That feeling of being stuck between several rivers trying to head the same direction, with your only compass being what you are escaping from, no longer what you are hoping for. Hope isnt even in the horizon anymore. Hope, hope is for those naive romantics who still believe in human will. Dreams are passe. Today is the best tomorrow can offer. You survey the battered shore on either side of your boat and realise now that the bridges you were about to burn were the ones you were meant to save. Now you have no choice but to sail to the right shore, perhaps on your own, perhaps with a friend. With each heady current you grip the oars ever firmer. But you never use them. The river before your swirls in a decades-long spiral, emanating confusion, feeding its own rage; dragging thousands into its swirling depths. The victims of delay. Three years of research into this growing whirlpool (whirlpools spin into themselves, only *seemingly* without direction) is barely enough time; but just enough time to understand that all whirlpools must end and will die down once the storm ends and the river shifts its course. By then, you too will have to move on. By then it may be too late. You begin research on social movements, and you end up moved yourself. Your mentor asks for a full report. There is nothing to submit but frustration. You feel you have deceived enough people and deceived enough of yourself to want to throw yourself overboard. You feel it is too late. Or is it too soon? All youre sure of is that you havent decided yet. The boat rocks; you feel directionless; you are rudderless, the wind blows through tattered sails and hits you with the simple truth that its impossible to hold both visions of the world and its future at the same time. They are simply too different and the odds seem set against them all. Its the curse of the social scientist, no less than the priest: to witness barbarity and humanity simultaneously; to sift truth from dogma; to hold several paradigms at once; to try and see history whole. To try and understand.To see within history real people struggling with their own contradictions. And in the process seeing just how imperfect human beings are - and how beautiful and beautifully frustrating at the same time. In reality your search for truth is a selfish pursuit, even sadistic. You watch the world day by day go insane and write status updates about it. Like a journalist. You study the nuances of reality, knowing full well that at the end of the day one has to choose a side; that there exists such a thing as the pursuit of the Just and Good (even if it takes a bloody long way to get there) and that you have to stay with it to the end. You know it isnt about you. You know it isnt about you. The river will flow with or without you. Over the horizon the river curves downward. Is it a leap into the abyss, or toward hope and renewal?
Posted on: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 16:17:22 +0000
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