Steppin' Out

What do you do if you realise you’re 24 and haven’t taken more than baby steps yet?

I mean, we all know that one must crawl before we walk, and walk before we run, but is it ever too late to go through the stages, and instead want to just start running? Or maybe some people are just different and feel what they need is to push themselves off a branch and learn to fly that-a-way?

For the longest time I have known that like to write. But I have never been one to keep myself at something. Eventually what you felt was a God-given gift turns out to be a good start that we wasted by not keeping pace. I think this lesson has to come to everyone someday, and usually those with less of the inherent talent outdo those who are comfortably privileged. They just start working harder from much earlier.

The worst thing about me is that I have a clear, undoubted vision of my failings and my abilities, and my failing at my abilities, and yet I am sitting put in my nest of scattered tidbits and contented by the shiny thing here and the colourful piece there and feel that life is beautiful from where I sit, so why make the long walk and the hard jump and the strenuous flight?

Why indeed?

I have acquired a book (oh, when will I stop?) that has an interesting title – ‘The Consolation of Philosophy’. The consolation isn’t as important as the philosophy. We need the philosophy as then we start interpreting our lives. I don’t mean being Socratic or a Nietzscheian , as it is obvious that neither was Socrates a Socratic, nor was Nietzsche a Nietzscheian. But instead we need to know what it is we want to be and what we want our lives to demonstrate. You want to be a musician, but an Indian or a Western, or something that lies between, and that too a modern musician or a classical, and will you be a traditional musician or a fusion of past-present, east-west? And when you have the answer then try and expand your sphere of experiences to make yourself a specialist. Not the best in the world, but one who understands their subject inside out. If you want to be a literature student, then be the best in one period, or one movement. The idea is not to limit your view, but to be assured of at least one view. I have often been convinced of something only to have another say something that puts it on its head. Be evolved enough in your life to account for everything and to keep modifying your thoughts to encompass you experiences.

See I’m rambling, and that is probably because when I sat down I didn’t know what my end result should be. That’s my problem, but one that I don’t know how to surmount. Often when I write I feel result is inferior if I have the end in sight, it becomes manipulative and obvious, but if I don’t know what I will end with, it is a more balanced progress. But then I end up rambling over and over.

Damn.