The ramblings of a creative buffoon

I was listening to a song called Harmonic by Hex (its on the coldcut album). It’s ambient music and as such its common for ambient music to contain samples from various media types. It fits and sounds cool…

With this particular song the sample playing in the background was of some unknown-to-me speaker who talked about something very philosophical and interesting.

Here is what he said:

“People who fly in this world have a different point-of-view of  than those who spend their lives on the ground. A very wise man once wrote a poem while he was flying, and he called this poem ‘The God’s Eye View’, and he said that this view was entirely different than the view he always had on the ground, which he called ‘The Bug’s Eye View’.

Out there, somewhere, in the air we fly through, exists an old Persian legend much like this poem about a bug who spent his entire life in the world’s most beautifully designed Persian rug. All the bug ever saw in his lifetime were his problems. They stood up all around him. He couldn’t see over the top of them, and he had to fight his way through these tufts of wool in the rug to find the crumbs that people had spilled on the rug.

And the tragedy of the story of the bug in the rug was this: that he lived and he died in the world’s most beautifully designed rug, but he never once knew that he spent his life inside something which had a pattern.

Even if he, this bug, had even once gotten above the rug so that he could have seen all of it, he would have discovered something – that the very things he called his problems were a part of the pattern”

My first reaction to this was “wow!”. What a concept.

Just think in your life the problems you face, does a pattern emerge? What if you could find the pattern, and use it to your advantage.

I think there is one pattern that is consitent with almost all of us. That is something I like to call the ‘New years resolution syndrome’. This is when at the start of the new year you are filled with so much hope for new beginnings, but after a while you lose sight of the goals you set yourself and keep telling yourself “I’ll do it tomorrow”… Tomorrow doesn’t happen though. It’s a story of procrastination which with-strains you from achieving your full potential.

Well that’s a pattern, and it’s not just new years resolutions. Even just when you want to get something done, but you procrastinate and put it off. That’s a pattern!

So how can you beat this pattern of failure, and turn it into a pattern of success?

You’ve got to pre-visualize yourself succeeding in what it is you want to do. Close your eyes and imagine the finished result. Do this several times until you BELIEVE it! Then with sheer confidence and determination go ahead and accomplish the task at hand!

If all else fails, remember the story of the bug who never even realised that the problems around him were just part of a pattern. Imagine if the bug could have flown above the rug to see the pattern and how nice of a rug it really was!

Tell me what you think about this story of the bug