The Might & Madness of (Our Method of) Reading Books.
There is something in the consumption of things in everyday life that makes us vulnerable to its necessity.
When I consume knowledge, learning of things – from an author's perspective, taking in a book page by page, is actually a user-proposed method not how it is a default of a cultural bias.
Just as the Japanese read their mangas from right to left – the Westerners tend to read it from left to right, and modern publishing has followed this norm. I tend to skip chapters and not read as caused & chronologically ordered on the book, which is why I love reading anthologies & collections best. (And preferably with loads of moving/ 3D/ hanging pictures.)
When occupied with a consumer culture that proposes various ways to doing something you are either: 1/ learning first-hand, 2/ adapting to the knowledge that is culturally “what is local” , or 3/unlearning what you know, and replacing this with one that has helped you cope better – from a temporal place to a more permanent one that has been chosen, adapted and correlated to make way to your person (as well as observing how it actually changes you).
This is when your systems have changed to what is now your “third culture”, an inheritance of cultural migration. The Shock (and Learn) and Awe method has always been my spoiler to life, but a gained space in a host of un-tragic memories.
When the environment you’re born in meets and clashes with cultures that you migrate to – for school, work, even as relationships change you internally and cause you to “uproot” to other places. The negotiation that is eternally placed upon you, if you’re properly installed at the core, is the apprehension of what is ok to you - not life’s conspiracy to arrange your early demise.
The reason for balanced trips to adulthood – careens your way to real adulthood not as a property of age (although that’s the marker), but instead as an employ to a more fundamental growth – that of your resilience to the change that takes out your wonderful core. So in this daily adventure you are balanced by the third wheel of the core soft knowledge that is where you have been, a wealth that imprints your unique design, not succumbed to change – not by cramping your nooks & crannies, nor by any means of weathering.
As an adult, we are given choices to the path we’ve been set on as well as choose to be on. This sets us up on the compass to our true north and that usually permeates the life we have set our sights on to building – something that we can put our name on. A signature life, designed by you.
So if you don’t co-create your life, does God take all the blame? Or will someone else tow along your tugboat? Will you somehow arrange for someone else – as a placeholder to defer your life for? A just in case person, a call for emergency fix-it guy? Will there be a voice at the end of your call unless you place them by default or displaced by the meanders, taken? Will your solids be crossed over by stripes and diagonals? Is this useful to you, or at least, pleasurable?
So maybe this is a good UX guideline that outlines where you can colour within, but not limit yourself to. And like the vast ingredients of life, you can at last make that comfort being that you know is waiting to pop out at the closest moment of someone else’s beck and call. Not a recipe, (there is no recipe), but it’s what you need to learn as basics. Then it’s all played by ear (or listened to, as that commutative, instinctive guide steering you on the way to avoiding the nega you). Unless you wanted to.
Happy foraging!
#WrittenInSg #PlantingCreeds
(Published in a cafe from Medium Mobile, with apologies to mistakes with a no-edit-after publish version of a software. Also, in a frail chase to conserve battery/memory, I am publish-button happy and scramble to edit later. Thanks for your patience.)
