Two things

Two things occurred to me on the train this morning… I will try and put them here before they evaporate - apologies in advance for the stream of consciousness.

1 - Interesting things happen all the time. I was telling Giles last night in the pub about a couple of the things that happened to me in Columbia a few years ago, and this morning chatting to a friend on the train I mentioned the time I found a GPS device lying in the middle of the road.
This got me thinking… Sometimes one (or I) can fool myself into thinking that little has happened in my life recently, and I am always talking to people who think that nothing interesting ever happens to them, and that the party always seems to be going on next door and they are never invited. The truth is, however, EVERYONE thinks this. Everybody else’s life always seems more interesting, especially if you are to busy watching other people’s lives to notice all the mazing stuff going on in your own.
Last night, in the pub toilet, a bizarre non-organic noise (think tortured metal twisting just prior to reaching breaking point) briefly made everyone lined up against the porcelain laugh and we shared a moment of humorous solidarity in contravention of the normal ’stare straight ahead, do not engage anyone in conversation’ rules that normally prevail. That’s quite interesting.

2 - I was talking on the train about our reliance on electronic devices. R referred to this as ‘outboard brain’ theory.
This made me think about my ultimate goal of saying goodbye to all technology and living a simple life surrounded by a few acres of smallholding, and how much I envy people who already have achieved this more simple existence. Which is fine, but then many people who I look at as having achieved this ambition have done so by being successful in some field (sic) or another and accrued enough wealth to enable them to opt out. Which is weird, because the world is quite literally filled with people who live a ’simple’ life and would sell their soul for a chance to live in the modern, technologically replete world I inhabit. All of which makes me feel like a bit of a white-middle-class-arse. None of which makes me want to change my goals by the way. I guess it’s all about choice, and recognizing the fact that I am lucky enough to have been born into a society and period in time that enjoys health and prosperity. Maybe not exercising that choice is worse than feeling guilty about those who don’t have the choice in the first place.

Maybe I’m just getting old.

Written by exmonkey on October 4th, 2007 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on General.