I found via bucurenci.ro Cosmin Alexandru's article. I jotted down a few quick thoughts.

This is a great article and manages to tell us the story of an eventful life in a few sentences, bringing forward precisely those events and circumstances that matter not just to the author, but to the reader as well. Meanwhile, I can’t help noticing, when reading such a powerful piece, how unsatisfied I am with my own writing style. It seems that I try to cram too much in too few paragraphs and as a result nothing flows naturally. My ideas waste too much time in my brain and by the time they come out they’re old and dehydrated. It’s almost the same sensation as experienced when I watch a tape of my own stiff acting.

Then again, I can cry for me (Canada) on more private forums. Here, let’s focus on CA’s Force field. I’m only going to react. I’m not trying to write something good here, just my first rxn so that I can review it later. Again, I suggest you read the original (second link in sources), what follows is probably anticlimactic. Also, I’m using Google for translation so what follows is probably not what he meant to say (not enough time).

My relationship to power began in force. Immediately after the revolution I reached the top of the pyramid of the college student movement where I organized strikes, demonstrations, I fired teachers, I restructured the curriculum, I negotiated with government honchos. I wrestled with the power to change most, quickest and deepest. I was 20 years old and powerful enough to change destinies.

I’ve never had the power bug. I grew up in a one-parent home, mostly by myself, in full control of my time. Other children’s parents would always give me as an example to their sometimes older kids and when they’d go in a “no kids” holiday, they’d ask me to keep an eye on their child. The fact that I was taller and went to school more than 1 year earlier than the kids my age. It’s probably my height that caused me to get elected once as “row commander” and I hated it. This was a stepping stone to becoming “class commander” and I did my best to get out of that, which meant talking my desk-mate into taking that role. We “split” shortly thereafter, he had become insufferable. He’s now married, has one child and is one of the best lawyers of his generation. Long after I was to learn that the mere act of placing someone in a position of authority decreases both their IQ & EQ by at least 20 points, which for many means halving these quotients.

Most of the time I wanted to just observe and keep a low profile. I saw leadership as something to run away from, especially when it meant hypocrisy and paying lip service to “comrade To’ar’shu and his distinguished consort”.

In high-school I felt no connection to most of the other students. I ended up in a class with around 4 or 5 friends from primary school, including a former desk-mate, but by then we had grown apart and we felt we hadn’t much in common. My one-parent home had become a no-parent home: I shared the fate of many other kids whose parents fled to better (strawberry) fields, where grass was greener and there were fruits to pick. Except that fields were white and the air was too humid, but those are details. What matters was that I now had more freedom than I could possibly use, especially of the stay in the morning line-up to buy milk kind. I was drowning in adult responsibilities, but I was too proud to admit that I was in over my head and besides, even if I were to ask for help, there was nobody to hear me: the kids I was playing with had nice, middle aged mothers who were mostly wiling to help me in all kinds of ways, none of which was actually helpful. These new found responsibilities distanced me somehow from my peers. I had to make money, I had bills to pay and all they were thinking of was to skip classes to watch the poor quality sex ed tapes from the West being shown in all cinemas which were now masquerading as porn. Emmanuel 22 1/2 was big, I thought it was dull and boring.

I coveted one single “position of responsibility” during my time in Romania. Since primary school, I used to spend all my winter holidays at a chalet at the top of the mountain in Poiana Brasov, Cabanita. One season, Mr Gliga asked me if I wanted to be monitor in the next one and it didn’t take me long to accept. But Cabanita burned down to the ground that same year or the next, Mr Gliga died shortly of heart complications and with them some of my most treasured memories of my childhood. One year later I left for Canada.

Sources / More info: bucurenci, CA-mah powez