oswulf babbles.
Mar. 27th, 2015 02:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oswulfThere is a war. Always a war. And the details change. The sides change. Everything changes but the war remains. The same war fought over and over and over. And we mock the people fighting over the things and using the excuses that we did yesterday, mocking their backdrop even as we continue the same behavior. Scenery doesn’t change the nature of the beast.
Doctor King said that the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice. And I believe that—usually. But as the issue of the day passes into yesterday, as we feel so superior to our ancestors over classism or papal indulgences, slavery, genocide, mutilations, women’s suffrage, anything. Time and again, individual wrongs evolve from a given to heatedly contested to horror-inducing and disdained. And yet the same battle will rise and play out again.
Well here’s a pattern. Very different things but parallel… wossname… way I am sort of thing.
Need to make better food choices… so stop an unhealthy choice. But if you don’t *replace* it with something, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
And now unhealthy monkey choices. But if I just cast them aside, if I stop unhelpful ‘zone 4’ activities but I don’t REPLACE them with anything… I’m still not getting anything zone 1 or 2 done—just… setting myself to stumble across some other zone 4 activity for the monkey to play with.
Random typing. Throwing thoughts onto paper. Thoughts of at best questionable value. Is there any reason to keep it? And if I do… where? And what chance that I ever even look at it again? So often writings and stories and whatnot become part of some mess, looked at only while cleaning & faced with the decision to keep or discard… then again ignored until the next cleaning after that.
Trigorin (I am almost certainly spelling that wrong) speaks of the trials of writing. Feeling that he should put forth about “life and science and the rights of man” and worrying that he is only a scenery painter. I see that. I want to write stories—at least I think that’s what I want. Flights of fantasy, tongue-in-cheek repartee awash among fantastical worlds. But then… I want to write meaning. Perhaps addressing cruelty and compassionlessness is the fuel I need, perhaps I simply despair of value in my life when I am not adding something productive toward a better future. “I am Ozymandius, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.”
“What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Are the revealing of a deeper thirst this world can’t satisfy?”
--Blessings, Laura Storey
It’s not just the conflict, it is how we deal with the conflict. The ends does not justify the means. In the long run, the means ARE the end. As fervently as I maintain that the true path lies not in picking a side and valiantly raging against the other, but in seeing how we can all work together and do better by everyone—that same philosophy should apply to how I carry forward that argument.
And sooner or later, is this whole line of babbling just another zone 4 plaything of my procrastination monkey? Am I genuinely progressing toward resolving something, toward some breakthrough of… something… or is this just the same old cycle?
Doctor King said that the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice. And I believe that—usually. But as the issue of the day passes into yesterday, as we feel so superior to our ancestors over classism or papal indulgences, slavery, genocide, mutilations, women’s suffrage, anything. Time and again, individual wrongs evolve from a given to heatedly contested to horror-inducing and disdained. And yet the same battle will rise and play out again.
Well here’s a pattern. Very different things but parallel… wossname… way I am sort of thing.
Need to make better food choices… so stop an unhealthy choice. But if you don’t *replace* it with something, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
And now unhealthy monkey choices. But if I just cast them aside, if I stop unhelpful ‘zone 4’ activities but I don’t REPLACE them with anything… I’m still not getting anything zone 1 or 2 done—just… setting myself to stumble across some other zone 4 activity for the monkey to play with.
Random typing. Throwing thoughts onto paper. Thoughts of at best questionable value. Is there any reason to keep it? And if I do… where? And what chance that I ever even look at it again? So often writings and stories and whatnot become part of some mess, looked at only while cleaning & faced with the decision to keep or discard… then again ignored until the next cleaning after that.
Trigorin (I am almost certainly spelling that wrong) speaks of the trials of writing. Feeling that he should put forth about “life and science and the rights of man” and worrying that he is only a scenery painter. I see that. I want to write stories—at least I think that’s what I want. Flights of fantasy, tongue-in-cheek repartee awash among fantastical worlds. But then… I want to write meaning. Perhaps addressing cruelty and compassionlessness is the fuel I need, perhaps I simply despair of value in my life when I am not adding something productive toward a better future. “I am Ozymandius, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.”
“What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Are the revealing of a deeper thirst this world can’t satisfy?”
--Blessings, Laura Storey
It’s not just the conflict, it is how we deal with the conflict. The ends does not justify the means. In the long run, the means ARE the end. As fervently as I maintain that the true path lies not in picking a side and valiantly raging against the other, but in seeing how we can all work together and do better by everyone—that same philosophy should apply to how I carry forward that argument.
And sooner or later, is this whole line of babbling just another zone 4 plaything of my procrastination monkey? Am I genuinely progressing toward resolving something, toward some breakthrough of… something… or is this just the same old cycle?
no subject
Date: 2015-03-28 11:04 pm (UTC)I also understand the intermittent despair one can suffer when looking at humanity's history. I feel that despair more as I grow older - but then, as many old and crotchety people are apt to do, I balk at my own despair, dig my heels in and look around for hope and joy.
no subject
Date: 2015-03-28 11:35 pm (UTC)http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html
The "zones" refers to what he calls "The Eisenhower Matrix" or "the Procrastinator's Matrix".
Essentially, zones 1 & 2 are 'important', zones 1 & 3 are 'urgent'. And procrastinators tend to hang out in zone 4 until deadlines make them rush into zone 1 or 3 for a bit. Zone 2 tends to be where most of the real fulfilling stuff in life happens.