take a quick look because what follows will make more sense in that context.

Having created a compelling vison of your best life and having “virtually surveyed” a few countries in this context, you are ready to make this vision more real by understanding the major decisions you face. In our experience, a multitude of issues, opportunities and tasks flow from these foundational decisions.

Key Decisions

What Does it Mean to Move Abroad?

Your vision is one thing. It could just be a compelling daydream. Or, it could have become a project you pursue actively. But making it more real and realistic relies on exploring your foundational options in three areas. These are presented in the order we pursued them. But as we progressed to making our vision reality adding new information as we went, we changed or solidified decisions as all three came together.

Options for your life Abroad:

• Nomadic- You may begin by living in several countries, sampling life in each, while exploring a more permanent choice. Many countries do not require any visas for stays of 60-90 days. Others use simple online form for temporary stays of up to a year. Still others offer special “digital nomad” visas that allow you to live and work in a country without special work permits.

• Permanent Residency (PR)- this means that you are looking for a new home country. Permanent residency comes in different varieties. Some countries allow you to get an immediate permanent residency visa in a single step because you qualify in a particular class, like retiree, or investor. Other countries will issue a temporary visa for a couple of years and then enable you to have true permanent residency. Each category of PR visas has its own privileges and restrictions.

  
  Frequently retiree visas do not allow you to work in a country (except perhaps online not engaging in commerce with that country’s citizens/businesses). Another distinction involves the time you must spend in a country when getting a visa. Some countries require only a brief stay every one or two years to keep a visa valid. Others require largely continuous residency.

• Citizenship- In some instances, you can apply directly for citizenship because of ancestry or family connections to a country. A few countries offer citizenship by investment, but these programs are becoming rarer and more expensive. Most naturalization processes require years of residency with an appropriate permanent visa to qualify to apply for citizenship. Be aware that some PR visas don’t permit citizenship. So, if a second passport is your goal, be aware of PR visa restrictions.

Very few countries prohibit dual or multiple citizenships. The US and Canada are not among them. PR visas usually enable you to purchase property, have bank and brokerage accounts in a country, and exercise most civil rights except voting. International travel is a privilege of a passport that comes with citizenship in one or more countries and not a residency visa.

These are presented as discrete options, but they are really a mix and match menu frequently evolving as your life, needs and desires change.

A Sustainable Livelihood (or retirement)

As you can tell from the prior discussion, how you make a living in a new country depends on visa requirements and restrictions.

If you have a remote work position (or business) this question may simply be one of comparing the visa privileges with your position requirements. You may want to work in a country for an employer there. Still, others may choose to work for a US, European or firm domiciled internationally and have an assignment based in your chosen country. Taxation can be a key issue. Friends report changing from an income tax rate above 35% to almost zero and enjoying a lower cost of living as well.

For internet solopreneurs, working from your chosen country may in fact be the easiest of all choices. It may or may not require a work permit. Some so-called nomadic visas include a work permit or inherently allow certain work. If you are a solopreneur or make a living through some variation, taxation regulations can be very favorable to you in many countries. Some countries like the U.S. offer significant exemptions for income earned abroad. Research taxation on international income in both your home country and those you are exploring.

Retirees may find the question of livelihood abroad easier if they have a form of social security, pension, or investment income. Many times, these income sources are not taxed in a home country or your chosen country of residence. Some retiree visas come with incentives reducing the cost of living. One country offers a legally mandated 25% discount on air and other transportation, and discounts on medicine, medical care, restaurants and entertainment. These are country specific, vary widely and are worth considering.

There is an abundance of options for your livelihood abroad. Explore these opportunities as you look for the just right country to live your best life.

Which Countries Fit You Best?

It is time for you to see yourself living your best life abroad. Choose a few countries that appeal to you and create fact sheets that match the country’s characteristics with your vision. Sound information on healthcare, education, economy, security and public safety and environmental quality is readily available to you. So too are insights into investment opportunities and finances. Put together a one pager on a handful of countries and evaluate them against your vision.

If you have two or three countries that appear to fit well with your vision of your best life, use Google Earth, YouTube videos, and other sources to put together virtual tours.

Make it a virtual adventure investigating not just the issues discussed as key decisions above, but also the culture, languages spoken, environment and places that you would put on your bucket list to explore in person. The decision is not just about the three key decisions, they’re the framework. It is also about fit. Tangible and intangible characteristics, that would make a country or locale compelling to you. Language, a welcoming environment for expats, cultural fit, financial stability and sustainability may be some of these.

Putting It All Together

• Creating the Vision of Your Best Life “Putting the Mosquito to Rest”.

• Making the decision to make it a project you work toward and not just a daydream.

• Deciding which type of living abroad fits best you. Nomadic, temporary or permanent.

• Exploring a sustainable livelihood or retirement.

