I don’t like the term, but perhaps that’ll encourage me to avoid engaging in it: self-indulgent introspection. I don’t typically seek attention from others, yet I’m constantly focused on myself. Maybe that’s why I don’t seek it, I already receive too much scrutiny from my own consciousness. “How am I feeling, what am I thinking, what’s my reaction to this or that…”
Enough already! My character is bland and unexciting, he doesn’t warrant all the attention I give him. He simply serves as a vessel of consciousness (no offense). If he had entertainment value, he’d have demonstrated it by now – instead, he literally just sits there. Think of him as a bolted-down chair in a movie-theater.
Sometimes your theater-seat has food remnants on it, maybe the arm-rests are a bit sticky – but who cares, that’s not why you go to a movie-theater. Why would you analyze the squeak in the folding seat? Why would you attempt to discern which beverage was spilled by your feet. Why would you make guesses as to which food the crumbs came from?
The point of the theater experience is to watch a movie, you’re not there to examine the theater itself. Yeah maybe the seats suck, yeah the people in front are chatting, yeah it’s a little too cold – but the less you focus on the immediate setting, the more you can invest yourself in the movie.
Here’s what we know:
#1, you’ve been overly-focused on yourself for several decades.
#2, you’ve had a pretty unpleasant experience.
#3, you’ve witnessed how the feeling of dissatisfaction is relative, and doesn’t dissipate when external conditions improve.
Are these points related? Maybe not, but what if they are? I think there’s enough probable-cause to warrant a direct and immediate ban on all navel-gazing activities.
To that end, I declare these statements to be true for the time-being:
#1, I will stop staring at the bugs accumulating on my windshield and focus only on what’s beyond my vehicle.
#2, I don’t care how my vehicle performs, whether it can be optimized, nor how it compares with others on the road. I’ll simply ride around until it goes kaput.
#3, I’ll keep it washed and vacuumed but that’s it.
#4, My car isn’t entered into ANY races, there’s no rush to go anywhere or do anything in particular. This baby is set to “cruise” and I’m just loungin’.
#5, I will NOT return this vehicle in the condition it was received. As a matter of fact, it’ll be dinged-up and run into the ground.
Well, we’ll see how that goes….
Whittlin' Rich 