Categories: uncategorized
Date: 27 September 2006 14:35:43
I pondered my legacy.
I have a job, a profession even, and one which, more than most, has a well-known stereotype. If I told you it then you would form a pretty clear impression of how you'd expect me to be. You'd probably expect that if you asked me something it would take me a while to answer and the answer would involve lots of long words and be fairly incomprehensible and certainly any connection with the question you asked would be obscure. You'd probably expect that if you asked me to do something then I might well take a while and, before I'd really even started, I'd get distracted by something and would stand in a corner of a room staring absent-mindedly, having forgotten completely about the task you'd set me.
Those expectations annoy me. Now, I'm well aware that I do some of those things. But I'm saddened and frustrated if that's the first thing people think of about me. I'm scared that when I die my kids will talk about their dad as someone who could never give a simple answer to a simple question, before they think of anything else that I did or was. Those behavioural quirks are not what I'm about. My life's purpose, if it has any, does not consist in trying to stare into space. So if I live out my life and all people remember is me staring into space looking vacant, then that will be a frustrating distortion of what was really going on.
So I wondered if I should deliberately avoid such behaviour. (Could I change it? Oh yes. I've reinvented myself many times in my life and I'm sure I'll do it many more times). Yes, it entertains people (while also annoying them) but if it's such a distraction then maybe I should work to overcome it. Well, that's how I felt two months ago. Now I read this and wonder what I was getting so worked up about. At the moment I suppose I don't care what people think, and staring into space is a better trait than many that I could be remembered for.