A different discontent

I suck at being ordinary. Without the council of my heart, I am just a middle-aged guy playing The Sims. That is just not much to write home about.

I have installed Spore again, the world’s most epic strategy game ever, where you start as a small simple single-celled organism and evolve to dominate the galaxy, perhaps. I remember thinking, back in 2008, that I would like to play it for many years, filling thousands of planets with life. But this no longer appears to me a great way to spend my old age, if any. At least the Sims are a kind of model of the real world, more or less. Well, mostly less, but still. Perhaps at some point I shall learn to relate to aliens with three arms on their back and a head at each end, but it seems less than urgent at this time.

I made my way through one science fiction novel by the esteemed Vernor Vinge, may he live forever or as long as he wishes. But I got bogged down in the second, well written though it may be. SF kind of feels like a past thing for me now, no offense to the writer.

The different discontent inside me is this, that I am not discontent with my conditions, by and large. I have more than enough food, clothes, space, computers and so on. I thoroughly enjoy being single. I have the 24 hours a day that each mortal is allotted, hard to complain about that.  It is myself I am underwhelmed by.

I really don’t think I can give off much brightness by myself. What I have to share of value seems to come not really from me as such, but from the deeper part in me, from whatever structure has been built there in my subconscious, or from whatever being(s?) have set up camp there. How long has it been that way? Pretty long, I think. But how can I be sure I have got this right? Anyone who has revelations think they are awesome, I am sure. Yet some lead people astray, and some are just dumb, or miss the points that are worthwhile. The true nature of the tree is best deemed by its fruit, and the true nature of revelation is deemed by the virtue it imparts. This is what limits me, but not as much as it should, I fear.

As Elias Aslaksen says somewhere: “The speed of a human is like the lightning when it comes to puff himself up, but slower than the snail when it comes to humbling himself.” And that, when applied to myself, is grounds for discontent. Although a different one from what I had when I grew up, thank the Light.