yo, curb that desire you! wise words from zee stoic book today

I think the universe knew it would be a slower start to the day today, maybe it was the nip of whisky on the way out of the friday evening or the stumble to the toilet at 6am wondering what planet I was living on, who knows, but a page in the book made me recalibrate, turning mild frustrating and back pains into wondering if the coronavirus would be worse than the life I had now (seriously, for a moment it ran through my mind)

But then I was up, threw my body skywards and headed for round two with the toilet just after nine. I was late, i’m never late, I’m always early, but today, well, just wasn’t feeling it, threw all the excuses to the front like I could selfishly defend the remit of why I should be able to do what I want to do this morning.

I surveyed the breakfast landscape, not too bad, but then whoa, ok, joy, I made some breads up already, oh and I have mushrooms, lots of eggs, I could make my breakfast wraps easily — I small win the dark and gloomy start to the day, maybe just maybe I could turn this around.

Checking servers, checking residuals, saw a cool change in my residuals that makes future billing easier and just around that moment, pre-mushroom cutting I read another page from the stoic lifeline book and today was basically curb that desire!

“when children stick their hand down a narrow goody jar they can’t get their full fist out and start crying. Drop a few treats and you will get it out! CURB YOUR DESIRE — don’t set your heart on so many things and you will get what you need” — Epictetus, discourses, 3.9.22

Of course this would not be the first time that I had heard these words over and over, being pushed to concentrate on one thing only because that would give me the desired result, maybe the result is not my interest, maybe the transition is more the payoff for me. Maybe I like to see how the story unfolds more than the punch line, the crescendo as the words and actions build to some similarly expected cluster fuck moment.

But we reached max clusterfuck. Paused, and made breakfast.

Having an imagination is both a blessing and a curse, it’s hard to believe where you can allow your mind to take you too — like a floating wet sponge floating a watery grave in your skull waiting for the right kind of electrical impulses to trigger distinct actions, retrieval, memories, action.

I’m reminded of the film MOON again this morning weirdly, the sam rockwell epic performance of a general worker on the surface of the moon maintaining a fleet of autonomous mining machines, extracting a fuel that is sent back in supply runs back to earth with the mantra that your work is helping the lifes back there not truly understanding the ramifications of the work to later find out that actually you’ve been cloned and was never meant to go home — it’s a stunning film, great soundtrack and incredible acting.

We all have our MOON moments, some are filled with the joy of reaching the highest heights and some are the ones where you know that even if you facsimile yourself you’d never have enough earth time to craft the perfect you in the perfect world — we don’t get to control that, as we don’t get to extend the time with another quarter or 10p in the kebab shop arcade machine, we just are, either fight the chemistry of the moment or lose your uniqueness like a death eater to the face.

Wash them Hands,
Ya Filthy Animal

__humble x