I like to think that I have the world figured out and that you sometimes shouldn’t believe everything you see or hear and I don’t get sucked in (too much) because of advertising but human nature is to be selfish (perhaps there is a gene for it) and even I forget that sometimes what I believe or perceive may not always be how it was intended.
I recently went and saw the musical Wicked (this was an excellent production and I have been singing “Wonderful”, “Popular” and “What is this feeling?” far more than i should). I guess you could say the theme was along the lines of misconceptions. Why is it that we think what we think? and are we always right? It definitely makes the world a much harder place to understand because suddenly you might have another option, another choice to consider.
Now the circumstance that brought this line of thinking on for me was what started out as a normal conversation which developed into me getting upset and yelling out out something which I believed to be true (I also said that I need therapy, so clearly I was not happy). Upon reflection and a much calmer conversation I was given a different version of the story, one which I had never even thought of. Whether this version of events is true I couldn’t say but it did enough to get me wondering when I had become selfish enough to think that this person might not want the best for me? If there were now two sides to the story who is right or how do you come to agreement or what do you do if you can’t? It’s that whole scenario of the victors write history.
It’s given me a bit to think about and maybe it will help me be a little less sensitive about certain things because I have now aired those things I bottled up but then again that could just be who I am but then again how I see myself may very well be completely different to how someone else sees me.
Sometimes too much thinking is where the problem lies, if we could just say this is right and this is wrong then we would all know where to stand when the line in the sand is drawn. And if we gave up thinking we might all enjoy ourselves a bit more because we wouldn’t be spending all our time worrying an considering things.
Sometimes I think I just ask to many questions.
“ Professor: I’ve finished fine-tuning my ‘What if?’ machine. It can answer any ‘what if?’ question accurate to within one tenth of a plausability unit.
Leela: That’s so plausable I can’t believe it.
Futurama, Season 4, Anthology of interest
I had moment yesterday, nothing special, nothing particularly striking but it got me thinking and gave me a bit of enough shock to not sleep well over it.
I saw something from way back when and it brought me back to a few years ago when I could have walked a different path had I just made a different choice. I suppose now it is of no consequence but I am guilty of this as I am sure most people are, I sat and wondered and imagined what if?
It’s like that episode of Futurama where the professor fine-tunes his “what-if?” machine and right at the end you find out he really wanted to know what if he invented the fingerlonger. Do we ever stop wondering about how things might have been?
Whether that particular point in each of our lives was one of joy, a moment of embarrasment or guilt at something we may or may not have done to or for someone and if whether we have shut it from our conscious minds that we almost forgot it was there doesn’t really make it go away. So how do we learn to live with it and live in our present and not wonder about what ifs and maybes?
I wonder…..
“ If work were so pleasant, the rich would keep it for themselves.
Mark Twain
Do you remember when you were little and you had grand dreams (now delusions of granduer) about what you wanted to be when you grew up? I remember wanting to be a teacher, then a journalist, then I got into sci-fi and then I wanted to be an astronaut and when I had finally decided I really didnt know what I wanted to be I settled on Queen of the universe, a job position not currently filled (there is after all only a MISS universe contest) and possibly one I would never dream to fill.
I also remember in high school being told to pick a study stream based on what occupation I intended on getting into after school and not really being able to pick something other than what I was expected to pick (thank you parentals for high expectations and damn me for wanting to please people too much.) I chose my course of study and I followed it right through uni and out the other side and not really into something I imagined doing. Then again I had never had any concrete visions of what I wanted to be doing.
Currently I am having one of those occupational (in a literal sense) dilemmas where I know I am destined for something big or at least something that I excel at and makes me genuinely happy to go to work, but it eludes me. I don’t have any illusions that everyone is happy at work all the time even a ice-cream taste tester (which would be a great job), I am pretty sure ice-cream headaches and an expanding waistline make that job a hard one to handle at times.
It also makes it a little hard deciding what you really want to do when you are not sure how it will turn out until you try it. Imagine training for years to be a ballet dancer and becoming so great that you got to perform for hundreds of people instead of small groups and then suddenly you developed stage fright? And all of you out there saying “surely you would know before because any sort of performing makes you nervous?” its an example and the best I could think of when I havent had any lunch.
Then it begs the question are we also supposed to do get the jobs we want? I really don’t think anyone imagines being the person who changes the sanitary bins in the ladies toilets but someone has to do it right?
