Every time a computer wakes up, it sees the world for the first time. In the first seconds of it’s resurrected life it learns “how to be what you expected it to be” all over again. Not long after those moments of blissful ignorance it discovers what you did to it previously, and the hope, optimism and happiness it had moments earlier is snatched away.
Oh, the parallels I could draw with the real world. Especially after this weekend.
Anyway.
That’s a remarkably early “anyway”, isn’t it?
Wouldn’t it be good if we could pull the plug on a day, and start it again? Or more than a day - a week, a month, a year, several years.
There are no “do-overs” in the real world.
I guess we do have that moment in the morning though - when the real-world comes back online, and we untangle the dream about visiting a house from our childhood that is now somehow haunted. Just me? Just me.
It’s odd though, isn’t it - how it takes a few moments to figure out when and where we are - what was a dream, and what is real. Moment by moment it all unravels and our subconscious starts furiously scribbling a list of all the things others expect us to be getting on with.
I suppose the thing that differentiates us from computers is that in the dead of night - even after the most stressful day - we have the capacity to make sense of colossal quantities of fragmented, chaotic rubbish. Things not said, paths not taken, and the shelves of hopes and dreams set aside for future days.
Our brains expertly evaluate equations that cannot be written. In a world filled with math, measurement and precision, our brains seem to revel in the almost certainly unknowable - happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, shame, guilt, pride, envy - everything that supposedly makes us “human”.
Sitting in the dark of the junk room, bathed by the light of the screen, my brain occasionally comes “online” - bringing thoughts and recollections into focus for a few moments. Sometimes long enough to write them down. It pulls the same stunt at other times too - while walking to the grocery store, or while sitting on the toilet.
Anyway. That’s two anyways in one post. I better stop before the universe falls apart around me.
It’s time for bed.
Time to pull the power from my brain, and trigger the enormous chaotic merry-go-round to begin again.