• Survey countries that interest you using the characteristics you value (described in your best life vison).

Once you have done this, you are ready to focus on one or two target countries that are worth your time exploring in depth. Exciting steps in this process await you if you are still scratching that mosquito bite- moving you toward moving abroad.

Hopefully, after reading this, you will visualize your future self when thinking of moving abroad—Being that person you wish to be, your future self, living your best life. While this is not an original approach created by our family, it helped us to open ourselves to different possibilities.

The Future as Someone Elses Problem

We often live as if our future selves are someone else’s problem. Today’s issues and challenges are real, and we focus all our time and effort on them. Our day-to-day lives are so consuming that we don’t spend time thinking about, much less getting to envision our future selves.

We typically consider our future selves only when directly related to our current life. For instance, we may complete a particularly challenging task for a new job we are hoping to land, or to ensure that we get a promotion or incentives in the future. But these are situational and transactional, focused on specific aspects of our future, not our future selves. Our typical approach to life engages with the present, but it mostly neglects our future. To quote Groucho Marx, “What has our future ever done for us?” The answer, of course, is “nothing YET”.

Writing a letter-- Really?

One effective way our family used to create a mental picture of, and make friends with our future selves was to write letters to our future selves. Just the act of writing allowed us to think more deeply than just verbalizing our thoughts. The goal of creating a written picture of your future self is to create the most complete vision of your best life.

In this letter to your future self, describe your aspirations, dreams, and the person you aim to become. Be honest and heartfelt. Consider different areas of your life: career, relationships, health, hobbies, personal growth. Also, consider the qualities of the physical and social environment you want to live in. Imagine your future life’s sights, sounds, smells, and feelings. Are you envisioning being in the cool mountain air, along a rugged coastline or a tropical beach? Are you living in the culture of your ancestral family in Ireland, Spain or Egypt? Or, in a welcoming but unfamiliar culture that intrigues you?

Writing this letter will provide an image of your future self, how you want to make a livelihood, and the environment in which you want to live. After you pen your letter and let it incubate for a day or so, include the characteristics of your future self to your vision of your best life tht you created as described in the last article , “Three Key Foundations”.

Integrating our letter into our vision helped ensure that we included intangibles we held dear, but thought were so intrinsic that they did not require mentioning. This helped us tease out things about locales and ask questions we would have ignored or answers we would have taken for granted. Your future self is an essential component of your vision to relocate.

What benefits does a person like me gain from moving abroad? (use your age and other characteristics you are curious about)

Whether you choose to move abroad or not, I hope this thought process has been valuable to you, and you have met and made friends with your future self.

We all need to hold secrets. Samuel Johnson mused, “To keep your own secrets is wisdom; but to expect others to keep them is folly.” Franklin and Johnson were contemporaries and bookend the implications of secrets held personally and those given voice. It always amazes me when social media headlines claim access to “hidden secrets” and “unknown facts” How are these even possible?

Governments have classified files, corporations and celebrities use NDAs to protect their trade secrets, avoid liability or shield bad behavior. But secrecy is also frequently a multilayered curtain hiding incompetence. Sometimes that curtain is literally shrouded with levels of guards, barriers, and cameras. Other times, it’s a thirty-page legal document written in a font so small it’s legally classified as a vision test. And occasionally litigation filed just to stall and obfuscate disclosure.

Secrets are not going away. But that doesn’t mean that there is not truth to be discerned and discovered. As intentional disinformation and propaganda thrive as robust industries in our world, discerning the truth is an increasingly important skill.

I’m not a knight boldly hunting the Holy Grail of Truth. But I know our assertions or beliefs don’t magically become truth or knowledge just because they are decorated with bold font and a couple of exclamation points or an AI generated meme.

Truth today is a frightened cat under a sofa: it’s definitely under there, but it’s not coming out just because I ask nicely. Since facts are increasingly buried under layers of fear, greed, and jargon, I’ve settled on a different yardstick: authenticity.

Authenticity is the courage to be genuinely human—warts, awkward phrasing, and my shiny, ever-enlarging forehead included. It’s the opposite of a polished persona vetted by a focus group. As writers we face this daily. Even when I try to be a neutral instrument, I still end up smuggling in my biases and a suspicious number of adjectives.

But how do we actually “suss out” authenticity? There’s no blood test for it. In fact, if someone starts a sentence with, “Let me be totally honest with you,” I immediately check to see if my wallet is still in my pocket. True authenticity isn’t a performance; it’s a pattern. You look for the “admissions against interest”—when someone admits they were wrong, or says “I don’t know” without acting like the sky is falling. Authenticity is found in the people who show their work and represent their opponents fairly, even when it ruins a perfectly good zinger.

