[First two paragraphs from the Purple Notebook, APRIL 2002]
To rise above the (proverbial) average life in which I grew up was one of the primary motivations behind most of my major decisions over the past twelve years.
What is “wrong” with a “normal” life? One, it’s boring. Two, materialistic hoarding is synonymous with the average life in a middle-class suburb, and first-hand experiences between my twelfth and eighteenth birthdays drove the impression home that if you didn’t watch your step, you could lose everything you have patiently built up and collected – your furniture, your curtains, your car, your microwave oven … but also your self-respect and the respect of others in the community.
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[This thing of “rising above the average” needs some explaining.
If 99 out of 100 people want to do the same or similar things, it is a choice they make of their own free will, with their own motivations for it.
My problem is that I don’t want to look back at my footsteps on the Beach of Life (so to speak) after X number of years, just to find my own line of tracks unrecognisable from those of others who walked the Beach at the same time as I did. I want to look back and say: “Look! There are my tracks! I did live. I, too, walked over that sand – although I made different turns, and followed my own pace.”
Do I want to leave a new footpath? Not necessarily. I also don’t have an obsession with avoiding other people’s footsteps just because I’m afraid my own tracks will disappear inside theirs.
It is of course also true that some tracks need to be refreshed from time to time. Why? For one, as a marker for future generations – so that they can be reminded that, if they look carefully, there is more than one path that can be taken.]
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