“Where are you going?”
“There and back. See how far it is.”
“How will you know when you get there?”
“I’ll be on my way back”.
“How will you know you’re on your way back, if you don’t even know you got there?”
“I’ll recognise things I saw on the way”.
***
There’s a small, (emphasis here on small) part of me that has a grudging admiration for people who seem to have a life-plan, or at least, a set of predetermined goals and a sense of direction which hurls them towards old age with a smugness that I just do not seem to possess. I’ve tried to muster the same enthusiasm to conform with the “ideal”, but at some point this always wanes and I find myself rejecting this more and more.
I don’t have a mortgage, nice car, 2.4 children, designer grass on the floor at home, abstract prints on the walls; I don’t run my own business, covet expensive clothes or label (that word, again: LABEL) people according to income…but the very people that do, make up just about 88% of the friends I keep or meet up with socially, which, of late, hasn’t been that often, I admit.
Turn the clock back ten or fifteen years and they never revealed these aspirations. If they harboured any such plans I was never privy to them. Yet, I don't envy them either, chasing what it is they chase. Caught in the mangle of life, small cogs in the greasy machine. Like us all. Isn't that the greatest con ever perpetuated? The big sting, with us, the marks, being played, being hustled? What should we call it? What label best fits? There - that word again. Label. Capitalism? Western living? The nasty, insidious ideal, the grand design which keeps us confined to our boxes. The genius of it all - how did they convince us to till the fields, to drag the plough, to plant the crops, to swing the scythe, to earn the money, to buy back the very food we toiled over? It's so damned clever I only wish I had thought of it first. I endeavour to escape it. To break the chains that shackle me to this. To stop selling myself short. To finally get there. I shall only know when I have arrived when I stop recognising things on the return journey.
“There and back. See how far it is.”
“How will you know when you get there?”
“I’ll be on my way back”.
“How will you know you’re on your way back, if you don’t even know you got there?”
“I’ll recognise things I saw on the way”.
***
There’s a small, (emphasis here on small) part of me that has a grudging admiration for people who seem to have a life-plan, or at least, a set of predetermined goals and a sense of direction which hurls them towards old age with a smugness that I just do not seem to possess. I’ve tried to muster the same enthusiasm to conform with the “ideal”, but at some point this always wanes and I find myself rejecting this more and more.
I don’t have a mortgage, nice car, 2.4 children, designer grass on the floor at home, abstract prints on the walls; I don’t run my own business, covet expensive clothes or label (that word, again: LABEL) people according to income…but the very people that do, make up just about 88% of the friends I keep or meet up with socially, which, of late, hasn’t been that often, I admit.
Turn the clock back ten or fifteen years and they never revealed these aspirations. If they harboured any such plans I was never privy to them. Yet, I don't envy them either, chasing what it is they chase. Caught in the mangle of life, small cogs in the greasy machine. Like us all. Isn't that the greatest con ever perpetuated? The big sting, with us, the marks, being played, being hustled? What should we call it? What label best fits? There - that word again. Label. Capitalism? Western living? The nasty, insidious ideal, the grand design which keeps us confined to our boxes. The genius of it all - how did they convince us to till the fields, to drag the plough, to plant the crops, to swing the scythe, to earn the money, to buy back the very food we toiled over? It's so damned clever I only wish I had thought of it first. I endeavour to escape it. To break the chains that shackle me to this. To stop selling myself short. To finally get there. I shall only know when I have arrived when I stop recognising things on the return journey.
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