skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Starting out I was
lost, I never knew where to go or which way to turn. After bad decisions and a
number of failures I became convinced life was a maze. A
huge, complex maze but a maze to be
solved nonetheless. Once you know you are in a maze
however, it isn’t such a challenge, you start thinking about the problem like
it has a solution. I’m in a maze I will make choices to
solve this maze, you think. Carefully look left and
right, weigh your decisions and head toward your goal. I was vigilant, I was
alert and I was focused, life would not defeat me, I would conquer it. However
the more I progressed the clearer things became. There were no hidden passages,
no different paths. Success did not flow from choice but from perseverance. My
decisions were illusions, the only thing that worked was persistence. So I
trudged on. And on. Forever round corners, another birthday another corner.
Still I pushed on. Only when I reached the centre, a dead end, did I see life
for what it is, a Labyrinth. Without the energy to return to my beginnings,
finally I lay down to rest.
By far the
easiest and quickest way to insult the intelligence of a complete stranger is
to walk up to a crossing they are already waiting at and push the button
yourself.
That one small action says so much with so little effort.
It says, just from the brief glimpse I have had of you, based only on your
appearance and how you hold yourself, I have made the decision that it’s
entirely possible you are mentally incapable of understanding, let alone
operating, simple pedestrian signals. So I am doing it for you.
BANG!
BANG! BANG!
Ridicule
hits the button hard, three times while looking me in the eyes.
“Yeah, I had already done that,” I explain to him.
“Oh, well I heard if you press it again it thinks more people are waiting and
changes quicker,” he replies.
“Firstly, it doesn’t think anything,” I say, “and second, if you
believed that were true wouldn’t you keep on pushing it?”
Instinctively, his hand shoots out again.
BANG!
“I didn’t know if you had pushed it,” he says.
“What, am I waiting for a gap to run across?”
BANG! BANG!
“Well you know… I didn’t want to risk it,” he replies.
