According to Einstein, I might be damned.

I tried to consider everything (that matters) before I made the choice to pack up and leave. The first thing that is glaringly obvious I missed is the recognition that I will be going to a place with an entirely different state of mind. Some might call it less free-thinking, some might call it less liberal, some might call it a million other things. That’s not important.

Los Angeles has been a boon for my outside of the box thinking. In no way institutional, it’s more on the people I have chosen to interact with, and those I haven’t chosen to interact with (but have interacted with). There’s a clear line between what I find enjoyable and unenjoyable based on either circumstance, but both play their role.

Were this philosophical gap to exist, I see two ways to dissect it.

The first is to recognize my ability to carry this mentality when I depart. Wanting to question things bears an overwhelming sense of positivity. And while it’s a blanket statement, I’d be hard pressed to disagree with anyone who said there were less people with an against-the-grain mentality in Los Angeles than in Chicago. With enough strength and resilience, I could infect some with it, if only those on the fringe.

Granted, sticking such things into engrained individuals is not easy. I am not claiming the people in the Midwest are engrained, or that being engrained is a bad thing. I’m stating the possibility of it, and that based off conversations I’ve had, I feel reasons to be concerned for the friction that might exist. On more than one occasion, Chicago has been described to me as a city of people all doing the same thing. What would keep them from thinking in the same formation?

Needless to say, I don’t think in much of a formation. What preceded was the blessing, what follows is the curse.

The second way to dissect is that I’ll suffer (not soul-consumingly) by stepping away from a pseudo-mecca of forward-thinking. Los Angeles is like no place on Earth, first for Hollywood, which lost any luster it might have had for its over-inflated ego, and later for the entrepreneurship and unleashed spirit that followed. Of course, the bad sides of both are highly evident. But at its base, man is neither good nor bad. The two were introduced into the world at the same time, and could never exist without the other. There is nothing to use to defend LA or any other city, nor any reason to.

The second viewpoint says when I leave, I can (unsafely) assume my unbounded curiosity and assertiveness in chasing a dream will slowly shrivel and dry. Every part of my endless desire to create opportunity and touch people’s hearts will succumb to the undertow of passiveness. It will inject me, spread, and I’ll be of like kind. I’d like to consider this the pessimist viewpoint, but entirely possible. At the same time, it’s change. And I crave change.

Outside of the fact that I hate being anything but different (a deficiency more in pride than in action), what I’ve only now realized is I’ll be fighting a battle between both. In any likelihood, my enthusiasm for change and growth will be minimized in action by my company and surroundings, leaving the responsibility of maintaining and increasing it’s strength internally, and squarely on my shoulders.

Merits and dangers are equivocal, as the resistance to counter ideas will test my desire to introduce them. Even more, such opportunities might be few and far between. That doesn’t change the reward, which I don’t have to state..

Were it up to Einstein’s laws, the positivity and mental energy I can pass on to others will over time be lost (to me), until I can again funnel it from others. Conservation of Energy is either damning or refreshing in that regard, depending upon how you equate thought as energy. I personally believe thoughts are the energy that provide the power to change as well as create, making the two highly equivocal.

In which case, I’m damned.

Philosophy aside, there’s always option C: the mentality is a fragment of my persona that is bound to erode as I try to execute an armory of built up dreams and ideas that then fall flat on their faces for reasons tying only to me as a functioning individual.

Not that I believe in such a thing.