More Snake and Less Boot

“If you’re always indentured to outcome, you’ll always be indentured to failure” — a troll underneath a bridge near Bitchfield (I know there’s really a place called this in England—rumour has it, this is where feminists go to die...)

Now then, kidder. I’ve wondered what I should write about this week. The title (obviously) links to oad Woody from Toy Story (thou art the wit, and the light, my duck). Though something that’s gotten me in a tizz of late is the temptation of the serpent in the Garden of Eden and the boot of one on the verge of travel to something greater.

I wonder kidder, if we miss the hints of birth in Genesis. This presumption ain’t no philosophical treatise mate but more an inkling rapture evident in the early pages. More the birth of the human through sense. We kindle something greater once we come to know the score between action, the passing seasons, and our place within the world rather than adjunct to its processes.

I dunno, chief. It reminded me about something you said that ”in a godless world, we find each other, and then the fun begins.” Though, I’m not having too much fun to be honest. In Genesis, the serpent tempts Eve to the tree, you know the story —That ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil . To know one is alone, to know that they are naked. It seems a loathe task to overcome this realisation. It is shall we say a task that bares little fruit. No matter how small these apples are, they’re still necessary. The birth of our mischance, the birth of our world—a language kindled in our first breaths, first touches, and the scent of our mother. Closed-eyed we fight for reason, but not quite yet.

I’m feeling the pressure about what it is we should give ourselves to, because I think we have to give ourselves to something. I suppose it’s defining what that something is. There seems to be no greater pursuit than the mystical ‘is’. As intractable as it sounds, I still can’t quite define this process. I suppose it comes in the choice to stop or continue the outlets and innate talent that our parents provide us. It reminds me of a fairly recent Indian film The Disciple. Through the doubtful eyes of Sharad, a twenty-four year old schooled in the Indian classical tradition, devoted student to a guru, it asks this question with an undercurrent of yearning. As Sharad progresses and learns more about himself and the possible mediocrity of his work, the yearning only deepens. Until, as an older man, he reverts to supposed curse of second best: writing and teaching about the thing rather than doing the thing itself. I use this to preface the doubt we have — I have — about the pursuit of mastery.

Reverting constantly to the voice long ceased, I’m comforted but also exasperated by the sameness of our long struggles to the day’s end. It’s as though our pursuit leads us to the water’s edge of meaning but the boat’s moored twenty feet out and we can’t swim. I suppose, kidder we’re minded to revert back to the village know no more than we can fathom and remain in our misprision of ignorance. I ask you, though mate. What does it mean to live a creative life? And how far are willing to go in pursuit of excellence? Are we just grappling with the childlike enjoyment of our initial interactions with our chosen pursuit? I suppose this blog post should be answering these questions, but I don’t know what to say. Because I think comes to down to accepting the passage of Time. It feels like holding a candle in your palm while its wick gradually recedes as the pain develops. I dunno kidder but its the closest to feeling most of us have in a long while.

Desperately melding language to suit our discontentment and unashamed terror at the purest value coming from the search for meaning in objects opposed to people. It seems that that’s all we have, kidder. Our form of life is the people we encounter. The consequence we bestow on action, the countenance provide by our experience with other humans. Delve deeper and it’s the human you fear. Fear their inadequacy in your time of need. Fear that you cannot be the one they can count on.

This post is a little scattered but you know there be some truth, methinks. There’s something liberating but also excruciating about the knowledge you can’t do anything and everything, while also achieving mastery of a particular pursuit. I think that’s what humbles us. Time and enough chances still won’t cover it. While I use the serpent and the tree of knowledge to consider something already extrapolated a hundred fold by tech gurus, actual gurus, Alex Hormozi and the like, it barely scrapes the surface of our inimitable work with the knowing and seeing that a thousand essays probably wouldn’t be enough to cover it.

I dunno, mate. We’ll get there; I suppose.