Leaving Kelowna, and Some Thoughts

It’s 9:45am now, a beautiful day. That’s one of the reasons why Kelowna is such a great resort town—the weather is warm & sunny (and dry) in the summer, which is great for touring around and have fun on the beaches of Okanagan Lake, and snowy (mostly in the mountain peaks) in the winter which means fantastic skiing (according to people I was talking to; I never skied).

I was sitting eating breakfast at Blenz Coffee, conveniently located on the north east corner of Water & Bernard. So peaceful. Then I had an idea why I’m enjoying myself so much.

Think about yourself for a second. At home. You lead your own life. You have friends, wives, husbands, girlfriends, family. The majority of us also have jobs, and there we have another array of people, some are friends, some are managers, some subordinates.

People, people around us. People we know, people we (mostly) like.

Each one of those people in our lives is a source of enjoyment one way or another. But also—and this, a lot of people neglect to mention—each of those people is a source of feedback.

Those feedbacks, whether we admit it or not, affect us. “No man is an island”; our values are gradually shaped and fine‐tuned according to feedbacks we get from our environment. True, people also have internal motives and characteristics that are independent of anybody else, but it’s the fusion of those “internal” principles and the feedback from our environment that makes us who we are; what we think; what we consider “good” and “bad”.

One main reason why I’m enjoying myself right now is because I am completely alone and receive hardly any feedback from people I know, and I know a lot of people. I am a stranger in wonderful places, watching the world go by as I am only taking a passive role in it. Being in such a position helps me better understand and further explore what it is that I want from my life; how I want to spend it; create completely independent connections and friendships with people I have never met in my life. In short, just being myself, looking at the world through completely transparent and colorless lenses, not masked by any filters such as work and personal life.

Most of the important conclusions and decisions I’ve made during my first 30 years of living were made when I am completely alone, disconnected from any frame and context. Those decisions help me strengthen my belief in what I value as well as my desire. It helps me think clearly and behave naturally, without being categorized by any means.

When writing in this blog, I would like to provide you, the readers, with my view of the adventures I am going through, completely unfiltered by any filter. I can’t, and don’t want to, do it any other way.

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Isaac