The Blank Page

Starting from scratch is always so scary. There are a thousand different things to do, you can only do one of them at a time, and somehow, there seem to be infinitely more ways to fail. One tends to feel the pressure of making the best choice. The paralysis of indecision can be easily eliminated in a hierarchy, just ask your superior what to do, and rest assured, they will tell you. I've never been great at following through, but I would like to think that I have some experience with starting fresh.

"Quitting cigarettes is easy. I should know, I've done it a thousand times!"

Similarly, I prefer to platinum my video games, start fresh on Monday, and let myself go on "bad" days. It's comforting to stick your head in the ground and easy to do nothing when you're numb. As we all should know, numbing yourself is easier than ever before. Now, it's safe to say that I'm not in the business of leaving things unfinished. Writing involves various distinct phrases, and until and unless I know my text inside out, and it's truly as good as it can be in this moment, my job is far from over.

Regardless, I like to think that it's good for me to struggle here everyday. To tackle a new blank page as routine, is to master the entry point that leads to deeper work. Taking the first step, every day, is mastering the art of showing up as a creator. Eventually, you'll have to finish, or find yourself a job that actually pays. But whether it's a brush and a canvas, a pencil and a piece of paper, or a small flickering line on a blank screen, we'll never get anywhere until we truly get started. 

Until then, pay heed to the fact that thinking truly is pre-writing and gleefully continue offering the very best to your personal compost pile. The practice will come and so will the skills. Consider this before leaving: I'm sure a mathematician can say a thing or two about the holy significance of the actual difference between zero and one. It's beyond astronomical, nearly infinitestimal. That's because in nature, in what we typically think of as real life, there is no zero, assuming that the absense of a thing isn't a different thing altogether. 

I suppose one might run out of apples in their fruit basket, try to find one, and think "I have zero apples," when in fact what they really have is an empty basket. What's interesting about this line of reasoning is that while at first I felt embarassed over having a "stupid" thought, i.e. that zero doesn't really exist, I immediately realised something else that may be quite characteristic of the human condition. The thing about having zero apples is: the lack of an apple does not exist, but we can easily picture it because all we have to do is go down the street and buy another one to replace it.

Or we can order one in, or simply wait for the family tree to bear fruit next season. In a way, it takes everything we have ever accomplished horribly for granted. So is this a lesson in loss and gratitude? Not quite. I think what's more crutial than ever, is for people to truly understand the difference between fact and fiction. For instance, all forms of currencies are also imaginary creations. Like the promise of an apple by the fruit seller, these pieces of papers hold the promise of value itself. I can't help but feel intuitively that this makes all individual problems inherently group problems. 

I just immediately tie the promise of value to the overall quality of life for any and all groups of people. I wonder why that is. Beyond the difference between fact and fiction, we can now observe these enourmous and complex systems we have erected across the world. The farmer that buys his materials from industries, who sells his food for money, and people buy and sell it throughout a distribution system, and millions of very real, tangible, and actual apples rot away and go to waste, all to maintain this illusion of zero apples.

Once again, I feel the need to emphasise that I'm not necessarily interested in the ethics. Imagne instead for a moment, that you lived on a secluded island, and a crate of apples dropped from the sky in the water. Once you run out, you'll once again be at the mercy of the forces of nature. THAT, is our history. That, is what we all came from. For once the entire world was nothing more than a blank piece of paper. Every day, a fresh start. The problems might have changed from hunger to rain to disease, but the solutions were only temporary. Make no mistake, life was a living hell, an eternal struggle.

No wonder we as a species are obsessed with erecting systems. Hierarchies and industries, laws, states, jobs, and channels of distribution. So that no matter what, no one should ever have to deal once again, with a truly fresh start. Today, we might not feel like we need to reinvent the wheel, and we really don't because that's not what those first pioneers did either. We do, however, need to keep on creating more solutions for the ever-growing cesspool of newer problems. Not much has changed over the millenia in that regard.

So what is the difference between one and zero? It is the difference between imagination and reality. It's the distance between thought and action, between planning and execution. It's difficult to put in words what is inherently beyond them, for that is where all symbols emerge from. Like Schrodinger's cat, or like riding a bike, it's a bit of a paradox. For some of life's biggest accomplishments, are grasped only after they've passed by. Most riddles are only answered after looking at the solution, after which, they were always obvious from the start.

Regardless of the knitty gritty, there is something to be said about the process of creating. Not that there is some nobility of inherent goodness in it, but that it bears the fruit of possibility. As such, it is the greatest adventure still within reach. We can lament the loss of new islands to discover, but there are always more mountains to be conquered. What could be better than that?