He wrote in the third person when he wanted to make it less obvious about whom he wrote.  Of course, that sometimes made it more, rather than less, obvious.

Anyway, ….

He was a closet introvert who spent a great deal of time on reflective introspection trying to understand himself and to fathom the realities involving good and evil, all too often, apparently, sides of the same coin as interpreted by those impacted, either by their own actions, or by the consequences they experienced as a result of the actions of others.  He very much wanted to be good, as long as it was not too inconvenient, and he hated hypocrisy, at least in others. 

He believed that truth was an absolute but an obfuscated absolute, too often artificially complicated and muddled by those for whom truth was inconvenient, and that, sadly, included him.  He speculated on the nature of mendacity and came to various conclusions.  First, on the one hand, it was a natural human impulse when an imbalance of power existed, resulting in insecurity, or even when such an imbalance was only an inaccurate perception; but on the other, it was a sadistic expression of hubris on the part of those who wanted to be perceived as in the right, knowing that was not the case.  The latter tended to need quite a bit of cake in order to eat it, but without exhausting the supply available to them.  He wondered concerning the long term consequences of mendacity and came to conclude that it prevented solution to real problems, although perhaps masking the problems for a time during which they tended to metastasize, creating a more and more complex web woven of materials apparently based on singularity theory and thus, all but inescapable.  The conclusion?  Well, formulation of any real conclusion would require a lot more than merely two hands.

He also reflected on the consequences of boredom which he came to believe led to overeating and depression (among other things), and to ill thought out actions whose consequences were rarely positive.  Boredom seemed avoidable but cognitive labyrinths inexplicably blocked positive solutions, creating self-perpetuating negative feedback loops which required a great deal of discipline to avoid. 

“Discipline” doing something that needed doing when was not disposed to do it.

As seems obvious from the foregoing, his introspection tended to wander from subject to subject, sometimes involving rational links, sometimes objective, but all too often seemingly without rhyme or reason, or at least apparently without rhyme or reason.  Further reflection sometimes turned up profound insights, or at least what appeared to be profound insights.

He liked writing, perceiving that it provided a means of communication between the diverse aspects of his personality and nature, both concurrently and temporally, and disclosed the unreliability of memory, evidently something heavily impacted by what he referred to as legis murphiatum.  Writing seemed an essential means to maximize the potential of his introversion while minimizing the existential threat of boredom.

And, of course, he wrote in the third person when he wanted to make it less obvious about whom he wrote although sometimes that made it more, rather than less, obvious, about whom he wrote.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/