A lot of blog posts from friends this week! Am addressing two simultaneously: both of them dealing with the same thing. Regrets. Conscience. The past. The present. The future. Why we, as humans, have the almost magical ability to deal with all three in separate discreet units, and - in an amalgam of sheer genius to awe any animal, plant or bacteria coupled only with the desperate hopelessness of an animal who Knows The Future - to deal with all three as separate entities, and then to allow the past to mock the future, and the future to swallow the present, and the present to seduce the past.
Also, am atleast partially writing this to steel myself up 'coz ... today's UROPS day! By five p.m. today, one way or another, for better or for worse, in happiness or sadness, my second Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme project will come to an end (I told my boss today that I was planning not to do any more UROPS; thought he'd agree with me as my record of working hard for UROPS is not good. His response - "What, you're only going to do coursework?" - with a tone of disgust made me rethink the certainty of my choice but I digress).
Shooting off in one quick, short jump before I return to the topic at hand, I'm wondering how much my blog is being affected by my influences. When I was typing the last paragraph, it reminded me suddenly of Kelken's Thoughts page, and it has a calm quiet tone to it which reminds me of Naef's blog, too. Hmmm. I wonder how much we assimilate those we meet? How much we become those we see around us? But enough questions. Back to the future!
Quickly now, quickly quickly, for time steals on; but tomorrow I will have absolutely, totally, positively no time to get anything done, so I ought to finish this now (I wonder if Ms. Mok will read this? But I know the other intended audience is listening, right beyond the edge of sight, aren't you? Aren't you?). Why can't we live like animals? Why can't we be born and die and run and jump and leap and skip and fall and cry and hurt and love and leave and go and come and wake and sleep, all in that one single instant of time - the present - in which all animals but us live?
Here's a thought: why are we so different? Why are we the only animals who live in the past, present and future, not in the ever-present Now? But are we the only ones? What of chimpanzees, coordinating attacks on enemies in African forests? What about dogs, hunting in packs in the guise of wolves? What about ants, scurrying in self-controlled self-modulated complex systems?
I believe that the answer is simple:
nobody lives in the ever-present now. There is no everpresent now to live in, to begin with (have to edit this entry later ... when I've got the Time!), to end with. We all live in a continuous flow, past-to-present-to-future, one way street.
Of course, that doens't mean its a bad thing. You can live your life the way you want - nothing's stopping you but your fears and worries, and what are
they, but meaningless stops in the road? Go ahead, make it work, make your dreams and chase them to the end of the earth, and if you must jump off it's edge in the process - well, what's stopping you?
Me back to my report now, my last comments - until this entry's pretty inevitable full-edit -
Don't Worry about being human. Your priority is to being a happy, healthy well-adjusted animal first. Take care of yourself, groom yourself nicely, walk the walk as sharp as any cat, sleep like a dog, play like a kitten, jump like a kangaroo, and run like a horse. From the Emu in you learn curiosity, from the elephant, strength and stability; from the owl wisdom, and the (dare I add?) Pooh-of-little-brain: that some things are important, and some are not, and figuring out which is which is the font of all learning. Finally, and most importantly - though that hardly need be said -
learn. Learn, learn and live, live and explore, live and seek, live and find.
But mostly, firstly, most-importantly - live.
This post was posted by Unknown at 4:52 am
