Older, but no wiser
Andy Borrows' musings on life and all its confusion, contradictions, richness and opportunities
Friday, September 30, 2005
Originality
What would it be like to have a truly original thought?
Not to regurgitate half-digested dogma we swallowed from parents or peers;
Not to set our thought-wheels on rails laid down by those whose intellects we thought were so much more developed that our own;
Not to sweep up discarded thought-fragments off the floor and bolt them loosely together into some creaking Heath-Robinson structure that sways and topples at the slightest breeze;
Not to pick favourite ideas from the idea-trees planted and watered by those who would channel the flow of our minds for their own ends;
To dissolve accretions of word-upon-word, thought-upon-thought, cemented together by assumptions into a congealed mass of conjecture;
To restrain the words which rush to fill empty space, joining themselves together like a chain of dominos, or old friends holding hands;
To weave instead an idea-cloth whose pattern had never before been seen?
(enough metaphors yet?)
I only ask because the experience must be so novel.
What would it be like?
A child might know the answer to that…
Not to regurgitate half-digested dogma we swallowed from parents or peers;
Not to set our thought-wheels on rails laid down by those whose intellects we thought were so much more developed that our own;
Not to sweep up discarded thought-fragments off the floor and bolt them loosely together into some creaking Heath-Robinson structure that sways and topples at the slightest breeze;
Not to pick favourite ideas from the idea-trees planted and watered by those who would channel the flow of our minds for their own ends;
To dissolve accretions of word-upon-word, thought-upon-thought, cemented together by assumptions into a congealed mass of conjecture;
To restrain the words which rush to fill empty space, joining themselves together like a chain of dominos, or old friends holding hands;
To weave instead an idea-cloth whose pattern had never before been seen?
(enough metaphors yet?)
I only ask because the experience must be so novel.
What would it be like?
A child might know the answer to that…
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