Looking outside again I find myself looking outside again, outwards into the world for words to describe what I feel, What I want to express. After a flurry of searching, of grasping At the voices of others, The articulation, the timbre, the pace, I stop – Wait.
Why others? Why not me? Surely I can pluck the words Ripe from the branching neurons of my blooming mind-orchard? Am I not best suited to tease The sparks breaching my subconscious Higher into the light, to sculpt and mould them into The form of my fancy?
We get so stuck in the details of life, the daily grind, the endless to-do lists, agonising over issues we’re facing at work or home. We’re so close to the rungs of the hamster wheel, we end up counting them endlessly as they cycle by, over and over again. The alarm clock wakes us up at the same time every morning. We eat the same breakfast, read the same news sites, drive the same way to work every morning, greet each other in the same automatic way when we get to our desks, and get our regular cup of coffee to get us going to do it all again.
Our lives can be more than this, yet we often don’t see that. We have our faces so closely pressed up against the window, the screen, to try and see more of the detail of what’s inside. Step across to the other side of the street, then have a look. You’ll see that there are more shops than just the one you usually shop at. There are more people walking by than you usually talk to. There are other streets that you’ve never been down.
“Many set themselves the aim of rescuing the indifferent and the lazy—and end up lost themselves. The flame within them gets dim with the passage of time. So, if you have the fire, run, since you never know when it may be doused, leaving you stranded in darkness.—John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent”
