The distance we view something from determines how we see it.
It’s not a matter of viewing from too close or too far away. There is no optimal distance. But distance determines what is seen. View a forest from five kilometeres away and see it as a forest. View a forest from five meters away and see some trees.
Get the overview or get the detail. Everything reveals itself at the right distance.
You just need to find that distance.
Where are you now?
Check your compass.
Have you blown off course?
Check your compass.
Have you gone too far in one direction?
Check your compass.
Have you turned too soon?
Check your compass.
Life is a journey. To succeed you need to know where you’re going or you will simply wander. To get to your destination you need to have a map.
Make a plan, follow it, and check your compass regularly.
Success in any field comes from the formula.
There’s a formula for everything. How to write a hit song. How to write a bestselling book. How to make a blockbuster movie.
You need to understand the formula. Sometimes the formula is written down and readily available – ‘just follow these steps’. Sometimes you have to figure out the formula yourself. By examining what worked. Finding patterns. And of course there can be more than one formula in a given field.
Once you find the formula you can follow it. Or not.
Following the formula is optional, understanding it is not.
Overnight there was another shooting in the States.
Pop, pop, pop. Three dead.
Each of us is just a bag of meat. Miraculously alive on a ball of dirt hurtling through the darkness around a massive billions of years long explosion. Bags of meat alive because of a little bit of electrical current running around our heads. We live because of many things but the electrical current is why we know it. And yet we kill each other.
Pop, pop, pop. Three dead.
We are all bags of meat. We are all bags of miracles.
Our lives are so completely without importance. Our lives are so completely important.
Pop, pop, pop. Three dead.
We kill each other so easily. We are not worthy of the miracle we are. We must strive to be better. We must become better. Our best selves await us.
Our best selves would not be content to sit back and allow others to be ended so easily. Our rights should not be the reason another has the ability to senselessly end a life.
Pop.
Our comfort should not be the reason. Our fear should not be the reason.
Our best selves know that we can do better. If we do not act it is because we have not been our best selves. If we do not act it is because we are hiding from the truth. The truth we know – we can stop this. We can prevent this. We can live side by side.
We allow the electrical current to be disrupted. We allow the bag of meat to be torn, slashed, broken, burned. We spill it onto the streets. We spill it and we say that we have done good. But we have not. Our best selves know this. Our best selves live inside us, fearing for us, cowering from us. If we allow the deaths of others then we willingly allow our best selves to be shackled and tortured.
We are miracles. We should live our lives knowing it. Living in peace as we ride this ball of dirt around the sun.
Pop, pop, pop. Three dead.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
We collect and congregate in groups of the similar. There are borders between us. So many borders. And we can’t even see. Borders we build without realising we’re building. Borders not just of place, though they exist too. We build borders of colour. Borders of religion. Borders of other.
Aspects of our identity mark us and keep us separate from other. Corralling those marked the same together. Fencing off those marked different. Race, religion, gender, politics. And on and on to the lesser markers such as accents, the logos you wear, the side of the street you live on.
We clump together like beads of rainwater streaming down a window pane, pooling on the ground. Drowning in sameness. Accepting no challenge to our identity. Clinging to it tightly, fearing it could be ripped from us.
We repel otherness like water repels oil. Sometimes specs of oil gather on the surface and we see the water polluted, unclean. We see others gathering in our bubble of sameness and look on them the same. But we must remember that we are neither oil nor water. Oil and water can not mix. We can. Oil and water rush away from each other through compulsion. The only compulsion that pushes us away from each other is ourselves. Us. Our identity. Words we have gathered to say to the world this is me. This is who I am. What I am. We use these words to separate.
Oil and water can not mix but we can. People of differing identities can come together to create new people. Our identities are arbitrary words assigned or chosen. They do not prevent black and white from coming together to create new life. They do not prevent Christian and Muslim from joining. We are human. All of us. Regardless of the words we use to identify us as individuals. We are all human. The words do not matter.
We need not be fenced in. We can become explorers of a larger world. We can be more. We must simply accept that we are all one. One great whole with parts that are the same but different.
Our life’s journey takes place in a changing world. The landscape shifts around us as we make our path through it.
We strive towards milestones, destinations, but the ground does not moving. Even if we pause in our journey the landscape does not stop changing. Destinations move further from us, nearer to us, or disappear entirely.
The world we journey through changes because we are not the alone in travelling. Technology, economics, politics, and social are some of the factors influencing the changes and shifts on the landscape we travel. Technology can bring a goal nearer by providing us with better tools to achieve it. It can also make our goal obsolete.
Nothing we do can stop change from happening.
We must accept that the landscape shifts. We must continue our journey despite it. Remain flexible. If the position of your destination shifts you must be able to adapt. That may mean understanding that the journey may be longer or even that you must change your destination.
We journey through life from milestone to milestone.
Now and then we pause and look back along the path we’ve traveled. We judge the steps we’ve taken and the steps we haven’t. We judge our progress. And sometimes we come up short. The journey we’ve made is less than we hoped. We judge that we’ve not come far enough. We judge that we’ve moved too slowly or too quickly. Procrastinated or rushed. Stayed a while too long or not long enough. We could judge our journey all of these things.
We cannot change the steps we’ve taken. We cannot make them faster or slower. We cannot make them different. The steps we’ve taken are set. They are past.
Yet, our journey is not over. We have more to travel. Past steps do not set the steps of the future.
There are many ways of doing things. Some are better, some are worse.
Is a blank screen the same as a blank page? They are both blank. They both need to be filled. But, if you’re stuck on one it could help to try the other.
This isn’t just something to try if you’re writing. There are different methods for most things. If you’re stuck with one try another.