Castle-builder extraordinaire

You know, through the haze of relaxation after a long days work, a thought popped into my mind, and I can’t help but say that it stuck.  Mind you, this was one of those quickly fleeing ideas of dubious base, one of those notions where upon waking the only utterance that fits was “This seemed like a good idea.”

Not in way that college lets us bandy it about, more of a fugacious (quickly withering) potential conceit that perhaps we should turn our sights to one of the basic characteristics of humanity:  the complex.  Now, we all most likely have a couple, and for sure most can recognize it in others, but for salience sake I would like to say that the existence of our neuroses is tenuous at best.  As any $19.99 self help book would attest (I would imagine, at least) who we are is some metaphysical spirit self who nurtures all of our positive qualities, while living freely of the negative qualities that people gossip about at the water cooler.  Now I couldn’t help but think if who we are involves the things that we betray ourselves about (i.e. “I just need to show the world how ______ I am”) is who we are we are inevitably destined for failure.

What I want to propose instead is perhaps a better way of gauging who we are is by who we want to be.  I don’t want to insinuate that the dreamers who dreams have no root in reality are the compass by which we should guide ourselves, but for isn’t it in striving rather than correcting that we learn all the lessons we need to?  I don’t know if I am just way behind the cool kids on this one, but is the better barometer where you are going then where you have been?

I wouldn’t bring this up except for my further forays into the corporate and ‘real world’ have taught me that my coworkers and contemporaries like to occasionally treat themselves to a fit of self-abuse.  From the folks that I trained with (we dropped from eight to four in a mere three days; I would imagine that there is more to follow) to the old salt on 2 weeks notice, I heard quite a bit about how most endeavors of both my employer and the position I was learning were just some big corporate scheme and how this job would ruin me and how they couldn’t hack it and why everyone they talked to was a big ol’ tool shed and so on.  

What were they thinking about?  What was wrong with the whole big thing rather than what could be right about the same enterprise.  Turns out the next day I ran into some folk who like to think about where they were going to go…I heard nothing about how damnedly evil my employ was, rather how much sweet extra cash they were raking in.  And I too partook in that sweet cash.

So after much rambling, I guess I am trying to say that attitude is dependent upon aspiration and aspiration is the measure of that which we truly are and who we present ourselves to the world to be.  If you had to choose, would you prefer someone who wanted to fix what was wrong or one who might plunge (how headlong is up to personal discretion and inclination) into where he/she might be going?  I guess I think you should hug your friendly local dreamer or, equally as excellent in my book, hug the kid who knows what he/she wants:  I really believe that inspiration is created only through those who dare to look towards the future.  I don’t know, the whole not what we are-what we ought to be thing.  Now looking ahead I see some rest:  I want to try to fly somewhere in REM tonight – stay tuned.