From Childhood to Forty: How We Learn to Leave the Present

 We are not born disconnected from the present.

Quite the opposite.

Childhood is perhaps the only time in life where presence is not something to achieve—it is simply the default state. A child does not plan joy. A child does not optimize experience. A child does not postpone living.

A child inhabits.

So what happens?

What transforms that immediate, sensory existence into the fragmented awareness of adulthood?

This is where structuring your novel across life stages becomes not just a narrative device, but a philosophical exploration.

1. Childhood — The Natural State of Presence

In early life, the world is not mediated by goals or expectations. Time is elastic. Moments stretch and deepen. A summer afternoon can feel infinite.

There is no concept of “later.”

This stage is important in your story because it creates contrast. It shows what is lost—not in a dramatic sense, but in a gradual, almost invisible erosion.

2. Adolescence — The Birth of Projection

Then comes the shift.

Teenage years introduce imagination, but also comparison. Identity becomes something to construct. The future appears—not as possibility, but as pressure.

This is also where early forms of escapism emerge. Not necessarily destructive, but indicative. The mind begins to wander away from the present:

• Fantasizing about who one will become
• Escaping into controlled experiences
• Discovering pleasure detached from relationship

The present becomes insufficient. The future becomes seductive.

3. Twenties — The Era of Construction

Adulthood begins with momentum.

First jobs. First independence. First real decisions.

But with this comes a new logic: life becomes a sequence of strategic steps. Every choice is evaluated based on its long-term return.

• This job leads to that opportunity
• This sacrifice enables that stability
• This delay ensures future comfort

The danger here is subtle: life becomes instrumental. The present is no longer a space of experience—it is a tool.

4. Forties — The Moment of Reckoning

And then comes the moment your novel begins.

The structures are built. The milestones achieved. The external narrative is complete.

But internally, something unsettles.

Because the question is no longer “What should I build?”

It becomes:

“Why does it feel like I am not inside what I built?”

This is where your protagonist stands—physically present, but psychologically deferred.

And this is where the novel finds its emotional core.

The Illusion of Arrival: Why We Keep Waiting Instead of Living

There is a quiet promise many of us born in the 1980s grew up believing: that life would eventually “settle.” That one day, after enough effort, enough discipline, enough planning, we would arrive. The house would be bought, the career secured, the family formed. And then—only then—we would finally live.

But something subtle happened along the way.

We learned to wait.

Not consciously. Not dramatically. But through a thousand small decisions. We postponed joy for stability. We postponed presence for preparation. We postponed life for what we believed life would eventually become.

And then, one day, we look around.

The house is there. The partner is there. The children are laughing in the garden. The mountains are still, eternal, indifferent to our inner storms. Everything is in place.

Yet something feels strangely absent.

The paradox is not that we failed to build the life we wanted. It is that we built it while being elsewhere.

This is one of the central tensions behind Leaving the Present: the idea that modern life, especially in Western Europe, has perfected the art of projection. We are constantly negotiating with the future—saving for retirement, securing mortgages, building careers—not because these are wrong, but because they silently replace the present as the place where life is supposed to happen.

We no longer live. We prepare to live.

And this preparation becomes endless.

Even our escapes reflect this pattern. The democratization of digital gratification—whether through entertainment, social media, or more intimate forms—offers us controlled, immediate experiences that mimic presence but require no commitment. No risk. No vulnerability. They are moments without consequence.

They are, in a way, the perfect metaphor for our time: experiences that feel real but remain disconnected from life itself.

And so we oscillate between two states:

• A future we endlessly construct
• A present we barely inhabit

The result is not tragedy. It is something quieter. A low, persistent sense of disconnection. A feeling that something essential is happening just outside our grasp.

What makes this theme powerful in a novel is not its abstraction, but its intimacy. It lives in small gestures:

• A father looking out a window instead of joining his children
• A partner noticing absence in presence
• A conversation interrupted by thought rather than noise

The illusion of arrival is not broken by failure. It is broken by success.

Because when everything is finally in place, there is nothing left to blame.

Only one question remains:

If not now—when?

From Independence to Shared Existence

 We often celebrate independence as the ultimate form of success.

To be self-sufficient. To stand alone. To need nothing from anyone. These are seen as signs of strength, of maturity, of control.

And in many ways, they are.

Independence allows us to build, to decide, to move freely. It protects us from disappointment. It gives us a sense of autonomy that feels essential in a complex world.

But there is a point where independence, if left unquestioned, begins to transform.

It becomes distance.

