Confessions of a Reformed (?) Status Magnet
Morning Thoughts #84
Oh long-trusted inner compass, were you really just a status magnet all along? Much too often, it wasn’t the destination, but how it was seen that drove me closer to it. Admiring the view but at the same time cursing that it was not a mirror. Sensitive to stirrings promising further self-discovery, I kept moving forward on a path unchanging except for the promise of increased illumination. The directions I thought were born within had only arrived there and gotten stuck. I caught them as any functioning antenna does.
When I thought I was resisting, I was being swept along. Clearing the shards of statues recently downed but not by my hands. Gone are the demolished old ideals, and we like to imagine ourselves as their destroyers when, in reality, we’re more like the cleaning crew at the end of a party. Like rebelling only against grandparents that you see just on holidays, when you’re a free-spirited teenager living day-to-day with overly controlling parents. Within, I used to heed their directional advice like second nature - my steps of regurgitated enlightenment.
Oh the space program of modern terminology; another new definition has just dropped, meaning another cultural satellite has risen, another data point pinging towards ever more precise political corrections. Feel the data points, pointing and pointing, giving exact coordinates to true status north. Not necessarily high culture, mind you, but absolutely high status - for that is the only language this needle speaks. The deluge of input has us flowing ahead so powerfully and accurately that we forget we’re drowning in it as well.
And I know I am not going to lose my sensitivity to this. My steps will continue to be thus directed, whether I choose to follow the recommended path or not. For research purposes only (I assure myself), I will continue to note where my status magnet points. Discovering where I point to understand its why, catching myself in a series of questions rather than instinctively following its expedient directions.