Radical Eclecticity

It’s been long enough since I’ve written a blog entry that I thought it was time. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the mood to write the next LITDSTPTSOA entry, so I almost didn’t write one at all. Then it occurred to me: The name of the blog is “Radical Eclecticity.” Limiting myself to sequential posts on the same topic is not even remotely eclectic, let alone radically so. Furthermore, by not permitting myself the freedom to ramble and free associate, my last few on-topic posts really wanted to include off-topic wanderings. For the most part I stifled it but, since this blog is supposed to be my outlet, I have amended that decision.

That’s what category tags are for anyway. If you want to read all the stuff on a certain topic, click the category tag in the list there, and wham! Read away! I genuinely believe that my thought process gains strength from associating and synthesizing ideas from multiple areas and categories. The process of writing gives shape to that synthesis. I write for an audience because, without the audience, I wouldn’t actually write. Besides, reflection is much more useful with feedback. Even if no one comments on the blog itself, I tend to get verbal comments from friends and coworkers that read along with my wanderings.

Hmm… I think that’s going to be a new category tag that I use for my entries, “My Wandering Path.” I’ve been thinking  recently about the different experiences in my life and how they have all, in their own unique way, brought me to this point. I am the person that I am today because of all my varied experiences. I am in the place that I am in today because my wandering path brought me here.

The shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, but often times, the most effective one is somewhat crooked. When I get even further along on my journey, I will look back and see significance where I currently see none. It is, as I recently said in a conversation with a friend of mine, like a great cosmic dance that God choreographs. We may never see the purpose of each little step, but there most certainly is one. As the dancers, we play a huge part in determining our own outcomes, but we may never see the full extent of the interplay between the steps, turns, and choices we make, and the shape of the final picture.

The glorious part of it all is that we don’t need to. We need, simply, to understand the role we fill in the dance. Who we are, where we have been, where we feel led, and what surrounds us on the stage, all combine to make the next step more clear. There is a rhythm to it. We both set and follow it. There is a flow to it. We both direct it and are directed by it. And, while the closer we get to the end of the show, the more clear the beginning of the show may become, we may never understand all its nuance until we leave the stage and survey it all.

I got a little more deepish there than I was intending to. I planned to ramble about taking sick days, being behind in the day to day tasks I need to do, and a visit from my sister. Instead, the Stream of Consciousness flowed me into an extended, introspective metaphor and universal kinds of reflection. I think this is the thought I needed to process right now, though, and that’s why I do this. I needed to be reminded of the importance of the wandering path, and the inherent value of what seem like obstacles.

Thinking out loud is a good thing.