They call it wanderlust.
It is that nagging tension in the legs to lead their owner outdoors after the chill of winter has waned away to the early promise of spring. The desire in the soul to go explore, set forth and see new lands and undertake new experiences. Senses go wild with want for new tastes and smells and sights the imagination cannot conjure, for it has no frame of reference to create the false memory within our minds.
They call it nuance, without even the notion of the various shades of gray it takes to get to the thin line where the word lives.
People exist with the concept that everything is about the two sides between every story without any in between, deciding after hearing both sides who is right and who is wrong. All are right, all is wrong. The point is that whatever the event between both parties or everyone happened in the first place. Separate realities cannot co-exist in the same space. One thing happens, then the next, each of us the stars of the show our conscious minds tell us to explain what is going on.
My story bumped into yours today. Sorry about that.
They call it chaos.
Not exactly that, but the idea that we can govern the events that happen in our daily lives anymore than we can control the whims of the wind and the sea is on the spectrum of insanity. But it isn’t exactly chaos. We steer the ship between the hazards and sometimes we end up in smooth waters, and others we take a course that finds us on the rocks and shoals. We wonder how this happened, blame others for our mistakes. We forget to point the finger at the person in the mirror when we’re in the thick of it. Only later do we realize the error of our ways.
They call it an earworm.
The song stuck in the back of the brain on repeat, or the phrase that won’t go away no matter how many times it is spoken aloud. Think of the beginning of this chorus “I would walk 500 miles” and try for your life not to want to sing the rest of it aloud. It is the unspoken idea that won’t go away, the invention for that gizmo that you think will be the million dollar invention that saves humanity. Somewhere in the back of someone’s mind is an earworm that is the cure for cancer. One day it’ll come out.
They say nothing is original.
It’s a small, small world and everything is a copy of what we’ve done in the past and what we will do in the future. Hollywood loves a sequel bringing back an 80s franchise. Publishers enjoy the homage to Shakespeare and Hemingway, praise authors who invoke the spirit of someone not around anymore to cry foul. People will remember the flawed idea presented and locked inside of memory forever.
They like to kick you when you’re down.
Ugly world that we live in, the moment you’ve reached the top of the mountain you find that someone’s at the bottom with a bunch of dynamite trying to bring it all crashing down. No one is immune to a culture who loves a hero, but also enjoys the schadenfreude of seeing what skeletons they have in their closet. Everyone wants success, no one wants to pay the cost to get there. Give me fifteen minutes of fame, and let me walk away set for life. That’s not how the story goes, the ending is always somehow tragic.
They say don’t be fooled by a story that sounds too good to be true.
Yet we do it all the time, with the good stock tip, the 100% guarantee to make money deals. The 3 a.m. infomercial exists for a reason. People buy the plastic doodads promising to save us time and money in the kitchen, or to make our muscles stronger despite sitting in front of our flat screens. Products promising beauty, to reduce the fine lines of aging, to restore the health we’ve lost with a single pill a day.
They will call this free association without any point.
They will be correct, but the thoughts were fun while they lasted.
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