Fiction writers too have to be “authentic,” which sounds like a paradox since we are literally paid to create fictional worlds and embellish. I think a novelist is being authentic when they don’t cheat. They don’t use a deus ex machina because they wrote themselves into a corner, and they don’t make their characters act like idiots just to move the plot along.

An authentic fiction writer respects the internal logic of their world building more than they respect the reader’s desire for a happy ending. If the “truth” of the character requires them to be a disaster, the authentic writer lets them be a disaster. They aren’t trying to sell you a lifestyle; they’re trying to describe a being, even if that soul is imaginary.

Of course, I still get fooled. Clickbait still works on me because I apparently really need to know the “one trick” that will fix my life. The key is to move on before the next headline informs me I’ve been using a toaster incorrectly for forty years.

Attention is our most valuable and unique asset. We “invest” our time and attention whenever we read or watch. Our attention is targeted by everyone. Attention, like respect, must be earned. Authenticity is one of the few currencies left that can buy mine.

Take “fine.” It can mean excellent, acceptable, punished, or quietly furious while smiling through dinner. I want words to be precise, but words have other plans. They wander off, change clothes, acquire new meanings, and return without permission. “Viral” left the doctor’s office for marketing. “Content” became an endless conveyor belt of clips, captions, and people gesturing at floating text. “Product”, once describing something specific, now seems to include anything used to cleanse, soften, condition, or exfoliate nearly every inch of the body.

New media speeds up the chaos. A phrase can be invented at breakfast, repeated ironically by lunch, become a meme by dinner, and be embarrassing by morning. Choosing language that will last can feel like labeling fish in a river: everything is moving, including the definition of “fish.” Emojis are not helping.

I also worry about readers. Reading requires focus, patience, imagination, and the willingness to stay with an idea until it becomes clear—or at least interestingly complicated. But our world is designed to divide attention into tiny, profitable pieces. A podcast offers music, movement, voices, and the promise of an answer before the next stoplight. A paragraph offers silence. It asks readers to imagine the voices, colors, pacing, and patience.

We are all curators now, sorting through more words than anyone could read, plus videos, alerts, headlines, advertisements, and opinions delivered like fire alarms. Deciding what deserves our attention is exhausting. Deciding what is factual is harder still. “Who do you believe—me or your lying eyes?” once suggested that experience was evidence. Today, even our eyes may need fact-checking. Discerning reality has become both a scientific field and a growing industry.

I have no simple solution. I want to preserve language’s beauty, music, ambiguity, and fullness without leaving readers outside my sentences holding a map, a flashlight, and a snack. My goal is not to defeat distraction or make language perfectly precise. It is to keep seeking balance: clear without becoming flat, rich without becoming exhausting, and honest enough that a reader chooses, for a little while, to stay. The gift of attention is the greatest compliment a writer can receive.

This isn’t about a “Plan B” escape hatch for when things go wrong; it’s about a “Plan A” for living your best life. By following a simple, organized process, you can turn that background noise into a clear vision for your future.

Step 1: Define Your “Best Life” Vision

Moving to a beach or a cozy mountain town is a great dream, but a dream isn’t a plan. To truly succeed, you need to define what your “best life” actually looks like. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’ll never find it.

A compelling vision should excite you. It’s not just about running away from high taxes, political stress, or bad weather—it’s about running toward something better. Ask yourself: what would make your life feel balanced, sustainable, and genuinely happy?

Identify Your Priorities

Start by ranking what matters most to you. Consider:

• Personal safety and security

• High-quality, affordable healthcare; good education for your kids

• A favorable tax climate and low cost of living

• A clean, beautiful environment

• Opportunities for a sustainable career or retirement

Test the Vibe

Once you have your list, give it some context. Check out expat YouTubers, read “Best Places to Retire” and “Best places for Digital Nomads” lists, and take virtual tours of countries that intrigue you. Its easy to spend hours virtually exploring new places, cultures and environments. That’s OK enjoy! Share your ideas with family and friends—not just to get their thoughts, but to see if your vision grows and improves with their input.

The Decision

Now for the final test: Does this vision grip you? Does it make you want to take action?

If the answer is no, that’s okay! You’ve gained clarity on your current life, and maybe that mental mosquito will finally stop buzzing. But if the answer is a resounding yes, you’re ready for the next step: narrowing down the specific countries and communities where your best life can finally begin.

Interdependence

I’ve learned that I thrive through close relationships. At first, that seemed to conflict with the spiritual traditions that warn against attachment. Over time I discovered they are talking about something different. Buddhism and Taoism encourage love and compassion while cautioning against clinging to people or possessions as the source of our identity or security.

For years I explored spiritual traditions that suited my independent nature. I found myself drawn to teachings that ask for understanding rather than belief. Buddhism and Taoism, with their emphasis on impermanence and interdependence, became lasting influences.

