Fish, choice and eyeless in Gaza

Havelock came back this morning with Fricka. My, I haven't had regurgitated fish since I was a chick. Odd sort of taste but not wholly unpleasant. I suppose the memory of chickhood and all of its small pleasures goes some way to alleviating the distaste you might feel about eating the contents of some other penguin's crop, even your father's.

Strange writing about Sartre yesterday, it got me thinking about bad choices, mistakes, those forking paths where if you had your time all over again, you'd do it differently, take a different path, wouldn't you? But would you? And if you did, would life turn out better? Or worse? Or would it just be different? Would you look back and still think that the 'other alternative' has to have been better than this life you have?

Hindsight is always 20/20 but, in one way, looking at choices you made then from your perspective now is a pointless and valueless exercise. You are now what you are because of the choices you made then. The person/penguin you were then is not the person/penguin you are now, it can't be!

So the question seems to to be 'Do you like yourself?' Or perhaps 'Are you very unhappy?' Because if the answer to the first is 'yes' and the answer to the second is 'no', which I think would be what most of us would answer, then on what basis do you judge the choice you made to be a bad one. Of course if the answers are reversed then you might well judge that the path you took was ill chosen but how many of us, or you, are very unhappy and full of self loathing? Really?

And what of the intervening period? Between your choice and now? How much of that makes you unhappy? How much of that has taught you to hate yourself? All of the wonderful people you've met. Would you have met them if you'd made a different choice? The things you've done, the trips you've made, the places you've seen, the books you've read, the music you've heard, would any of that have happened if you'd made a different choice? Is the life you have, the friends you have, the memories you have not rich enough? Something tells me that in nearly all cases, the answer would be 'Yes!'

It seems a common trait in humans to want more than they have. To want things to be different, more like his or her life across the street. But they had different opportunities, they had different decisions to make, you can never have their life unless you are them, can you? Would you have ever faced up to what you were capable of, how much you loved someone, or they you, found where the rocks in your life are that you can lean on, if you had not made the choice you made?

So in what way then, can it be seen to be a bad one?

No, Camus was right. Take pleasure in the life you have, not the one you think you want, give meaning to the things you do by doing them and stop trying to get one over on l'absurde. You can't, ever! It's just way too big! :-)

As Robert Plant was wont to say, "This is a song of hope."