When you write a blog a day you need to seek inspiration from everywhere and there are various places and various activities that provide this better than others.
Walking the dog, listening to music around the field is one of the most fruitful places and this blog came from that.
Listening to 'Be a Kid' by Twin Atlantic from their amazing Album 'Great Divide' which you can listen to here once again reminded me and crystallised what my overall philosophical attitude is. Incidentally this is also well demonstrate by 'Photosynthesis' by Frank Turner.
The more admin I get embroiled in, the more stress that work dumps upon me, the more complicated my life becomes the older I get and the further away from youth and childhood I go. My greatest and happiest times are when i'm closer to my youth and it's actually possible to be as close to your youth as you want.
This is not a question of not growing old gracefully, it's a question of having fun and being able to have fun.
When I was young (and in fact not so long ago) money meant nothing. Time was everything and it seemed I had so much of it that I didn't know what to do with it. I was, in effect, a millionaire. As life gets in the way it constricts the amount of time we have and our chase for money (and this is a modern phenomenon) restricts the amount of time we have and increases the amount of money we have which makes us older and lose our youth.
When the fog clears and I take time to sit back I realise that the only thing I need to do to be happy is to reverse the situation - decrease the money and increase the time.
It takes songs and quotes and experiences and perceptions to remind me of that on a daily basis and the pressure of society is so strong and weighs so heavily upon me that often I forget. But the above song is a brilliant way to remind me when i'm walking the dog that actually when I grow up I want to be a kid.
It's why I generally don't work well on committees, it's why I generally don't speak well at congress.
I swear too much, disrupt too much, misbehave too much and i'm far too cheeky but when that does disappear and stop then it's time for me to cut the work out altogether to recover my youth. I think i'll try my best to stay a kid until the very end.
So, i'll finish this cranky philosophical blog with a Seth Godin quote from what he calls 'the ruby slippers problem':
"Most of what we were chasing is that we've had all along.
In our culture, the getting is ever more important that the having.
There's nothing wrong with getting, of course, as long as the process is in sync with the way you want to lead your life."
Go and do something childish.
Blog Post Number: 1127
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