“Be first and be lonely,” unknown.  I wanted to consider this concept.  There really are people who thrive alone.  There are others who need the presence of others.  I can’t say one is better than the other, I just know what feels right for me.  I have always been independent and my mind has always been active enough I didn’t necessarily need other people.  Plus I didn’t have the best relationship with trust either for myself of for others.  I learned to do a lot on my own.  I learned to trust my own feelings and instincts (and later forgot but that’s a different story) to the point where I knew that just because some things worked for others didn’t mean they would work for me.  I knew that I wasn’t the same.  And I often had the distinct feeling of being held back.  I grasped concepts quickly and I wasn’t necessarily able to move forward—my mother didn’t want me to advance early to a new grade because she thought I would have a hard time making friends.  I barely made friends with my peers as it was.  Plus I found I had an appetite for growth—I wanted to learn as much as I could.  And there was a period where I could retain anything—I mean, so much.  That isn’t to sound conceited by any means—I consider it a gift.  Now I am torn in so many directions, living so many different versions of my life waiting for something to settle that I am still stuck in this moment.

It isn’t being first that has kept me lonely.  It is being out of time.  It’s being unsure of where I am and what’s next.  It’s being uncertain in myself because I can’t get the useless degrading words of others out of my head.  It’s believing that I am not meant to advance because others need to and somehow my imperfections are something so terrible I need to prove over and over again that I’m worthy of letting them go.  When I’m out of synch, when I’ve held myself back, when I’ve doubted myself, that is what I’ve been feeling.  The circular argument, the waiting for others to make a decision for me, to determine if I was good enough to get what I was looking for.  I’ve never wanted to be first, that wasn’t necessarily the goal. It was about finding me and learning as much as I could to figure out who that was.  I became ambitious as a means to prove my worth, to erase the negative things and the “terrible” things I had done in my past.  But working with a group is frustrating—and then I came to find out that it wasn’t working with the group that was frustrating, it was being with the wrong group.  It wasn’t hanging out with friends that was a problem—it was hanging out with the wrong friends.  Food wasn’t the problem, it was habits and the wrong food.  Same with everything else. 

So I consider this a touchy subject because it questions to what degree ambition is a problem.  Being first for the sake of being first can cause issues.  It definitely can be lonely because we ostracize those around us for the sake of our own gain.  We leave people behind or we use them to climb to where we want to be instead of working with them to mutually benefit.  But when it comes to being first in our lives, that’s a necessary thing.  We can’t put the wants of others over our needs and expect them to make that up to us.  Some would say if you want to be first go alone, if you want to go far, go together (it’s an old Kenyan proverb).  It isn’t about being alone or together, it’s about finding the right thing that fits.  There are times we need the loneliness, we need to make sense of our purpose and we have to find what best fits for us, what feels right.  We can’t do that with other people’s opinions weighing on us or the distraction of things that we think we need to buy or accomplish.  We need to know ourselves inside and out and take steps that align with that.  So being first isn’t necessarily lonely and being with a group isn’t necessarily with good company.  We need to know ourselves well enough to know the difference and be confident enough to follow what feels right for us.  The rest is a matter of opinion.