16 May 2013

Blog day, part the ninth: on Reality

Those thought experiments, or, to use the technically accurate terminology, "fantasies", I mentioned below are fun to do from time to time, but they also have their drawback: reality.  It makes reality seem duller, a little less tolerable, when you see how ill it fits with your dreams.  It is nice to dream of cars and homes, and of telling your boss where to shove it, and of never going back to the job you hate ever, ever again.

But it isn't real.  And when the fantasising is done, you are left with your real life.  You will never own that car, or in may case, any car again.  You will never own that home.  You will continue saying "Yes, sir.  Sure thing," to your boss, and you will work until you die. 

Is this depression speaking, or is the real depressing in and of itself?  I don't know. I wish I could say I don't know how things got this way, but I know exactly how things got this way.  It was me, every step of the way.  I made my decisions.  I never once missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.  That sort of thing is in my genes.  I come from a long line of hard working financial failures.  Lotteries and their ilk are just a tantalising dream for many of us, and the money we pay for our tickets is the tax we pay for still having dreams.  Dreams that don't involve us suddenly making our minds up and working our way out of our mess, or breaking free of the chains of the years we have woven around ourselves.  A cheap, easy, free dream of an escape from an intolerable, yet survivable, (although not in an ultimate sense) reality.

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