The Prospector

They say that to get what you want you must want what you get. They say that if you don’t know what you want you’re unlikely to get it. They say…

You say. You say that you’ll find the path. You say you have a plan.

Plan. Path. Get. Have. The metaphors all conjure the same protagonist. This is the age of the prospector. Each carving out a small holding in the endless frontier: time.

Where will you stake yours?

Here’s a thought. What if we chose the wrong hero? What if the prospector is a tired trope, a legend of the lawless west when the plains were so big they could swallow a herd of buffalo without trace.

Can you really stake a claim to time? Are we moving into it, capturing it. Or is time coming to us? Offering to each the now, succeeded only by now. Perhaps time is just a word for change: not external at all, but rather an observation that what was and what is are different.

In this case, we would need new questions. Not “what do you want” but “what are you wanting”. Not “what’s your plan” but “what is your question”. Not “what do you have”, but rather “what did you just find”. Now. Reading this.