full of awe

but do we grow up?

There is more, obviously, but I’ll continue later. Or restart. God, I don’t know what I’m doing. Not that it matters. I mean what kind of idiot knows what they’re doing. Isn’t it true, isn’t it abundantly clear that we have never known what we were doing? We grow but do we grow up? Or if we do, can we with certainty then say that that is the direction we should be doing it in? Trees do it, sure, but that is only because they don’t put much importance into growing. They leave the growing to various elements in thrall to physics while they get on with the real stuff of living. Up is not what we’ve always made it out to be and we are wondering what all of that breathless reaching for the firmament was all about. We are still caught in the inertia but many are concluding that it was all a bit of a dream, and looking back it’s difficult not to see it as a nightmare. Or to see this, what we have done, the outcome of all this up, the elongated, brittle bone structure with the neckache and the glare-blinded eyes, as a bit premature. We were all too excited when we looked at the trees and saw their magnificent form. Here we are now tired much too soon, wobbling precariously on legs not designed for all this stretching. We fold, we hunch over, we sit against the trunk of a sturdy tree with our heads on our knees. Heads so heavy on quavering necks and scoliotic spines. Heads on knees, heads in hands. Strange creatures of Shikasta, we wonder where we were supposed to grow to if not up.

Because, and sooner or later we must face this with faces bruised and mouths bloody from not looking up anymore all of a sudden, that this was not the outcome we had in mind. Up is only one of the directions. It’d be just like us if, now, we find we can’t explore all those others we’d dismissed so casually along the way.