Not an intentional distance, not a rejection of others, but a gradual separation. A way of organizing life that minimizes reliance, minimizes vulnerability, minimizes exposure.

And in doing so, it also minimizes connection.

Your character lives within this paradox.

He has achieved independence. His life works. It is efficient, structured, coherent. There is a certain elegance in how he navigates it—no unnecessary complications, no emotional dependencies, no unpredictable disruptions.

From the outside, it looks complete.

But completeness is not the same as richness.

What is missing is not obvious, because it is not measurable. It is not something that can be quantified or optimized. It is something that can only be experienced: the presence of another.

Not just physically, but psychologically. The experience of being seen, of being challenged, of being reflected back to oneself through someone else’s perspective.

When this presence finally enters his life, it does not immediately feel like an improvement.

It feels like a disruption.

Because shared existence is inherently less controlled. It introduces unpredictability. It requires negotiation. It exposes parts of oneself that were previously contained.

It creates friction.

And yet, within that friction, something new emerges.

He begins to see himself differently. Not as a fixed identity, but as something dynamic, evolving in relation to another person. He discovers aspects of himself that only exist in interaction—responses, emotions, vulnerabilities that were dormant in isolation.

This is the transformation.

Not from loneliness to companionship, but from static identity to relational identity.

He realizes that independence was never meant to be the final state. It was a stage. A necessary one, perhaps—but not a complete one.

Shared existence does not diminish who he is.

It expands it.

It introduces complexity, but also depth. It brings uncertainty, but also meaning. It challenges his sense of control, but enriches his experience of being alive.

And in that shift, he discovers something unexpected:

That true strength is not in needing no one, but in allowing someone to be part of your life without losing yourself.

That the most complete version of existence may not be solitary, but shared.

Late Openings: When Life Surprises You

 There’s a quiet beauty in things that happen later than expected.

Not because they are delayed, but because they arrive with a different weight. A different texture. They are not wrapped in illusion or urgency. They are seen more clearly, felt more consciously.

And yet, we rarely prepare ourselves for them.

We are taught—implicitly, constantly—that timing matters. That there is a sequence to life. Study early, succeed early, love early, understand yourself early. There is an invisible calendar against which we measure our progress, and any deviation from it feels like falling behind.

By the time we reach our 30s or 40s, many of us believe that the essential parts of our story have already been written.

We stop expecting major shifts. We refine, we optimize, we stabilize—but we no longer anticipate transformation.

This is precisely the state your character inhabits.

He has reached a point where life feels defined. The main paths have been chosen. The possibilities have narrowed. There is a sense of completion—not fulfillment, necessarily, but closure.

And within that closure, something subtle has disappeared: openness.

Then, unexpectedly, life interrupts.

Not with force, but with presence.

An encounter. A conversation. A connection that doesn’t fit into the established structure. Something that doesn’t belong to the “past” he has already organized, nor to the “future” he had projected.

And this creates a tension.

Because accepting this new possibility requires questioning the entire narrative he has built. It requires admitting that the story is not finished. That the boundaries he believed were fixed are, in fact, permeable.

This is not comfortable.

There is hesitation. Doubt. Even resistance. It would be easier to dismiss the moment, to categorize it as incidental, to return to the known structure.

But something persists.

A feeling, perhaps. Or a curiosity. Or simply the sense that ignoring it would mean missing something essential.

And so, slowly, he allows the possibility to exist.

What makes this moment powerful is not the external change, but the internal shift. He moves from certainty to openness. From definition to exploration.

He begins to understand that life is not linear. That growth does not follow a schedule. That some of the most important experiences are not those that happen early, but those that happen when we are finally capable of recognizing them.

Late openings are not second chances.

They are first chances—arriving at a time when we are ready to receive them differently.

With less illusion. Less projection. More awareness.

And perhaps, more truth.

The Myth of the Solitary Life

Many of us grow up quietly convinced that we are meant to walk alone.

Not in a dramatic or tragic way. There is no clear moment when this belief takes hold, no visible fracture. It settles slowly, almost invisibly, through habits, small disappointments, and the subtle accumulation of independence. You learn to rely on yourself. You learn not to expect too much. You build a life that functions well enough without requiring anyone else.

Over time, this becomes an identity.

You are the one who manages. The one who adapts. The one who doesn’t need. It even becomes a source of pride—this ability to move through life without leaning on others. People admire it. They call it strength. They call it maturity.

But beneath that surface, something else quietly takes root.

Resignation.

Not a loud, painful resignation, but a quiet agreement with oneself: this is how things are. You stop imagining alternatives. You stop expecting encounters that might shift your trajectory. Life becomes something to organize, not something to be surprised by.

