Ideas really are dangerous…

Just below this post is a first sketch of a poem. It is not really a poem, it is just a mass of thoughts purged onto the digital paper so far, but I like putting in first sketches as when you get to the finish you can look back and see what u were first thinking or trying to think and how you have managed to articulate it all into something more coherent or purposeful.

I don’t usually like to explain my writing. It should explain itself or express something from within the reader from without. A connection. But, I think I have more to say here. Perhaps more for myself than for anyone reading this. I’ve just recently moved out to Thailand and have finished my Masters and as we do in life as we take one more step down the stairs of life into the darkness of the possibilities of the future, we dip our little toes down and we feel for where the next invisible step is. And how we make these steps are influenced by our ideas…and as I said, ideas really are dangerous.

We think we create them and own them, but they came from somewhere, just like the spark at the start of the universe, and their life is beyond our knowing. They are entities in themselves and they occupy us and like any life they are selfish in their need to propagate. If we don’t consider what they are and their forces behind our actions, then we start acting beyond our needs and do things for the idea alone, becoming mules for their carts.

Ideas brainwash me all the time. Funny thoughts or notions can occupy my mind, but I can quickly dismiss them, usually by another silly idea. But some endure and the longer they endure, the harder they are to shift out from your consciousness. You have been fulfilling them for so long that you and this idea have formed a symbiosis. The idea cannot live without you enforcing it and you cannot be happy without fulfilling the morals, ideals, rules, path, etc. of this idea.

To stop speaking in grandiose vague terms, perhaps I will use myself as an example. As a child I wanted to be an historian or a scientist or a basketball player or a drummer. In the end and for different reasons, the historian idea had more fertile ground to grow and won over the others. In university this evolved into being a writer/poet. In chasing/supporting this idea, one of being a teacher came up, and this is where I am today through many exciting and frightful escapades.I still have all of these ideas inside of me, and myriads of others in a complex ideological ecosystem fighting for dominance over one another, as do we all.

And now finishing another step in my Master course…I am left at the edge of another precipice, questioning the motivation for any of it. I do not feel I have made wrong decisions, but that right now, in a million different mes I could be anyone doing anything. And that perhaps is my point. Ideas are dangerous. Do not believe in them, do not become their tool, but use them as your tool. Take a step back from the precipice and evaluate your next step. Evaluate the steps you have taken and do things for yourself. For ideas have a life of their own and ideas really are dangerous.

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