CW 50

To no one in particular,

Making space for something else.

I met up with Soopal the other day. I don't know if I mentioned her to you before. She used to be a big wig on Earth as a Senate enforcer before leaving it all to come here and work with the less fortunate. She's a big wig here, too. She doesn't show it, but people know her. Different people know her. Powerful people. Powerless people. People who have chosen a different way of life. 

Soopal is the kind of person you shouldn't say no to because you never know what you might be missing. So, I never say no to her.  

Soopal was pulled into a project involving an outstation on a satellite and I jumped on the project with her. She's been tasked by a Senate Secretary to create a program to attract experts to the outstation in an effort to revitalize it. Years ago, The Mother, as she is known, petitioned the system for credits to develop an artificial satellite. Her and her followers dreamed of a new society more in harmony with space and all of its manifestations on planets and in the stars and named the satellite, Eosville. Before building the satellite, Corp. and The Mother struck a deal to leave Eosville be and let it develop its own system of governance based on harmony and consensus. Several solar cycles later however, the dream of The Mother and her followers has stalled and only a handful of people live on a satellite built to accommodate hundreds of thousands. Since The Mother's disappearance, the community is rife with competing factions and presents no real unity of thinking in terms of how to move forward. So much for living more in harmony with space!

Unfortunately for the people of Eosville, Corp.'s local system branch and Senate envoys from Earth are now taking a closer look at the satellite and sent a strong and, according to some, competent Secretary. Senate and Corp. are asking Eosville residents to make good on The Mother's promise of risk facing a re-fitting of the satellite for other purposes, including settlement and ration production. 

I've put in some time communicating with the people out there and I've spent some time talking to Soopal, but I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. I want to leave this place. I want to stop breathing in the poison. I want my children to learn the right things and eat better food. I want to stop being surrounded by colleagues who will let themselves be walked on and who will not hesitate to throw you under the bus. But it's likely that I'll be ending my career if I leave.

Anyway. Soopal. 

So she called me to the mess. And I wasn't disappointed. I met Nihir, a fierce forest man, and his wife, Mackenzie, who's actually from Earth but who converted and speaks the local dialect of Main better than Main nowadays. I came in mid-conversation and heard her say that someone had left Corp. to come and work with them in the primordial forest. "He made space for something else," she said. The conversation was moving on to something else, but as it did, I took what she said in: "he made space for something else."

Eanika says it isn't that deep, but actually, I find that there's something pretty profound about that thought: there's only so much space in your life and there are times when you will need to jettison the dead weight; there will be times when you have to prioritize in your life. It also means that if you hold on to stuff there may not be room for better stuff to enter into your life. Maybe it's not that deep. Maybe it's only where I am in my life.

People like Soopal, Nihir, or Mackenzie are out not so much to change known space--though they do!--but to sample everything that it has to offer. They have a flair for civilizational adventures and although they might spend a great number of solar cycles in one place their outlook on time is different than yours and mine: life and death are only temporary states; nothing is permanent. It's just another thing that they're doing. They hang out with other beings like them who want to do cool things, laugh, create, and take in the world as it is, not as it is packaged.

For the rest of us, that is to say, those of us who aren't quite sure whether death is a permanent state... Actually, if death is a permanent state, why wouldn't this be something to experience? Why waste precious life energy doing something you don't really want to do with people who don't really want to be with? I know the reasoning: one has to be prudent while one is capable of earning credits and anticipate the needs of little ones and old age. One must act as a "good father."

This is true. 

But it's also true that credits are only a part of life. We've made them out to be a significant part of life, but they don't have to be the only part of life, and not even the most important part of life. There are other things worth more than credits, as I've discussed elsewhere.

I have only so much time left. Not that I'm leaving right this second. But I am thinking about all of the things that I have yet to discover and experience. And I'm wondering if now is when I need to make space for something else. I did train long and hard to become a specialist and the expectation was that I would continue my specialization and train others to specialize. More and more it does seem however, that I am outgrowing being a specialist. Or am I truly coming into being a specialist--I don't know.

Space is my laboratory. I don't need Corp. to provide me a terminal and materials. I have my own.