Are all one’s thoughts like passing clouds? Touching nothing, present
only distantly, wispy and indistinct, forgotten and replaced as soon
as they have left one’s view?
I pondered this question or doubt recently as I counted up all the
notes I had put down on three-by-five note cards, sticky notes, and
legal pads over the past month or so. Each note cued me towards a
task, idea, concept or phrase I meant to pursue at the time I wrote it
down. But as I sift through the notes in the present the voice
conveyed by them seems distant. The urge to pursue it seems weaker.
The purpose seems vague. The reason for having written it down is hard
to remember. Obviously I had once considered it worth pursuing. Yet
what is it now but part of a pile of paper?
I suppose a sense of anxiety is responsible for some of my doubts. I
want to be a person of action. But so often my resolve is fleeting. I
fail to seize the resolve of the moment while it is there, instead
filing the thought away for later. I am not in school, some of my
proudest attributes have stagnated, I spend a lot of time reading
while sipping coffee like a retired person.
I say anxiety makes me think this way. Anxiety is like fear. Fear an
effective inciter of action. Very well then. May my anxiety provoke
action and urge it on. May I put down my goddamn three-by-five note
cards and comics and go do something, advance my life, learn in a
systematic way, make money, form memories, be with my friends, visit
my family. And perhaps most important to me personally: go outside!
My thoughts needn’t be like a passing cloud. Instead I will make each
one a call to duty and a license to action!
Isaac
pseudoisaac 