Pen & Watercolour Copyright 2009 Jean Burman
A human being is a single being.
Unique and Unrepeatable
- John Paul II
Why then do we allow ourselves to get so lost in the crowd?
Why are we so often content to fall “lockstep” in with the mob?
So happy not to rock the boat?
Or question the status quo?
I think it happens more in cities.
But I could be wrong. You know how I [so often] am!
Maybe it’s all that concrete? I don’t know.
But it does seem to occur more often in places and situations where people are gathered together in large crowds. Where people are moved from here to there en masse. Or where we are habitually herded together and funneled down a channel or through a system; the supermarket line… the classroom…. the workplace… or the bureaucratic process that administers pretty much everything.
After a while we lose the ability to think freely. To think for ourselves. And perhaps even… to think at all. Worse than that… we lose the ability to take personal responsibility. A quick scan of faces on the bus. The train. The ferry. I get an awful empty feeling.
Resignation and acceptance everywhere.
I’ve been noticing lately how people [stand] on travellators. You know… those things that look like escalators… but instead of going up… they go a-l-o-n-g? Like a production line? You know the ones. Yes of course you know. Grin. What some of us don’t know is… they’re meant to be walked on! But 9 out of 10 people don’t. Walk… that is. They step on… and stand there. Chat. Hold everyone up and make it impossible to get past. Most are none the wiser. It’s-what-you-do. And no-one questions it.
Odd how the same thing happens later out in the carpark. Or maybe it’s not so odd afterall? I guess if it happens on the travellator… it’s bound to happen again later in the carpark. It’s astonishing that… despite the choice of multiple exits… drivers still queue [without thinking] one behind the other at the same exit waiting [ever so patiently - or not] to punch their ticket into the ticket machine to get out. All I can say is it’s a good thing we’re not sheep. And it’s a very good thing the cliff face is not imminent.
I don’t know… seems to me there’s a numb kind of mindlessness going on out there. Or maybe it’s not so much a mindlessness as an absence of mind[ful]ness. It’s not intentional of course. But people don’t seem to have their head in gear any more. And if it is in gear… they certainly forgot to engage the clutch and select first gear!
Meanwhile… with all this mind-numbing-mindlessness-stuff going on… the clock is ticking. Lives are marching on. But we’re not stepping out as individuals.
What a waste not to take the chance to DO something remarkable. To BE someone remarkable… even if only in our own very small way. What a shame not to be the unique and unrepeatable person we know we could be (if only).
If only what?
If only we were brave enough (or awake enough) to see life for what it is?
[a fragile transient thing of limited unknown duration]
To question it. And then say “if not why… then why not?”
The single being… [unique and unrepeatable]… that John Paul II spoke of should not be fobbed off and dumbed down by the system… robbed of the creative spirit by the living of a mediocre life… and denied the chance to be something amazing.
It’s time to hit the travellator running. It’s time to get out there and swim like heck against the tide. Confucius didn’t talk about dead fish swimming with the stream for no good reason! He knew fish. And he was telling us all to get cracking!
It matters not what OTHERS think of you.
What matters is what YOU think of you.
And try and fail… or win or lose… it doesn’t matter. Except [in the end] to say… that YOU were YOU.
An individual. Unique and unrepeatable.
And despite the mistakes and failures… the shortcomings and broken dreams… and no matter how things might have looked from the outside looking in… you were [and still are] beautiful beyond description.
The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white.
Neither need you do anything but be yourself – Lao Tse
