they (the indefatigable they) say that no destination is achieved on the sole basis of one decision. rather, little turns and twists, choosing 'a' rather than 's', a bob when others weaved, leads one to the current state of affairs. try as you might to pinpoint how you arrived at this point in history, in this job, with this grim future looming, you will fail since there is no apex. or is there?
hope for a definite outcome is, subconsciously or not, what gets most people moving. in each of those pivotal moments if you could step outside yourself and define why you chose to step in that direction and not the other it would likely ring with the hope that the road you are tiptoeing down leads to peace, prosperity, and a general state of bliss. no one (or not many at least) chooses to end up homeless, friendless, purposeless. they are trusting that somehow this decision will lead them towards that elusive spectre of happiness.
so then when, as oscar notes, some of us gaze out of the gutter at the starry night and realise the slime in which we move, how do we embrace the new year finding that all the honestly intended bliss-bringing choices have ended us here, where we cannot see the way forward and we cannot look back to where we are no longer?
brenne says the wilderness is the only place of true belonging and yet when you are starving in the wilderness with paralysing analysis whispering that if this is as good as it gets can i please tap out how do you, lonely, find your way back to real trust and hope?
it's not, as she proposes, a dig down deep in oneself, a humanistic gospel of inner strength. if we are honest with ourselves we see that by ourselves we cannot make the sum of our choices achieve our desires. the world is horribly screwed up and only by realising that can we make the wilderness make sense.
i don't have all the answers on this new year. 2019. 18 years past the odyssey. a world that even science fiction could not have dreamt and one chock full of paradoxical dilemmas yet a world in which there still emerge people that hope against hope because they are made in the image of One who is the Answer. that destination, made out of small choices that transcend this life of hills and valleys, will watercolour the past and bring beauty out of the pain.
hope for a definite outcome is, subconsciously or not, what gets most people moving. in each of those pivotal moments if you could step outside yourself and define why you chose to step in that direction and not the other it would likely ring with the hope that the road you are tiptoeing down leads to peace, prosperity, and a general state of bliss. no one (or not many at least) chooses to end up homeless, friendless, purposeless. they are trusting that somehow this decision will lead them towards that elusive spectre of happiness.
so then when, as oscar notes, some of us gaze out of the gutter at the starry night and realise the slime in which we move, how do we embrace the new year finding that all the honestly intended bliss-bringing choices have ended us here, where we cannot see the way forward and we cannot look back to where we are no longer?
brenne says the wilderness is the only place of true belonging and yet when you are starving in the wilderness with paralysing analysis whispering that if this is as good as it gets can i please tap out how do you, lonely, find your way back to real trust and hope?
it's not, as she proposes, a dig down deep in oneself, a humanistic gospel of inner strength. if we are honest with ourselves we see that by ourselves we cannot make the sum of our choices achieve our desires. the world is horribly screwed up and only by realising that can we make the wilderness make sense.
i don't have all the answers on this new year. 2019. 18 years past the odyssey. a world that even science fiction could not have dreamt and one chock full of paradoxical dilemmas yet a world in which there still emerge people that hope against hope because they are made in the image of One who is the Answer. that destination, made out of small choices that transcend this life of hills and valleys, will watercolour the past and bring beauty out of the pain.
