Blog for January 24th January…
I missed my deadline yesterday… oh dear. This reminds me of Douglas Adams’ famous words, ‘I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they fly past…’
We can be flexible with deadlines, can’t we? What is a deadline, after all?
Well, there’s a definition I’ve been thinking about… a deadline is a link in a chain reaction, where things that need to happen can only happen after it’s been met. It’s a binary situation – only two possibilities. Either we go forward in a predetermined manner, or we don’t.
This is interesting, because the chain has been predetermined, by someone or something – because of their desire to do something. Their desire is backgrounded by a series of other desires to go with identity and expected function. By backgrounded, I mean this: imagine a big square of paper, inset with another smaller square, that square inset with another, etc. The big square defines all the others, it’s a chain reaction but the movement doesn’t pass from one to the other, the energy is fizzing in each square pretty much constantly, because the process isn’t linear. That’s the bigger reality around alleged binary. Maybe thinking about binaries like this is too reductive.
Things are so rarely linear in matters of life and being human. What amazes me is that we keep trying to impose linearity on ourselves. Burrell says ‘linearity kills’. Sir Ken Robinson says ‘school kills creativity’, principally by forcing human minds into a closed itinerary formed by the big square desire, competitive economics, basically, from which policy is derived, this sets exam systems in motion, this sets off subject definition, teaching methods, classroom experiences , homework etc.
So I’m starting to think of deadlines as energy fields sitting there buzzing between choices. These choices aren’t free, they are the products of the flat squares of desire. There is different energy in the fields of desire – this are more like the slow eroding burn of conformity.
I can’t escape deadlines or desire, as I’m a product of both. But perhaps I can direct my energy to where I want it to go. I don’t know how, yet – and yes I’m a bit old for this I guess – but I’ll let you know if I get fried in the process…
🙂