My Rebellion Against an Unhinged World
I have long suspected that I am, at my core, a misfit.
Not in the tragic, tortured way of a brooding artist in a turtleneck—though I do appreciate a well-placed existential crisis now and then—but in the way of someone who refuses to settle into the neat little boxes the world tries to hand out like factory-made coffins.
Instead, I wander. Not just physically (though my tendency to drift from city to city, coffeehouse to coffeehouse, and bookstore to bookstore could be a case study in nomadic aimlessness), but mentally, spiritually, and intellectually.
Some people plant roots. I follow random breadcrumbs. But if being a aimless misfit means rejecting the dull certainty of the predictable in favor of the wild paradoxes of the universe, then so be it.
Like my Taoist predecessor, Zhuangzi, and that enigmatic Greek philosopher Heraclitus, I believe in the wisdom of wandering. I believe that the world is best understood not by pinning it down with rigid dogmas but by following the currents, questioning assumptions, and remaining blissfully open to surprise.
The Great Wandering Misfit Tradition
Zhuangzi, that ancient sage of whimsy, had a knack for flipping reality on its head. One day, he dreamt he was a butterfly, and upon waking, he wondered…..was he Zhuangzi who had dreamed he was a butterfly, or was he a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi?
Most people would have rolled out of bed and moved on with their day, but Zhuangzi lingered in a Zen koan of a riddle. This, I suspect, is the misfit’s way—to sit inside the question rather than rush to an answer.
Heraclitus, meanwhile, was busy telling people that you can’t step into the same river twice. The world, he argued, is in constant motion, a grand swirling dance of flux. Everything is always shifting, slipping through our fingers just as we think we’ve grasped it. For most, this is terrifying. For me? This is liberating. It means I don’t have to stay in one place, one mindset, or one life path for too long.
Both of these sages wandered in their own way—Zhuangzi through the boundless landscapes of imagination and paradox, Heraclitus through the ceaseless currents of change. And here I am, centuries later, walking in their footsteps, coffee cup of dirty chai in hand, trying to make sense of a world that resists being made sense of.
The Art of Wandering with Purpose (or Something Like It)
I have found that when the world grows too loud, too rigid, too certain in its chaos, the best response is to move. Not necessarily away, but through.
Sometimes this means taking a long walk without a destination, letting the streets pull me wherever they please. Other times it means reading a book about something I know absolutely nothing about—quantum physics, obscure medieval poetry, the secret life of eels—just to stretch the boundaries of my mind.
Often, it means striking up conversations with strangers who, at first glance, appear to have nothing in common with me, only to discover that we are both humans wrestling with the absurdity of existence.
Wandering, both literal and metaphorical, is how I gather ideas. It is how I figure out how to make the world a better place—not by forcing solutions but by stumbling upon them in the wild.
I once had a conversation with a barista in Chicago that led me down a rabbit hole of research on urban gardening. That research turned into a fascination with food justice. That fascination turned into an article. That article ended up inspiring someone to start a community garden. All of this because I happened to be in the right café at the right time, willing to let curiosity lead the way.
If I had sat at home, staring at a blank screen, trying to manufacture a brilliant idea, I would have ended up with nothing but a headache and a sense of existential dread. But by wandering, by opening myself to the randomness of the world, ideas found me.
Navigating Paradox, Mystery, and Uncertainty Like a Pro
The world is, to put it bluntly right now, feels like an absurd mess. It is a place where billionaires hoard enough wealth to buy entire planets while others struggle to afford a meal. A place where the loudest voices often have the least to say. A place where no one actually knows what they’re doing, but everyone is pretending they do.
And yet, it is also a place of breathtaking beauty, of serendipitous encounters, of people who surprise you with their kindness and resilience. The trick, I have learned, is to hold both truths at once.
Zhuangzi would say: Don’t resist the absurdity. Play with it. Flow with it. Laugh at it.
Heraclitus would say: Stop expecting permanence. Embrace the change.
I say: Wander through it. Ask questions. Stay curious.
The moment we stop being curious is the moment we start dying inside. Curiosity is what keeps us moving, growing, evolving. It is what allows us to see past the surface of things, to dig deeper, to connect seemingly unrelated dots into something resembling meaning.
And so, I keep wandering. I keep listening. I keep wondering what I might discover next, who I might meet, what strange, beautiful, frustrating, magnificent idea might find me around the next corner.
I may be a misfit, but at least I am a wandering misfit, and in a world that often seems lost, that feels like the best possible way to be.
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When you walk along a street aligned closely to the east-and-west and when the wind is very quiet, yet not completely still, at certain times of day when the Sun is low you see all sorts of little motes, of dust, of feather, or a seed; a gnat, mosquito, fly, or bee. You see them as the sunlight glints into your eye. So, too, ideas are floating all around you. Every breath must inhale dozens, but we breathe on, breathing those ideas right back out again unaware, unless you let one linger.
Fellow wandering misfit, I completely understand this. Being curious to life is what keeps us flexible and moveable. Be curious like a child and wonder at the beauty of the world, not getting caught up in the chaos, just curious.