Ch-ch-ch-chaaanges...
A lesson from Sim City 4:
It's pretty easy to build a road over a good, steep hill. You'll have a good road that will connect here to there and the zones around it will grow just fine. However, when you go to run water or a subway tunnel, that same spot won't let you build through. The deeper stuff, the stuff hidden from view, just won't match up with the stuff on the surface. If you're lucky, though, building that road will alter the slope of the hill just enough to let you run those pipes right where you want them to. But even if that doesn't happen, there's always another way around that spot.
And this, perhaps, is the crux of my whole dilemma. I want there to be a congruence between my deep, inner life and my surface, external life. As anyone else who's tried to do this knows, it's nowhere near as easy as it sounds.
I've always said that I'd make the perfect priest... if I could just find the right religion. Sequestered away in a monastery for a bunch of years with a cadre of like-minded spiritual seekers--it's got a certain draw to it. If it were 500 or so years ago, it would be an easy decision. Today it's not quite as easy.
For the first time in quite a while, I'm actually starting to feel like I'm part of the world again. It is slightly disturbing at how easily I'd throw that away to lock myself away in a very comfortable (albeit austere) place like a monastery. Disturbing, but not surprising. Well, at least not if you've lived in my head for 30 years.
Like most people, I'm kind of big on comfort. For the last five years or so, I've been in a safe, comfortable place. Not a happy place, but definitely safe and comfortable. Safe and comfortable is hard to give up, no matter how bad it may be to stay there. And once you are out in the cold, dangerous world, the call to just turn around and go back can be a pretty strong one.
But there comes a time when that internal urge to be better, to do better, to act on the fact that you know batter, outstrips the siren song of safety and routine.
And *swish* out you go into the world. Out into something new, into something different, into something that will be, perhaps, better.
If you're not careful, though, that insidious comfort will creep back in, drawing you in and trapping you in a rut. A different rut from the one you were in before, yet, somehow, still the same. It's a stagnation. A deep seated putrid wasting of time, energy and potential.
I can feel that settling in happening.
I've got to stop it.
It's in my internal nature to stop it.
But that's going to shake things up in my external world a bit. I just have to decide how much.
I know I have to change some things... but they are all going to be very precarious balancing acts. If I tip too far in the new direction, I'm going to lose too much that I'm happy with--too much that I still think I need--and, from my current point of view, I'll end up a worse person for it.
I need to become more active, more aggressive, more outgoing.
And I'm even toying with the idea of actually trying to kick up some dating dust on a new piece of my path.
But that's stuff for me to talk about over the next few days... (in no particular order, of course)
It's pretty easy to build a road over a good, steep hill. You'll have a good road that will connect here to there and the zones around it will grow just fine. However, when you go to run water or a subway tunnel, that same spot won't let you build through. The deeper stuff, the stuff hidden from view, just won't match up with the stuff on the surface. If you're lucky, though, building that road will alter the slope of the hill just enough to let you run those pipes right where you want them to. But even if that doesn't happen, there's always another way around that spot.
And this, perhaps, is the crux of my whole dilemma. I want there to be a congruence between my deep, inner life and my surface, external life. As anyone else who's tried to do this knows, it's nowhere near as easy as it sounds.
I've always said that I'd make the perfect priest... if I could just find the right religion. Sequestered away in a monastery for a bunch of years with a cadre of like-minded spiritual seekers--it's got a certain draw to it. If it were 500 or so years ago, it would be an easy decision. Today it's not quite as easy.
For the first time in quite a while, I'm actually starting to feel like I'm part of the world again. It is slightly disturbing at how easily I'd throw that away to lock myself away in a very comfortable (albeit austere) place like a monastery. Disturbing, but not surprising. Well, at least not if you've lived in my head for 30 years.
Like most people, I'm kind of big on comfort. For the last five years or so, I've been in a safe, comfortable place. Not a happy place, but definitely safe and comfortable. Safe and comfortable is hard to give up, no matter how bad it may be to stay there. And once you are out in the cold, dangerous world, the call to just turn around and go back can be a pretty strong one.
But there comes a time when that internal urge to be better, to do better, to act on the fact that you know batter, outstrips the siren song of safety and routine.
And *swish* out you go into the world. Out into something new, into something different, into something that will be, perhaps, better.
If you're not careful, though, that insidious comfort will creep back in, drawing you in and trapping you in a rut. A different rut from the one you were in before, yet, somehow, still the same. It's a stagnation. A deep seated putrid wasting of time, energy and potential.
I can feel that settling in happening.
I've got to stop it.
It's in my internal nature to stop it.
But that's going to shake things up in my external world a bit. I just have to decide how much.
I know I have to change some things... but they are all going to be very precarious balancing acts. If I tip too far in the new direction, I'm going to lose too much that I'm happy with--too much that I still think I need--and, from my current point of view, I'll end up a worse person for it.
I need to become more active, more aggressive, more outgoing.
And I'm even toying with the idea of actually trying to kick up some dating dust on a new piece of my path.
But that's stuff for me to talk about over the next few days... (in no particular order, of course)