No one Wins the Rat Race

Across this lifeless city, long before the unbroken promise of dawn, a sudden cacophony of alarm bells and ring tones rattle the rooftops of silent suburbia, heralding another working day.

For the day to kick off smoothly and painlessly, a succession of timely, rigid rituals must ensue. Breakfast by five-thirty, shower at six. By seven, I'm heating up the engine and the leather beneath my shivering body.

As the sun crawls its way across my windshield, I crawl along a three lane motorway passing 100km speed limit signs at 40km per hour. Every illuminated trapezoid in front of me carries the sad silhouette of a single soul. Their cars running on fuel, purchased by their licensed owners, so that they may drive themselves to the place where they earn the money to run their vehicles. The road to work and back, I thought, was nothing more than a hamster wheel, taking each of us nowhere.

A bespoke, navy jacket swings from a hook above a passenger window. In the driver's seat its owner gesticulates animatedly on his hands free. Up ahead a young woman demonstrates an aptitude for multitasking, applying mascara with the seasoned precision of a surgeon's hand while simultaneously steering with a take away coffee cup in the other. I sit here amongst them, in my carefully considered attire squinting through the silver condensation, all eyes ahead, our final destination - conveniently obscured from the hazy horizon.

To me however, at that moment, my final destination presents itself with crystal clarity. On the right, my employers; to the left, the crematorium. How convenient.

The promise of work/life balance is an enticing lure. It is a lie. If it's dark when you leave and dark when you return, how much time do you have left to really 'live'? The days melt into a seamless week, a week distinguishable only by anticipated weekends.

We perform our well-rehearsed tricks, logged-in to a machine that spits out a treat every fortnight. So well-trained are we, that self identity is eventually relinquished. We become what we do, until the second week of annual leave when we finally surrender to the gradual, painstaking reemergence of the familiar self, only to be abruptly shrouded once again upon return.

Is it selfish of me to want more from life than this? The purpose of our lives is to realise ourselves. Every day that I veer away from that path of realisation I not only betray myself, I betray life itself.

Sure we all have to work to feed ourselves and our families, so very few of us get to do what we love and get paid for it. But what makes those few any different from us? Life rewards them well. Merely for having the courage to make that decision. Granted, their loved ones may have suffered for it, but it's usually temporary. The alternative, is to spend our whole lives suffering, with little reward, if any.

When I recently shared my disillusions with my brother, he said, "You'll get use to it, people can get use to anything." Yes we can. History has proved this more than once. We can even get used to abuse.

There's a quote that's been wearing itself out across social media - "The day you win the race is the day you stop running." If you don't have the courage to make that decision, to stop. Life will make it for you, eventually.

Connecting the Dots

There is a poignant scene in the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off, where Alan Ruck's introverted character, Cameron Frye spends what feels like an eternal moment alone in front of Georges Seurat's, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

The focal point amidst the flurry of activity depicted in this piece, is a little girl, standing still and dressed in white. She alone, seems to be acknowledging the viewer's presence or in this case, Cameron Frye. A connection is established and a profound exchange occurs at some level between them.

Seurat's work is distinguishable through his technique, primarily his unique, 'dot-like' application of medium. His work is mathematical, well balanced, static and yet there is movement. The closer one looks at a Seurat painting, the more indistinguishable the subject matter and like a camera lens dissolving into focus, the further one moves away from a Seurat, the clearer the subject matter.

I want to talk to you, not about Seurat (that was admittedly, merely a long segue) but about analysis, or rather, over-analysis. I'm not referring to human progression, the momentum of which could and would not exist without analysis. I'm referring to introspection. I need to talk about it, not to preach to you, but to remind myself that I over-do it. I over-analyse. And yes I'm doing it now.

Needless to say there are situations that call for healthy over-analysation - it can be enabling and empowering, revealing ourselves to ourselves. But it can also be unnecessary, inhibiting even crippling.

Having planned to write about this today, I read this morning a rather serendipitous quote by Steve Jobs; "you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards". Self-analysis is basically trying to do just that, 'connect the dots' of our past in order to make sense of the present.

I don't connect the dots. Instead, I tend to analyse each and every single dot individually...my problems, my projects, my past. I try to make sense of the dot, rather than accepting the harmonious interaction between the dots. Somehow they work together to form a picture. I just need to remind myself to step back, so that the picture can reveal itself to me...like a Seurat.

Finding God - sort of.

My childhood bedroom walls were adorned with holy pictures. Mass produced replicas behind glass in delicate frames, most of them beautiful and frightening all at once. Beside my bed was a painting of St Bernadette with mother Mary appearing to her in a grotto in Lourdes. That image mesmerised me for years, so much so that I chose Bernadette as my Confirmation name. I prayed to that picture every night before I closed my eyes because I was convinced something bad would happen to me if I didn't. I remember being envious of Bernadette. I wanted to see Mary too. What was so special about Bernadette? Why was she so privileged? I hated her as much as I aspired to be just like her. I would lie and stare at that picture in the dark. I could still make out the halo around Mary's head in the dim light of the street lamp outside my window.

