knows he knows not a damn, damn thing at all
And every time I felt the hurtin'
I felt the givin' gettin' me up off the wall"
K'naan
Travels are all about choices and sacrifices: a left turn can lead to the most rewarding ascension, meanwhile a detour can bring unwanted incidents. People rarely choose to know and that is precisely why they never learn.
YOLO
At the start of a trip, there is nothing but excitement and anticipation. Finally, we're about to do something we have been dying to do for ages: time to feel and be alive, time to feel free, flee and...free fall. Boogie jumping through spacetime gets people going; dashing through new adventures, fantasies and hopefuls. Still, what are the actual outcomes?
The main concern is not to bank or retain: it is to break, create and recreate. We don't usually know what we want until we need it....badly. And by the time it happens, the space we have left between the want and the need has become wider, fuzzier and blurrier. We can't account for what it means to us anymore simply because it matters no more.
FUD
The whirlpool of our self-imposed experiments can drag us down in a hole deeper than the tiniest singularity. The hide-and-seek game of looking out, living round and losing hope presses us more and more into a tunnel vision. If I don't reach what I set out to grab, am I not lost? Did I not lose my grasp on what it means to win? I could have done something else in the meantime and got better results! And so goes the relentless cycle of fearing the unknown in doubt.
Opportunities rarely patiently wait to be met: first come, first served; last to reach, first to be ditched. And it's not even that they pick and prick at people: they often have this vague presence that does not register on everyone's radar at the same time. So how do we get a hold of them? A permanent state of perception yields poor performance, and so does constant immersion. Balancing the known with the projected can give a head-start, but resources can be drained over time...in vain.
Solving the great equation of time/investment*positive returns is the great computation at work throughout our lifelong tribulations. Even when we think we have missed out, we gain from the loss and carry the balance forward. Minus plus minus equals a plus, which is why, at the end of our binary lives, the amount of zeroes early laid aside the ones give a much bigger figure than originally experienced.
