December 16th, 2009
We all use beacons in our lives ... icons, dreams, distant lights to set our sights on and aim for. The directions we choose in life are as much the result of our experience as the resonance with our very natures; we are attracted to what we are and what we value, and also to what is familiar from the past.
Strangely, though, we are sometimes attracted to what we are not. The chimeras of the unfamiliar are occasionally more attractive to us than the spotlights on the known.
Think about it: Have you ever met a member of the opposite sex who was so completely unlike you? A different nationality or culture altogether? Different thoughts, language, values, physique even ... and found yourself drooling and weak-kneed? 1 Or perhaps there have been times when the smell of completely foreign food which, let's be honest, doesn't always get our stomachs growling, suddenly comes across as wonderful ... you are suddenly hungry at the smell of something you've never eaten before? I'll admit to that one. :-) Maybe you've had a completely opposite opinion about something all your life and, for the briefest of moments, you suddenly get the opposing viewpoint. It's happened to all of us, I think, especially when we are young adults and freshly into the world. I mean, you wouldn't believe some of the things I temporarily accepted as truth when I was in university!
I'm not saying that these 180-degree turns happen often, or even with any casual regularity, but they do occur at random moments in one's life. Sometimes in moments of weakness, other times when we are suddenly satisfied with every aspect of our lives and must therefore "make a little trouble" for ourselves. It is at those times of opposing beliefs, contrary likes and dislikes that we can really learn something. In those moments of total opposition to our usual selves we show the potential to make a quantum leap in consciousness ... even if (or perhaps especially if) we return to our usual selves afterwards.
Like weekends of abandon for the normally straight-laced clerk. Or the savage who attends a poetry reading and comes away crying one time in his life. These moments of transcendence become the exceptions that prove the rule; they are the divergent moments that actually—and paradoxically—define us.
1. Not that I say I ever did, or that I am admitting to anything here ... I mean, my wife reads this for gosh sake.
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