the crowd in the middle

I don't aspire to be above and in charge, but I don't want to feel as if I were below and powerless.... and I certainly don't want to be caught in the crowd in the middle. That would suggest a reason for the feelings of aloneness. I am not sure where those feelings were shaped (or who, or what influences directed them).

I want to get to where ever it is that I want to get to when ever that might be, and enjoy the pieces I choose to enjoy along the way and sometimes ponder them alone. (It sounds like, I want what I want when I want it even if I don't know what it is!- a two year old in a fifty plus year old's body??). Maybe I am afraid of being settled in too many ways and that holds me back from much, but I certainly don't want someone else defining any of it for me. And why does that bother me, unless I might be afraid that I am letting someone else, or lots of someone else's define it all for me?

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A Dean at another school who has earned the degrees I am finishing, worked in the field a long time and is a likeable fellow, was trying to explain a pet theory of his to me last week --that people are losers who give up quick, or they are climbers who always find new higher ground, or they are stagnating somewhere in the middle (darn, I wish I could remember his term for those in the middle)- clinging to safety and security - afraid to move forward because they might lose or fail. The simplicity of that bothers me, but way beyond the too simplistic, is the annoying assumption that people must be, need to be attempting to be or to get to somewhere else. But some part of me knows that the hanging on in the middle part- the get comfortable and stay there because it is safe bit, resonates with something that seems much too familiar.

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On a not so different note, I dislike competition in most areas of life-- too many people take it way too seriously.
And in a somewhat different direction, I think I like pondering the questions-- because I am not so very good at choosing single uniform answers.

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