Stay rooted and unreal

Be changed. Loose people, gain people, be a Dr Who, or like David Bowie, rather than remaining in your original manifestation of yourself; especially a parochial one.

Those people you’ve known forever, who’ve also been known forever, by you and your mutual local familiars, have a vested interest to maintain continuity of the status quo. It makes life less complex, safer, requiring less work, less imagination, and it generates less stress. But for every one of those reasons, it is not real. It involves diluting the potential of everyone in such a group. It’s an approximation that’s more like co-dependency than friendship. It’s a shared denial: the classic “Emperor with no clothes on”.

Of course, moving into the unknown is more pressing for some than others. Jimmy Somerville’s classic “Smalltown boy”, is still relevant, but was highly so on its release in 1984.