I remember spending many quiet moments contemplating God during those tender, impressionable years. I was afraid of the idea of Him. His inaccessibility, invisibility and mystery only seemed to inflate this fear. I tried to grasp his face. At first I had only fragmented pieces, a sort of Mr Potato-Head-esque construct of images fed to me through pictures and films and stories. Eventually, the long, white bearded man in a long, white gown sitting atop a golden throne resided comfortably in my mind for years.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, while I was busy trying to make sense of all this, my father was also busy, re-evaluating his faith. I can't forget one cold, Sunday morning some Jehovahs Witnesses knocked on our door. Much to their surprise, my father welcomed them into our living room where they remained in vigorous debate well into the afternoon, gradually disappearing in a cloud of tobacco and steam from fresh coffee my exasperated mother would duck into the kitchen intermittently to fetch. As they were finally leaving, battle weary and unvictorious, one of the men turned to me grinning. From his briefcase emerged a spiffy, yellow, hard cover of illustrated bible stories for children. Matching his grin, I was all over that book in seconds.

Well if I wasn't already afraid of God, 'My Little book of Bible Stories' certainly finished the job. My fear of God was well and truly instilled. This book would be more aptly titled 'My Little book of Bible Horror Stories' and should come plastic-wrapped with an appropriate warning to parents. Not only were the stories terrifying, they had accompanying illustrations depicting God's fury and disappointment in man and if you were brave enough to turn the page, you would discover all the sadistic yet creative and original ways God punished man. The sheer terror on the faces of those who laughed at Noah will stay with me the rest of my days. And a pillar of salt? Who does that? I don't think it would ever occur to me to turn someone into a pillar of salt. For days I dared to look back at anything I walked away from.

I started to question, as I did with my Bernadette, why it was that these bible characters had direct contact with God. Why does he refuse to reveal himself? Where is he hiding? Why is he hiding? Why won't he answer my questions?

My questions turned inward, the first seeds of self doubt were sown. Am I not worthy? Have I done something to displease Him? Am I inherently evil? Am I going to hell? I've seen hell, I saw it in The Little Book of Bible Stories. I don't want to go there.

This once omnipresent and imposing presence, now (according to the bible) reticent for thousands of years. His absence conveniently explained away, predictably wrapped in mystery, leaving us with little more than fear; some would argue, also an omnipresent and imposing presence. The worst kind of fear is that of the unknown. It is also the easiest of fears to generate. The greatest threat, is an invisible one. Alone, in the dark. You hear a noise. Your mind fills in the gaps. The mind is a powerful persuader, a powerful motivator - capable of motivating countless others also living in fear and poised to embrace plausible, placating explanations and clutch them firmly for years like an old security blanket. In God's unrelenting 'absence' some have had little choice, but to fill in the gaps.

These days I turn on the light when I hear a noise...everything is revealed and there's usually nothing to be afraid of.

By the time I hit my tweens, I finally mustered the courage to swap my picture of Bernadette for a poster of James Dean. If there is a stranger lurking in the thicket, he's yet to appear. That's all God is to me now. I don't know Him but what I do know, is that every day, more and more of myself is revealed to me. I am becoming my own apparition. Maybe to some, that is the definition of 'finding God' but I don't know if we're talking about the same 'God'. The 'God' who is no longer a threat to me is about 5'10" with brown hair and brown eyes. Not the silver bearded, silver haired, vengeful monster that, The Little Book of Bible Stories makes him out to be. If it were up to me to write a book about God for children, it would be blank because that's what our vulnerable and impressionable children are, blank pages. It's not up to us to write their books. They've got to pen their own stories and find their own Gods - after they turn on the light.

Dead or Alive

I've been away. I went to a place where I felt alive. Now that I'm back, I feel I'm slowly dying again and I have to wonder how it is that I 'lived' like this for so long, especially knowing now what 'being alive' feels like. I recall my last post, something about vast expanses of desert between oases. I must concede, when you go on holiday and pitch a tent in one of those oases, it's very hard packing up and setting out again. How do we do it? Are our memories so fleeting and our attention spans so short? We become the walking dead and we don't mind if we do. We forget. We forget pain, that's a given, but unfortunately it seems, we also forget pleasure. We forget how sunrises over a sparkling ocean made us smile. We forget how insignificant we felt when our fingers traced the salty grooves of volcanic rock, how our lungs renewed themselves with clean air, how our bare feet cracked the glassy, wet sand on an afternoon jog along the shore, how we poked sticks in holes where crabs shifted elusively. How do we recapture these deceivingly simple moments in our daily monotony where we get ourselves in such a predictable routine, that our bodies begin moving before we do. Does remembering the beauty in those precious moments, make it easier or harder to merely exist? The fond memories may make us smile for a moment, fill us with a warm glow, but that same glow could cast a harsh light on our pathetic lives. Perhaps it is, for this reason that we would prefer to live in the dark, for as the saying goes, what you don't know, doesn't hurt you.