The character you are shaping lives exactly in that space.

He is not unhappy. That’s what makes it more complex. His life is stable, coherent, even successful by external standards. He has built something solid. But it is also closed. There is no room for the unexpected, because he has unconsciously decided that the unexpected no longer belongs to him.

Solitude becomes not just a reality, but a conclusion.

And then, something happens.

Not a dramatic turning point. Not a cinematic revelation. Just an encounter. A crossing of paths. Something almost ordinary—so ordinary that it would be easy to miss if he weren’t, at that precise moment, slightly more open than usual.

And that’s where everything shifts.

Because what changes is not the situation, but the story he has been telling himself.

He begins to notice that his solitude was never inevitable. It was constructed—layer by layer, decision by decision, interpretation by interpretation. And if it was constructed, it can also be deconstructed.

This realization is subtle, but profound.

It doesn’t erase the past. It doesn’t suddenly transform him into someone else. But it introduces a crack in the certainty. A possibility.

And possibility, once it enters, is difficult to ignore.

He starts to see that independence and isolation are not the same thing. That strength doesn’t require distance. That a life can be both self-sufficient and shared.

What he had taken as destiny reveals itself as habit.

And habit, unlike destiny, can change.

This is where the real story begins—not in the encounter itself, but in the slow reconfiguration of belief. In the way he allows himself, cautiously at first, to imagine a different kind of life.

A life that is not defined by the absence of others, but by the presence of connection.

From idea to publication — a structured process

 

✍️ From idea to publication — a structured process

Alongside my industrial and supply chain work, I have also developed a different type of project over the years: writing and publishing.

Not as a separate activity, but as another form of structured execution.

Publishing a book — whether on digital platforms (Kindle) or in print — follows a process that is not so different from industrial environments:

• structuring content into a coherent framework
• iterating and refining until it reaches a stable version
• managing formats, constraints, and distribution channels
• delivering a final product that is consistent and usable

Books such as “Un homme pressé” were built with this mindset:
from concept to final output, with the same discipline applied to any project.

Different domain — same fundamentals:
structure, iteration, and delivery.

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🤝 Final thought

Whether in industry or writing, I am interested in one thing:
turning ideas into something that works — reliably.

A different operating system — discovered later, applied earlier

 

🌍 A different operating system — discovered later, applied earlier

For most of my career, I didn’t have a name for how I was working.

I just knew I was wired to:

• break down complex systems
• see patterns where others saw noise
• anticipate risks early
• and turn uncertainty into structured execution

That mindset took me through:
✈️ Industrialization at Airbus
🚬 Global supply chain & NPI at Philip Morris International
🚆 Program & process governance at SBB

Across these environments, one constant remained:
I was at my best where complexity, pressure, and structure meet.

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🔍 A late understanding

Much later in my journey, I came to understand that this way of functioning aligns with what is often described as:

• ADHD (attention regulation diversity)
• Autism spectrum — without intellectual impact, often referred to as Level 1 / high-functioning / Asperger profile

Not as labels to define limits —
but as frameworks to understand strengths.

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⚙️ What it means in practice

It explains why I naturally:

• operate with high analytical depth and data interpretation
• focus intensely on solving complex problems
• challenge assumptions and explore alternative solutions
• perform well in high-stakes, structured environments

This is consistent with my behavioral assessment, highlighting:

• strong problem analysis and solution development potential
• high capacity for innovation and idea generation

At the same time, it also explains why I:

• prefer clarity over ambiguity in social dynamics
• favor facts over perceptions
• and build trust through delivery rather than visibility

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🧭 Reframing the narrative

There is still a tendency to see neurodiversity through a deficit lens.

But in many industrial, operational, and transformation environments,
these traits are not limitations — they are performance enablers.

Especially when:

• decisions must be grounded in data
• systems must be reliable and scalable
• risks must be anticipated, not reacted to

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🤝 What I look for

I thrive in environments where:

• complexity is embraced
• ideas are challenged
• decisions are based on facts
• and accountability is shared

Environments described as performance enablers in my own assessment:

• innovation-driven
• data-oriented
• high-energy, execution-focused contexts

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📚 For those interested

If this topic resonates, here are useful references:

• DSM-5 definition of Autism Spectrum Disorder (APA)
• WHO – Neurodevelopmental conditions overview
• Harvard Business Review – Neurodiversity as a competitive advantage
• CIPD – Neurodiversity at work

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Final thought

For years, I learned to adapt to systems.

Now, I focus on contributing where the system benefits from how I naturally operate.