connect the dots...

examining humanity again... and it seems that there is something in these thoughts that is linked on some important sublevel just beyond my recognition... something about the collective unconscious of humankind, perhaps... i dunno... give it all a spin, see what you come up with.

it is not our greatest trials that tax us beyond our strength. in fact, we would be largely unaware of the power and potential of our strength were it not for these circumstances of greatest tension. they are the times that throw into starkest relief our resiliance, our determination, our vitality. without them, we would languish in mediocrity, and seldom be aware of how meaningless we had become.
but, in almost tragic irony, while it is the giant opposition that makes us overcome, it is the menial trivialities of life that often overcome us, consume us, waste us.
consider goliath... how confidently, how courageously david overcame him. huge, looming, and altogether manageable. then consider two other things... how it must have looked from goliath's perspective as an insignificant gnat toppled his might, and how mundane, by comparison, the things were which actually troubled david. he could handle a giant because it was obvious. but lust, depression, insecurity, abandonment... these things haunted him, sapped his strength, poisoned his life. a hurricane might tear the roof off a house, which can be rebuilt in a day... but a long, persistant wind will eventually erode a mountainside, and the will needed to live on it.
i love the challenge of a good fight, of a battle of wits, something to which i can rise to find myself more formidable than i might have thought the previous day. but meanwhile, i'm being slowly killed by all the petty necessities of this world... saving money, finding a career, fixing my car for the umpteenth time just to find it working just as miserably, trying to be myself in the light of opposition, trying so diligently not to disappoint anyone, working within the confines of the way everyone else thinks because that's the only way to get ahead in a society that doesn't really belong to me...
this. is the real enemy.

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rules are for those with no intuition. or perhaps, those who have not yet learned how to harness it's potential. children are told to look both ways before crossing the street. because they don't have the patience for evaluation, because they lack the interest in judgment, because they simply haven't learned the reason, so the rule must be given as a bandaid until the concept is understood. once they know that traffic can kill them, the admonition can be dispensed with. but we must not, as a society, live on this surface level... we must, at some point, abandon the lid in favor of the contents, or they will go bad in the back of the fridge. and people are, by and large, more reluctant by the day to abandon the easy comfort of a few rules for the effort of digging beneath them. that's how fundamentalists are born. that's how religions are destroyed. that's how philosophy and spirituality and understanding and free thought are ruined. we're living on guidelines, and forgetting why they were ever put in place. and every time someone does something without knowing why, just because it's the way to do things, we lose something.
i popped some popcorn the other night, and even within the already extremely comfortable constructs of the microwave and the bag, the guy at the table in the hotel kitchen told me to just press the popcorn button and it would take care of the rest. and it did. and the concept that, at some point in the future, all we'll ever have to do to get popcorn is press the popcorn button, makes me sick to my stomach.

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sometimes, everything i see seems so important. not just important, imperative. vital. common junk takes on meaning that it doesn't have... like the close-ups in csi, when they want to draw your attention to a specific detail that bears on their investigation. it doesn't matter what it is... a paper cup, a chip bag, a word on a poster, a few twigs scattered on a front lawn... it all stands out, everything screaming for my deliberate and individual attention.
but everything is certainly not important... and thinking this way serves as pure and dangerous distraction... when everything is imbued with such necessity, what is truly critical escapes in the shadows cast by too many figures on the stage. not to mention the sense of power it gives... seeing everything for it's potential instead of what it truly is... it's like knowing that everything in the world revolves around the strange hum you just heard from a sock on the highway... it's absurd, but compelling, and all but impossible to resist, because that current, that heady vibration, regardless of the items to which it chooses to affix itself in your eyes, is real, and beats beneath the very core of humanity... it's the thrum of the voice of mankind, it's the world's potential, and feeding on it makes one feel nearly omnipotent. a dangerous and stupid way to feel, but exhilirating when it happens.
i want things to mean something when it's important for them to do so. that way, and only that way, will i really make some kind of progress.

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sooooo... i'm not sure what any of that means, i'm just musing... although the bit about the popcorn really does terrify me... what if we all become like that some day? just press the "fill in the blank" button, and there it is? my lazy nature yearns for it, but at the same time, it's repulsive to every part of me that still thinks, which, on some days at least, is a goodish percentage.

anyway, have a good one, and perhaps i'll be back sooner than later, for once.