Toukakoukan

In at the deep end

Conflicting Opinions

September 23, 2008

I’ve always thought of my trip as a ‘search for significance’.
When I was working 9-5 for a living, I was always concerned by a lack of significance in daily life.
Repeating the same routines every single day worried me, it made the time pass too fast with nothing to remember one week from the next.
It affected everything, my choice of girlfriend, car, house; I’ve always been inspired by “The Diceman” and anybody who’s read the book will know that’s quite a scary thing to say.

But significance is such a fickle thing, such a subjective thing.
I’m 2/3rds the way through re-reading “Norwegian Wood” by Haruki Murakami and what’s struck me the second time around is how every single episode in the book seems to have the most incredible significance, even if the significance is that it’s… not significant.

How can I yearn for significance and at the same time idealise the notion of sitting somewhere just listening to music or sitting quietly in a café watching the world go? Are these moments significant?
Maybe it’s the dedication of doing just one thing, even if the one thing is less than significant.

Maybe significance is the wrong word.
This is the trouble with words, if you have a blinding flash of realisation, of clarity and can conceive a fantastic notion, you have to put it into words.
Woe betide you should you choose the wrong words, as later the words, rather than the moment of clarity, will define what you look for…

I chose the word significance, but it doesn’t encompass everything that I’m looking for.
I’m looking for a negative more than anything, I’m looking for a way to stop time rushing by, to fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run.
But channeling this idea into the concept of acheivement or worth or relative merit is a mistake I feel.
Perhaps as I’ve said before I simply need to think about what I’m doing more, to analyse what I’d like to do, rather than be content to sit in apathy.

Lack of action is fine, I have no problem with a lack of action.
What I have a problem with is a lack of honest decision.
If I decide to sit and listen, rapt, to music as the focus my attention, that seems a worthy goal to me.
If I simply sit and idly listen to music simply because it’s the easiest option, that I have an issue with.

Making the easiest decision… I mean this precisely.
As the easiest decision may be, and often is the hardest path.
For some-one whose parents are pressuring them to go to university, the easiest decision is to go to university, but the easiest path would simply to work in Tescos.

There is no inherent truth in the idea that the easiest decision is necessarily the worst, I am merely saying that I find apathy in decision making abhorrent…