Isn’t the backspace function so liberating. Words disappear just like that and you get to start again. So much of my life is plagued by the wish that I could have a do-over – if only I did xyz instead I would have been able to realise my potential and everyone would have seen how much of a genius I am. I wish I was exaggerating but this is truly how I feel about most things and the reaction that I expect. There is so much that I regret and wish that I could just relive the moment with the knowledge of current events. But at that moment I was not aware that there was another choice, the path was singular, so there really wasn’t an option for anything else. Every choice that I had made had led me up to that moment so by regretting I am really just imagining a completely alternate future condition rather than a potential past condition. It’s helpful to think that there was nothing else I could have done, it lessens that UGH build-up that I feel when I “realise” there was another path. Really it is just my imagination trying to make me feel better about my choices, as if being able to imagine another scenario means that I am someone that has the potential to have made that choice..
But there is really no choice without action. Without action it will always be a hypothetical, the resistance that action comes up against is what makes it real. In Paul Klee’s outgoing vs ingrown man1, it is interesting to look at how these characters indicate the direction of their layers.
I posit that the direction of growth fundamentally changes the structure of these layers. While the ingrown character is creating layers that get progressively thinner and more dense (like a croissant), the outgoing character is creating layers outside itself, held together by loose association rather than being trapped by its previous layers. I read this as a metaphor for the consequence of action on future actions, that the outgoing character is creating durable layers, that are formed when they resist against outside forces, almost like little shields in space, responding to specific conditions such that if a similar situation occurs, one would have this one shield as a reference point, but would still have to negotiate the particulars of the situation. This is something that I want to apply more going forward, not to see my actions as isolated incidents of proving how far I’ve come, but rather little tests to see where I’ve landed.
(One note going forward, it’s probably more realistic to assign myself a range for the length of these things rather than forcing myself to upload a full page every time. A daily half-page to full-page is more reasonable. Maybe I’ll allow myself to upload a single sentence in the future when I get the hang of this so I won’t be able to use the short form as an excuse to not fulfil the quota, this is a writing exercise for shift after all)
1Edmund Bacon, Ways of Perceiving Oneself in Urban Interaction
full-of-shift.com 