Thinking too deep.

MikeSz · 07-12-2008, 21:27

Having just returned from a trip abroad, one which was not a vacation as such but one where I had opted to keep my eyes and mind open, I have had the following musings. Just in case anyone isnt on my wavelength, this is and has been purely an exploration.

What was reality but a short while ago, tactile, vivid, is now harshly relegated to the vault of memory too soon to be eroded by the parasites of our minds, their labours a patchwork quilt of remembrances and desires we failed to realise.

Happiness isn't about getting what we want, its about appreciating what we have.

A song once proclaimed 'you live 100 years' at 30 you're 33.3% the way there, considered as a progress bar on a cold computer screen that notion becomes penetratingly terrifying and depressing in the extreme. There are only so many junctions one can go through, only so many times one can miss one's stop and place half naive hope that you will yet be led to your destination. More and more, we see the signs, the stops, the opportunities as we pass them from our window of veiled comfort, a barrier almost of not only self generated emotional protection yet also an excuse for the pre-emptive inevitability of our apologies. That one would realise we should have departed and changed at the stop just passed and with each glimpse of that which has passed, the more resonate the understanding, the jester dances and plays our tune of ignorance. The further down the line we travel, the harder it is to correct our wrong train.

Lovers leave, friends annoy you, family mess with your head.

You're born alone, and you'll die alone. No one can go with you and the clock's ticking away, yes it may be in the background, but its there. Its in your alarm clock, its when you register for work, its when you get off, its when you look at your supermarket receipt, a stealthy reminder that you've made choices and they're being logged. In the meantime a voice inside my head hammered at the thickness in my skull, fatigued and weary it offers its only, painful and unwelcome advice “you know your path, you know its greatness and you know its risks. Why wont you walk it? What are you afraid of?”

What happens to us then, the age old question “what if?” that sentiment of the brave and the foolish, or worse the brave, the wise and the foolish combined when in a moment of madness one can no longer tolerate the fragile bonds of the present, those things that are true but so easily changed. What happens then when a man steps up and with peace and resolve stands on the cliff, faces the wind and declares in that most powerful of voices, that one to himself, that this is where the line is drawn. That from here the rules are dispensed, from here reality shall be grasped - not sought, realised - not dreamed, grasped - not envied. There is no humility greater than to be met involuntarily with one's own humility, no resolute more determined than the sense of fading prospect.

One may call it a creed, some may call it a determination, some more crude may call it a kick in the kiester. For most, we will still have to ponder and let the battle between our Demons and better Angels lead us out where it will. Some may chose to change the boundaries of the battle, to lean a hand inside that big glass tank of a simulated battle that has long lost interest to all except its builder, and pick a winner by flicking over the captain of choice. Im not quite there yet, though I've already contemplated the lid to this particular tank.