The most interesting periods and places I've visited, lived in or worked at, are the ones where I got to know people - people that I care about. Sometimes too much, but never in vain. A son of two borders I am known as a foreigner on both sides. I rarely turned away from people coming into the world where I was living without giving a helping hand, for them to more easily be assimilated into their new surroundings. Better than most I know how one feels being the new guy, the outcast - the outsider. Because I also know that the common people, the so called "normal", can't understand what it means to start anew somewhere. Building a new life from scratch, sometimes because of fate, sometimes because of will. It is so easy to never leave the place where you are known and always lived. To stay between the walls of your own coziness, where everybody knows your name and home wherever you go, never alone, always safe. That's also why you can't understand what it means to leave it, even when you wished. Neither can you understand that getting an outsider in, is actually important for that person - outsider - that gave up the kind of safety net you live in. Opening up to newcomers can be an interesting way to discover a different world. No warranty of a good experience - but isn't life about it anyway?
For many years I helped newcomers to simply adapt and become part of the pack. In every company I worked, I did my best to get the "newbies" to be one of the gang and create the bonds necessary for a strong feeling of belonging, to where they lived and worked. Most of the time I got simply forgotten after this first period but it felt good to be there for someone. Being a little push for someone's back is always rewarding, especially when you start to know who you can help. Because most of the selfish souls around will never give anything back. Not to me at least, and don't misunderstand me. I've seen so many people simply being helped themselves but never helping others, even when it was at their reach, not costing a thing.
When I landed in Toulouse, besides for my own personal Agenda, I came for work. Since then no word came from the company that hired me on how things were going. I travelled 2000 km to be there, alone and going through several misadventures of my own, and none of my new coworkers or employers gave a damn. Nor most of the people I had heard for years telling me how cool it would be to have me back there and to do things together once again.
The problem of having lived as an adventurer all your life is that when you stop, the people that never moved can't understand you nor really get off their own routine and just get you in as the newcomer you are. Humans are mostly not bonding anymore, they come and go without looking to meet new people. Going off the charts or out of the path is a mental state that I can't reach to. Doing the same thing over and over, year after year, meeting the same people and never occasionally talk to a random stranger just to see what comes out of it, inviting a colleague and see if we actually have some fun together, or helping someone in need near us, instead of wiring 5 fucking Euros for a poor African hungry boy that will never see the money nor the food we send. And I am the insane? Indeed. Living among people like that I must be. Probably I will never stop wandering this Earth, looking for other interesting humans. I've crossed many of them during my life, all with lessons to learn and to teach. None were bound to safety net of normality. All of them took a dive at some point. All of them reached out for something else than what they were meant to do or to be.
