2006-02-20
I am ego, I am repeating
I look around the room and realize we are all support structures for each other. Sitting in this coffeeshop, my coffee place, I realize this, having just read a long article in TIME magazine about Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Google and whether or not they can be trusted. Bear with me; there is a thread here. The article is designed, like Google, to give us the information we can use to make decisions about what, if anything, we will do next. Like most what, what do we call these things? – biographies of the extremely successful that double as information conduits to the possibilities the future holds – what, cover stories? – as with most cover stories that feature fascinating successful people, I tend to gloss over the important information and instead focus on the giants themselves. And I think: whatever does it take to change the world so very much by simply following a path you needed to pursue? It is some rare combination of genetics and maturation and the characteristics of the reality in which you find yourself, amongst other things, I am certain. It is the outcome of some absurdly small percentage of all of us, of even those of us with the attributes and requisite skills, whatever they may be, but probably something like: born in this hemisphere, or the West, or whatever you want to call it, +99% points, every other advantage possible, including but not limited to, being born with an absurdly powerful or shrewd mind, +.9% pts, and there you find that if you read this, almost certainly you are within the 99% of all of us that has the chance to really alter the world, and yet you won’t, will you, because like me, no matter what you are interested in, there is some other more complex calculus that nothing can ascertain the probability of; but we will try, won’t we, we will strive to better ourselves, because we have no choice, we are hardwired for it, and if you should find yourself on that path you need to pursue, so much the better if you have the courage to see it through to conclusion, and if not, it doesn’t matter, because you will be in a coffeshop, like me, possibly fortunate enough to be alive and well, and possibly able to ascertain that no one around you is the next Brin or Page or alterer of the modern order, but that, like all of us, we are support structures for each other, that the meaning contained in several seconds of solid eye contact and words that are spoken can change a world, can convey some infinitesimal mathematical calculation of the minor power of gravity over love, these atoms of attraction, or the relativistic nature of happy and sad, the hope that maybe we shall overcome someday, and the connection we share that in some small way, we are, all of us, perhaps a small part of the universe simply interested in experiencing itself, and that no matter which way we tumble or fall, we will still have each other, at least some of the time.
Sentences can be long or short, powerful or equivocal, and some are more vocal than others, but just like you, remember most that all are first unique and second forgotten, and similarly, that they have the capacity to create change as long as they exist.
