Canoe
Some things we just can’t fight. Well, we can fight them, so perhaps it is best to say that with some things we just can’t win. I guess it is even harder when you don’t realize what you are fighting. It has taken me years of win-less fighting only to find out that most of that time, I was fighting myself. From Vermont to Philadelphia, then to DC and on to New Mexico, I always thought I was changing my life, changing the circumstances, and setting myself up for a brand new world. Then I’d fall into the same old habits, different people, the same personalities, and worst of all, the same me. I guess if you’re not growing, you’re dieing, and when you spend all of your time paddling your canoe up a flood, you don’t realize that you’ve been slowly killing yourself as you float downstream. You haven’t gotten to the place you wanted, because you spent all the time fighting a torrent of water. Life’s like that. When isolated from the world, out on a little boat, watching the stars or the clouds, the river can almost seem completely separate. A world independent from where we sit. I guess the river sees it differently, and here it is master. It isn't always worth it to fight the flow. Sometimes the best way to go upriver, is to get to shore and walk a different path.
Reminds me of the point that Tom Wolfe was trying to make in his book "I am Charlotte Simmons".
ReplyDeleteBasically his main character was so wrapped up in her "I am in control, I create my destiny" mindset that she didn't realize that her environment was what she was succumbing to and things were spinning out of her control. I'm not trying to be nihilistic, but is was interesting how Wolfe tied it all to this image of a rock that is flying in the air (all the while it thinks "I am said rock" whereas it does not realize that it has been launched and it will land somewhere irregardless of its will or say in the matter.
Its interesting how what you wrote and what Wolfe wrote both depict human will as sedentary vehicles that think they have sovereignty over the elements or whatever they want to change but rather reality is quite the opposite and outside forces and realities are changing them.
Hmm, I realize now the point of having people respond is not to critique what you write, but you have a way of getting one thinking so take that for what its worth my friend.