I think I am from outer space

finding my kind of people by gauging their reaction to this statement

My kind of people, was what Howard Roark answered in The Fountainhead, when asked what he was waiting for as he was forced to shut down his architecture firm because nobody could understand the philosophy behind his work.

In my entire read of The Fountainhead, that statement left the deepest impression in my consciousness, as I deeply resonated with and understood what he meant.

There are some people in this world whom I would call kindred spirits. It is not necessarily because we share the same interests or goals, but somehow we seem to exist on the same wavelength, the same spectrum of our existences.

A friend asked me the other day, hypothetically what are the traits of my ideal partner, assuming I wanted to be in a relationship. On a whim I answered, “The person loves politics, loves to read, and…”, I trailed off as I looked at my friend’s face wondering if I should continue answering his question, if he could accept my answer.

I decided to carry on, because I keep saying I want to be the change that I want and that means I don’t believe in having any skeletons hiding in my closet. So I continued, “…she must be accepting of my weird beliefs including the one which…

I think I am from outer-space.”

He laughed, genuinely amused by my candid answer. I was half-surprised that he didn’t give me that look. From that moment I felt like I was free, regardless whether he felt I was being serious with my answer.

It does not matter if I truly believed I am from outer space. The key lies in whether the other party is genuinely curious why I even made that statement instead of being outright dismissive.

You may be surprised to know that I have had a significant number of people who made the effort to find out why I would say something seemingly so outlandish. These are my kind of people, be it friends or lovers. People who have a natural insatiable curiosity about other people, a deep interest in this world, to have the humility to accept that the human race doesn’t know it all, that what is unproven may simply be because we don’t have the capacity to prove it yet.

Or in life, not everything needs to have scientific proof in order to be experienced or to exist.

There are other questions I like to ask during serendipitous conversations, like whether it is possible that something can be faster than the speed of light, or if you believe there are parallel universes in this world.

The answer is not as important as whether someone is willing to question or debate, to even have the open mind to conceive that something that does not belong to current reality can one day be real.

Everything is relative, as Einstein has proven in his theory of relativity. The world was once believed to be flat, so why can’t I be from outer-space? ;)

Author’s note: I write on Medium like I tweet, mostly unedited, unfiltered and unscheduled. I don’t want too much pre-publishing analysis to cripple my impetus to write. It is my aspiration to publish organically instead of methodically. It may mean less people would read, but if that means more words would flow out of me, I guess I can accept the tradeoff. Do I really believe I am from outer-space? Have this conversation with me when we have the serendipity to connect. I welcome philosophical debates in my inbox too.