Thinking and Doing

I can still picture myself, 2nd or 3rd grade me, still afraid of the dark and picking my nose, sitting near the back of the class in that tiny desk  with the menacingly deep storage compartment, tentatively wrapping my hand around the lip of the faux-wood desk and imagining it bending like modeling clay in my hands, conforming to my will.

It seemed like such a simple thing: one could simply be incredibly strong. It was just a desk, nothing complicated about it to me. If only I would try or concentrate hard enough, it would simply move. The act, the idea of the act of exerting a muscle seemed like such a straightforward and powerful action that it should be capable of anything.

But maybe that's because I spent more time thinking than actually exerting muscle. That's much simpler really. I hadn't grasped at that point how pitiful muscular contractions were without some kind of powerful emotion or other biological instinct putting some power behind it.

I wasn't ever made fun of a lot, at least at that age, and there was no one at home who hurt me or anything else so heartbreakingly cliche. I didn't feel the need to overcome some kind of great obstacle. Frankly I would have had little to no practical use for this Hulk-like strength had I actually discovered it latent within myself.

One could speculate about the influence of superheroes on TV or the roving band of bigger siblings who were in the habit of knocking out any tooth of mine brave enough to let its roots lose ground, or the incessant habits of the parents of my generation to endlessly expound upon the extensive nature of each child's unique and special personhood, but that particular cultural trope, that 21st century ideological grounding of sorts has already been covered by all sorts of contemporary and "witty" young writers who fancy themselves to be edgy and hip. But then what's been left? What material has not yet been blanketed by the neon-colored tarp of expansive media saturation? What ideas are there left to dry and bake and photosynthesize in the heat of the light of day?

But that's tangential.

My lesson that day was two-fold. First of all, I came to realize that pretty much all life consists of is being, and being is pretty simple. It's being something else that's a little more complicated. That's when I learned that the power of choice isn't all it's cracked up to be.