No, not a wet brick. I didn't get a chance to take the camera out last week, so we're sort of on the dregs just now. If you look carefully you can see the drips from the downspout, though.Drips aren't what I want either, by the way. I have enough of those in my life already.
No, what I want just for a few hours is to be back in that part of life where singing Twinkle Twinkle really does make the stars come out.
I should mention before I get much further that I've been working with ECS kids for the past couple of days. It's fun, but it'll make it that much harder to go back to Grade Six mentality tomorrow.
The problem with wanting to be back in kindergarten, however, is that it's very much a case of misplaced nostalgia. All I'd have to do is bring it up with my family to find out in a hurry that I never was the ideal of a carefree child. I was bookish, I was neurotic (yes, already), and I couldn't walk properly.
Ah, the good old days.
Still can't walk properly, actually, but that's a completely different topic that will crop up here more often than you want to hear about anyway and I say let's leave it for now so that you're not prematurely sick of it.
And don't bother to even check the grammar on that last sentence. It'd make your eyes bleed.
I suppose what I want is to be something that I'm incapable of being. I'm not wired to do simple pleasure, really. I'm always too busy worrying about what the end result will be.
I have a bit of trouble stopping my brain, you see.
OLF.
But in the end, would I be happy if I could be something that I'm incapable of being? If something happened tomorrow that made it possible for me to stop and count dandelions without five thousand other things going on in my head, would it really be what I want?
I certainly wouldn't be me anymore.
Bit of a pickle, that. Can a person be happy if she's lost part of what makes her herself?
It's kind of like the whole bipolar thing. You hear of so many bipolar people who resist taking drugs to lessen the swings (and if anyone hasn't seen Stephen Fry's The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, it's worth a look. Not the easiest thing to find on this side of the pond, but there are definitely ways) because they're uncertain about losing such a large part of how they identify themselves.
Is happiness more important than self-identity?
No clue, obviously.
But I can't help wondering. In the end, maybe what I really want is the chance to try (for a day or maybe even an hour) being something other than I am with no consequences. Would I like it? Would it make me appreciate what I already have?
Dunno.
These posts almost always end that way, if you hadn't noticed. And then they say something like I need to get back to work.
I do, actually.
This got a bit weirder than I was planning it to anyway. I guess that's what a person gets for trying to post while carrying on a text conversation and eating lunch all at the same time.
Ok then.
Back to work.
Incidentally, how do you feel about facial hair?
2 comments:
Not so weird a post. I was an introverted child. I was not a joiner, mixer or talker. I read books. From about age five. That was fine when I was little. But when I became a teen and still preferred my books to a social life. My mother got a bit panicky. But then, my mother was a bit like me when she was little also. But once, I did step out of my comfort zone. In grade three I sang with three other little girls "twinkle twinkle little star" all five verses. The only problem being that the other two girls froze up. And I was there singing all alone.
"The Star"
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.
Then the traveller in the dark,
Thanks you for your tiny spark:
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.
In the dark blue sky you keep,
And often through my curtains peep,
For you never shut your eye,
Till the sun is in the sky.
As your bright and tiny spark
Lights the traveller in the dark,
Though I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
But moving out of my comfort zone was so exhilarating that I wish I did it more often. When I do, I feel petrified. But afterwards I feel magnificent. I highly recommend it.
I think, though, that there's a pretty big difference between stepping out of your comfort zone (which, I think it's fair to say, I do on an almost daily basis at work) and wanting to be something that you're just plain not capable of being.
One's taking a chance. The other? Futility, I guess.
Post a Comment