Timing

**WARNING: NAVEL GAZING**


Timing, it seems, rules all of our lives. Make of that what you will; be it in a Sliding Doors sort of way, or My Parents Failed At The Rhythm Method sort of way, it's hard to deny, and maybe even a bit twee to say so.

So it goes.

I've had a lot of time to think, the last few months, maybe, maybe too much time. Thinking is all very well, but unless you're Descartes, some sort of action is required. Too much contemplation of the existential, is, in my experience, bad for your health. It leads one to ponder one's place in it all. I'm left with the idea that it's hard to get beyond the Pale Blue Dot.

And yet... somehow, I feel that despite that, perhaps because of that, one can still make a difference. What I can't decide is if it's enough to make a difference just by smiling at someone you might otherwise have scowled at; should you risk striving to make a really big difference, running the risk of foundering on the rocks of your own self-regard? Or is that the point?

You can see why I'm wary of too much navel-gazing. And it doesn't get the tax return done.

Fate and free will? I find I have no choice but to believe in free will. And yet... My circumstances over the last year and a half or so have not been what I would have chosen, ever; but now I find myself confronted with whole new sets of possibilities. Am I a 'better' man for what has come to pass? I'm not sure I can, or should answer that. I'm probably a different man, but isn't that true for any given set of circumstances? Aren't we constantly re-inventing ourselves, with every decision we make? Perhaps e want to believe in some over-arching plan, but if it is there, it is of our own making. I have experienced things, done things, met people that I would not have done, but for what was, at the time, and in my memory, a painful experience. One that I would not have chosen, but that has resulted in some events I'm glad of. So, was this 'meant to be'?

No. Shit happens. Alan Moore is on record as saying:

"The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless."

Sometimes, the timing is all wrong; but sometimes, maybe every time, did we but know it, it's just right.