Promises Promises
The thing about having and showing so much promise is that at some point in time we have to front up with the goods. Is that a truism or what? If you’re anything like me, you’d have to agree there’s a stronger probability that we’ll have a rather more circuitous truth in the bag than a real-time ism denoting an actual result. How strongly strange our reality is then. Stranger even than fiction? Well maybe!
Have you ever had the passing thought that despite everything we have going for us we’re our own worst enemies? Allowing crowded thoughts of inadequacy, insecurity and self-doubt squeeze up against us as we hold onto the handrail in this crowded bus we call our lives. I hate the 5pm rush hour don’t you?
And isn’t it strange, that no matter where you are in the world, rush hour anywhere is characteristically the same. Same harried looks on people’s faces, this time it’s evening rather than morning. Same guarded ‘stay-out-of-my-space’ face and certainly don’t ask me how my day was. Sometimes, the sense is simply “Do not talk to me” I have no desire to engage in small talk! Rush hour has developed in us the perfect veneer of disconcern. It’s worrisome really.
Why? Well, because the moment we step through the doorway of our own homes we must (due to closer relational ties to the one or ones) then engage with them who are a trifle harder to fob off than mere strangers. Indeed, they can pull the mat out from under our makeshift mindsets faster than you can say:
“Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukaka
pikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu.”
Roughly translated it means “ The brow [or summit] of the hill [or place], where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, who slid [down], climbed [up] and swallowed mountains, [to travel the land], [who is] known as the land eater, played [on] his [nose] flute to his loved one”. (Oh by the way, this is the Maori name for an otherwise unremarkable hill, approx 305 metres high, near Porangahau just south of my home town Waipukurau in southern Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand). It also has the more salubrious honour of being the longest place name in the world! But I digress.
Showing promise at an early age can mean one of many things, a life of lengthy expectations from family and friends or our own unfulfilled dreams and aspirations, a heavy load or a life spent on the run, to goodness knows where and from goodness knows whom. It’s a slippery slope, no? Or should that be yes?
Whatever way you look at it, there’s no denying it and no going back from it yet the one thing we can know for sure about it is, that showing so much promise and having decided for ourselves just how and when we might fulfil its true potential in our lives is entirely our call. And if we never do, then who but we can say ours hasn’t been a fulfilling life anyway.
We can agree then? No-one, not even in their most do-good moments can because only we know and perhaps even then, we can live with our action or not. I’m comfortable with that, how about you?
