Saturday 27 February 2010

Path Dependency & Manufacturing Fog

OK here is a messed up mind that was thinking in overdrive and tired from a work shift.This is a kinda freestyle written type blog, just exploring my own thoughts...

How you (could) feel...
There are days where you believe. You feel like the most significant person is you, especially when you wear a suit for a day. You feel like your hand is on the lincoln bible being sworn into office and the most important leader. You feel like there is a new hope inside you, and that you have the power to change the world. You knock down the barriers constructed on your path. It is your path and you own it. you 100% own it. You laid every millimeter of it, and you walk it with pride, and you feel like nothing could stop you, no barrier exists, and if they do, you walk straight through them.

With all those feelings I just mentioned, the irony is that, I feel like the more and more I walk down this path, I realise that in reality no one else cares too much for it, and more precisely no one cares for where it goes my path goes. I am fortunate enough to have people around me, of whom I care deeply for, and I know they care deeply for me, but as for the path I walk on... After all its yours, not theirs. I shall explain.

You walk a Path...
If we truly take a look at everyone around us. Imagine all there lives are paths, and they lead in a billion different directions, they cross (see cross-pathing) and they are random, events cause new directions, and all we can do is to continue to walk, someone confidently, sometimes in pain, sometimes running, sometimes crawling, sometimes skipping. But the reality is that we dont mind. We all occupy a space in our very small and insignificant existence (and very small we all are indeed) and as long as we dont impinge on others in a negative way, you are very much left to your own devices. What rings nicely is those common phrases we all hear like 'dont fix it if it isn't broken' and 'leave you to your own devices'. These are so so unbelievably true. You exist as a number, and as a statistics and as long as you remain in a normal distribution an insignificant statistic you remain. To come back to the 'leave you to your own devices' phrase, people care very little about your devices, and are very much focusing on their own. They are looking down at their feet, on their own path, wondering where it will take them? how they will get there, and what they should expect. They too have their own barriers in front of them, and they constantly think or ways to overcome those barriers, The world to me is just a giant mixture of paths and walls, and we all play the same game. We all follow our own paths, most have no idea where it is going, and to be honest most really don't care. As a great and admired woman in my life once said 'it is the means, it is all about the journey, and not the ends'. I think we walk in such a way that we can only see the means directly in front of us, and at most we have a idealistic view of the ends. At the very very most, the ends is an ideal. I realise recently that you are set to your own devices, and you often stop and compare paths of others, you mold and shape friendship to mimic people's in recognition that your paths are of similar suit and direction (sad truth). Despite all of this, I do not take the egalitarian approach and I go against pre-existing ideas of morality by not helping think 'I must look down at my own two feet, and I should look down my path'. I genuinely believe that my family as a whole takes a very honest and intelligent view, and takes life for what there is. They accept the basic premise that, if you work, and you live from work, you do well in life. This is a concreted idea instilled into my head time and time again, by my mother and particularly by my grandparents...well the cynical and curious side of me says...what is that? Is that a realistic tone of those far more experienced in life than me? or is it the sign of a cultural norm firmly embedded into a cliche and institutionalised family unit? Is it a case they simply know more about life than me, or do I see something different to them. Something out of the fog.

The Fog...
England is unquestionably a foggy place at times, and we manufacture it, time and time again. We I don't want to manufacture, and people should not manufacture, people should not accept the weather for 'just how it is', and aspire to something greater than the sum of their parts of which they were born into. You should show everyone what you can do, and aspire. I aspire to something far better than I have walked down. I jump barriers, mostly and admittedly not with intelligence, but with hard work. I just live in the hope I learn and acquire knowledge on the way. I live without the conventional digger, or saw, but with a pen and paper. The weather is grim, and remains grim. and the rain gets heavier. (In advance, I apologise to any English students, whom are far more knowledgeable on this subject matter but...) It was Shakespeare who often cited the forces of nature are interlinked with actions and behaviours of the common man, I think he never really intended it as a literal play convention and rather as a deeper analogy. Questions pour into my head like why don't you accept the weather? Will accepting make you simply humble, or will it make you unfulfilled, or perhaps unhappy, and once again out of place. I believe that with a little more life experience points people can reach those aspirations and in order to do so they must give it their all, you must realise that it is something you want, you must accept you will often be left to your own devices. We are all shapers of our own life, and we must carve out our lives out of the materials you have been given, fog, rain or shine. I have always believed life is a game, and too often people have jumped through the hoops, learning the rules of the game, and playing by those rules. For me, It has got me so far, and now perhaps its time we, myself included, roll our own dice, and play our own game, and stop being so dependent on the path behind and worry about the way our life will be shaped in the future

The end...

x9

1 comment:

  1. Well, Forest Gump says that life is like a box of chocolates but hey, your definition is good too. Nice work bro.

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