I have this certain proclivity of
biting my nails when I am thinking. I only ever realize that my
nails and cuticles are worn down to the nub until after my brain
stops chugging along like a locomotive barreling towards a cliff.
And this happens all the time. I daydream while at work. I daydream
while at play. I daydream while I eat. I daydream in the bathroom
especially (it is known as the thinking room for a reason). I am
always dreaming.
Mindlessness is not my forte. In fact
it is impossible. While at work, I don't just do, I think about what
I am doing. I think about how I am doing it. Can I do this better?
Could I be doing something else? Should I be doing something
else? Do I want to spend the rest of my life doing this here, or do
I want more than this?
Many people I have worked with barely
think beyond the day thy woke up in. Only a few think a year ahead.
Fewer still think decades beyond their current place in time. Most
of the people I have worked with about sleeping with as many girls or
boys they can instead of finding that one girl or boy that can give
them what they are really looking for. They think about how they
don't get paid enough, griping and complaining, instead of working to
get a raise or plotting how they can get a better job.
Many of the people I have worked with
think about how to get back at people who have wronged them instead
of thinking of ways to help others and forgetting the past, allowing
the control that hate has on their lives to break away. A few who
think far ahead think of going to school, choosing a profession that
with gross them a pretty penny, instead of choosing a profession that
might fulfill them; “Do what you love and you'll never work a day
in your life.”
I confess that I have thought some of
these same things, but I mostly think of who I want to be when I am
old. How do I want to be remembered when I am gone. In the history
of the world, few people are written about. Even fewer are truly
remembered; taught about in school; history channel specials made
about them. Will I be one of those people? Likely not. But living
a life striving to be better certainly has other benefits. A life
mostly free of conflict. Many friends and few enemies. A great
memory for your posterity. A reward in eternity from a happy God.
I am a daydreamer, there is no way
around it. Does it make me better than those around me who think of
fickle and fleeting desires? Certainly not. But it does mean I am
in serious need of a manicure.
Sure, this does the week, as the writing shimmers back and forth between the trivial and faintly absurd to the grand and momentous. You handle the shifts, the changes, with control and calm; your voice, your tone is measured and thoughtful but not unduly heavy.
ReplyDeleteInteresting to me to read this. At my age (almost 68), you'd think I might know myself a little better than I do, but this piece reminded me what I've come to recently realize about myself: I am mindless in the sense you mean and always have been. I am the feckless creature you describe in grafs 3 & 4. One of the upsides of being feckless, however, is that I don't worry about my fecklessness very much!