I think all of us have potential for greatness. It is inborn, it bubbles inside all of us, kind of like radioactive foggy glowing neon super-Sprite, at least that's how I
picture it. Just like carbonation the pressure builds up when life shakes us around.
You've felt it right? When something cool moves us, or something bad shakes us, the pressure builds up and something has to give. We twist off our cap just a little, opening up, and you can hear the hiss, you can see it sometimes as the pressure whooshes out of us. How big the woosh is depends on how far we twist that cap off.
Some of us are better at opening ourselves, and some of us seem to always stay all bottled up. When the cap is opened up far enough that greatness sprays all over the place, if you are close to it you can't help but get it on you. We see photographs, hear songs, read moving words, watch films that change us, see an athlete make an amazing play, marvel at technological inventions, watch someone embrace another, laugh, or cry, all because someone opened up and let out a little of that greatness.
We all get shaken, we are human and existence moves us. Sometimes we just let the pressure die. We sit around, wasting the opportunity, and the bubbles fizz back out until something else shakes us back up. But I think more often we just let the fizz out a little at a time. We find ways to minimalize our humanity. We shout at the stranger driving too close to the yellow line like they have mortally offended us, we roll our eyes when someone different from us has the gall to invade our personal sphere, we put our efforts into existing, instead of living.
It's not all bad to let off a little neon super steam, it keeps us sane. We laugh with friends, play a video game like the result actually matters, worry about who is wearing red or who is wearing blue either in a football game or in the hood. And, often, we come up with funny one liners about life, text them to our buddies, facebook them for friends, read theirs as they do the same, as they slowly let that super neon greatness seep out a little at a time.
I just got done with a suggested break from Facebook. I don't think Facebook is evil. I think actually that it is one of those amazing moments of greatness that someone let out when they opened themselves up to it. It wasn't kept bottled up as some idea in a notebook or a computer lab. It wooshed out of somewhere.
I'm not sure how much super neon radioactive greatness I have in me. Most of us assume we don't have very much. But as life moves me, shakes me around and gets those bubbles all excited, pressure building... what would happen if I opened myself up a little more. What if I twisted that cap all of the way off instead of always coming up with little one liners for my Facebook friends.
I like Facebook, I like letting off a little steam. I like socializing with great people I've had the fortune to know throughout various times in my life. But I haven't painted for a long time now, I haven't been on any photo shoots lately, I have a half finished screenplay in a drawer, I have poorly written songs floating around in my brain, I have great ideas for huge lessons for my students... but I'm not sure I have enough foggy neon carbonation... so I might need to conserve here and there.
This probably makes little to no sense. I just don't want to exist, I don't want to "get through it". I want to wallow in sticky greatness. I want to be near it when others open themselves up and share themselves with the world. I don't want to get dusty on a shelf, letting my bubbles fizzle out. And I don't want to only open my cap a tiny bit at a time, always letting enough pressure out that I am never motivated to do something big.
Those are my thoughts, weird philosophical nonsensical neon super Sprite thoughts about my time off of Facebook. I'll still be around... but maybe a little less.
Fizz on...
2 comments:
You worded well my own frustration with Facebook. Unfortunately, there are only 24 hours in every day. When we choose to spend some of them on doing social networking - which is not a bad thing, but it is a choice - then those precious minutes are no longer available for us to do the other great things we can do. Choices to fizzle or choices to explode...
Wow! sure glad we adopted you! love,muzz
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