If time and irrelevance are synonymous, then we have an abundance of it. Either that or we have an abundance of cognitive dissonance. I have conveniently convinced myself that no other alternative is reasonable.
Again a blur out of the corner of my eye and the familiar sound of a plastic, winding toy.
I don't want to believe that I'm being watched and/or followed, so my brain responds by rationalizing the thought of it away. Like the fox that can not reach the grapes adjusts his belief that he never truly coveted the grapes to begin with. Holding two incompatible ideas simultaneously creates tension. Unease. Anxiety.
"Oh, you aren't even ripe yet! I don't need any sour grapes."
And there you have how Aesop coined the phrase.
My mind is playing tricks on me, I say. Peripheral vision is not reliable and hearing is humanity's weakest sense, I add unconvincingly. But my intent is transparent. Just a motivational ploy to reduce the cognitive dissonance...to re-calibrate my equilibrium.
Walking into my place of business this morning, I notice nothing distinctly out of the ordinary, save for blurs and random clicking noises. The blind surveillance cameras trained as per usual, recording absolutely nothing. If there were someone following me the cameras will not reveal evidence of it. They merely offer a pretense of security but it's a common, national fabrication. A corporate inside joke.
I'm being paranoid. There's no logic to the claim. The internalized struggle carries on.
Supposedly, convincing myself that I'm developing a psychological disorder and that my brain jumping to illogical conclusions is meant to reduce anxiety. Clever. My bias to seek consonance between expectation and reality...is mental illness. Sounds about right.
But there it is again. I heard the sound and I'm not imagining things. Not a chance. Reaching for the front entrance door, I swing around and throw my arms up into the air, not unlike a Surprise Attack Jazz Hands deployment, as to catch the most discreet of stalkers unaware and there she is, right behind me. One of the more prominent employees (also known as "convincing actress") of this facility. Stoic. Rigid. Exceptionally important. Unwittingly fraudulent (you know success is truly attained when your adjectives have adjectives). She is a rock star entrepreneur in her own right (and quite possibly in her own mind), following close behind me.
And I scared her. She may have even peed a little bit, and she is definitely not my stalker. She merely happens to be going to the same place at roughly the same time as me. Probably to a more important location within the building, but we share a common entrance.
And I scared her. She may have even peed a little bit, and she is definitely not my stalker. She merely happens to be going to the same place at roughly the same time as me. Probably to a more important location within the building, but we share a common entrance.
I now have a witness. No, not a witness of the unseen eyes I know are upon me. No, not a witness of the mysterious clicking toy sound. I now have a witness that I may be going slightly mad. And yes, I used the term "slightly." Deal with it.
A moment such as this confirms that time does, in fact, stand still. An eternity occurs within one single tick of the clock, as if caught inside of a bubble that refuses to burst and all of time outside of its specific context occurs simultaneously in all directions...and somehow not at all.
Time is synonymous with irrelevance and we have an abundance of it, which begs an obvious question that I'll leave to you for the answering.
Today's Jazz Hands do not covet the grapes.
Day two-hundred and fifty-two complete.
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