Friday 22 September 2006

Choice

One of the most wretched things about being a grown-up is the lack of grown-ups. This sucks bigtime. My cousin said to me once that it has suddenly dawned on him that we were now the generation in charge.
Well my friends it is a cold and windy place. Nietzche said something like that, Zarathustra woke up one morning and realised God was dead, long live superman...basically the same thing only from a syphalitic froth.
Of course, it isn't entirely true, plenty of people my age have parents, so there is quite literally another generation still there, still doing what they do.

In some ways, it shouldn't matter, the rules are in place, the system works and so long as everyone follows the rules, everything flows smoothly. And there's constant fine-tuning to the system, so it gets maintained and updated, in short it works.

But what if you wake up one morning, and find, like Zarathustra, that the system isn't real and that there is no-one in charge, what then? What would seven of nine do? Well, first of all, we'd panic, yep, when in doubt panic, panic has developed for a reason and the reason is that panic is chaotic and from chaos comes order. How? How do we grown-ups make order out of chaos?

Well here's my point. However the hell we like. We're grown-ups. We can choose to remain in chaos for a while - it can be liberating. We can choose ourselves, we can choose to turn to others, and whomsoever we choose is going to be part of the resolution. Or we can choose God. Any God or Goddess, it doesn't really matter since it is a personal choice. Maybe we need guidance. Tough, there's no-one to guide us until we make that choice.

So here we are, standing baying at the moon, our veins full of the steady throb, throb of life. Do we run into the wind with the pack ? Do we turn and lope away ? Do we draw the moon down?

If you think it's been random so far, then it doesn't get any better because I'm about to move from Zarathustra to Saint Ignatius Loyola. I feel this prayer is really about inner strength, and of course that is what Nietzche was in fact having Zarathustra feel. And with a new moon tonight, this is what I am feeling, inner renewal, strength, and inquiry. I hope Saint Ignatius will forgive me (course he will, he's a saint, it's in his contract) but I have changed his words to suit the new-moonliness of the day.

Teach us, great Power,
to serve You as You deserve,
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labour and not to ask for any reward,
save that of knowing that we do Your will;

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Grown-up is a way to describe someone in relation to another. Oooh, they're grown-up, because they're not as young as such and such. I have met and know some so-called grown-ups. I even work with some. The sad thing is that it's not a description, just a label. Nothing comes along with the title, and you don't have to do anything to earn it except not die right away.