The more I understood interdependence, the more obvious it became that my life depends on countless others—from the people who grow my food to those who offer friendship, skill, care, and support. Gratitude follows naturally. Kindness doesn’t feel like self-sacrifice but simply the healthiest response to reality. Of course, kindness also needs boundaries. Becoming a doormat helps no one.

Fear and anger have their place. Fear sharpens awareness when danger is real. Anger can protect us or motivate needed action. Left unchecked, though, both cloud judgment and become emotional toxins.

Living at the edge of a Panamanian rainforest has reinforced that lesson. The jungle is beautiful, but it rewards awareness. Human relationships are much the same. They offer our greatest joys and, sometimes, our deepest wounds. We humans can harm one another in ways no other animal can—not only physically, but emotionally and psychologically.

Living with both compassion and caution requires attention. Whenever I’ve drifted through life on autopilot, I’ve usually paid for it later.

Science continues to reveal how deeply connected everything is. Beneath what we notice lies an intricate web of causes and conditions shaping every moment. Our senses reveal only a fraction of reality, while advances in computing, physics, and systems science continue to uncover patterns once invisible.

What fascinates me is that many Eastern traditions arrived at remarkably similar insights centuries ago through careful observation, meditation, and contemplation rather than technology. Different paths but often pointing toward the same landscape.

Impermanence

Impermanence is easier to understand because we live it every day. Our bodies change continuously. We age. Our eyesight fades, our hearing softens, our knees begin negotiating instead of cooperating. Everything we love changes as well.

Accepting this doesn’t make loss painless, but it makes life more honest. When we stop expecting permanence from an impermanent world, we suffer less from surprise.

Both Buddhism and Taoism suggest that wisdom comes not from belief but from recognizing reality as it is. Their teachings are invitations to observe and reflect, not commandments to obey.

I can’t claim to understand the Tao, the animating force connecting all, in any mystical sense. But I know what it feels like when life becomes less of a struggle. There are moments when striving quiets down and I feel less compelled to control every outcome. Instead of forcing life forward, I seem to move with it.

That doesn’t mean giving up or just drifting. My injured knees still appreciate exercise, and problems still need solving. It simply means choosing carefully where effort belongs. The Serenity Prayer captures it well: accepting what cannot be changed, changing what can, and learning the difference.

Family, friends, and even the familiar objects around me help shape the world I experience. Yet interdependence reminds me that I don’t have to earn my place in it. Connection isn’t something I achieve. It’s something I wake up to.

As I’ve grown older, my friendships have become less about security and more about affection. I value them deeply while knowing that separation and loss are inevitable.

Relationships need attention, generosity, and time. Awareness of their impermanence makes me appreciate them more, not less. Grief, when it comes, is simply love continuing after someone is gone. Remembering with gratitude honors both those we’ve lost and the life still before us.

The challenge, at least for me, has never been deciding whether to care. Caring comes naturally. The challenge is caring deeply while remembering that nothing stays the same—not relationships, not health, not certainty, not even the stories we tell ourselves.

I’ve learned that affection doesn’t weaken when it’s held lightly. In fact, it seems to grow stronger. Gratitude has become more reliable than certainty, and kindness more useful than being right.

So this is the path I keep trying to follow: stay awake, pay attention, laugh when I can, forgive when I can’t, and remember that we’re all walking each other home in some way.

For years I imagined I was searching for the path. Now I suspect the path was quietly following me all along, bending—whenever I gave it the chance—toward kindness.

An entrepreneur for decades. Happy to work with people but not for them. Willing to make mistakes, suffer failures and enjoy successes- doing so while engaging with an agressive business world, keeping an open heart to family and friends. Always alone but not lonely in a large group. Questioning to understand, when others are happy with consensus. Family, frequently by choice not biology, and a few dear friends keep me sane- or so I believe.

So what the hey? Not an introvert. Not an extrovert. Is a descriptor helpful? Will it help explain this life? Not to fit into a psychologist’s box of personality types. I would dread that. But something to help grok this neither fish nor fowl existence.

I recently came upon what is characterized as an “emerging” understanding of people with this personality- my personality. It is called an “otrovert”.

I can tune in and connect with another person’s mind one-on-one. But, I don’t understand how a group thinks collectively, even when immersed in that group. Group thought is uncomfortable; it’s frightening. Communal traditions, such as religious, national ceremonies and holidays feel uncomfortable and compelling. I am a friendly observer, not engaged.

So dear reader I thought I should explain. I am passionate about many things and just a keen observer of others (I think my observations are keen anyway.) My fiction and nonfiction posts come from the well of decades of this active otrovert life.

Substack embraces exploration and sublty as well as expression of insights that are compelling and immediate. Here I can subscribe and not ”follow” and hopefully be interesting enough to have subscribers. I look forward to engaging, meeting you here, where an otrovert fits so well.