Distractions

I'm not going to blog today, but if I were, I'd blog about distractions.

A distraction is something that diverts your attention from the the activity you are SUPPOSED to be doing. I don't know about you, but I don't know for sure WHAT IT IS that I'm SUPPOSED to be doing. Never have. It's possible that everything I've ever done is a distraction. I read a book entitled "Ecotopia" years ago in which the author points out that all other mammals engage in play when they aren't eating or searching for food. Sounds good to me. That's why I'm fooling around today instead of blogging. I am, however, being distracted from my not blogging by a guy directly outside my nearest window who is building a wall to prevent the house from further flooding. He's very noisy. I wonder what he is really SUPPOSED to be doing today and why he wasn't SUPPOSED to be wall building at the beginning of the rainy season rather than at its end. I'm guessing he got distracted.

You also have to factor in the distraction that takes you from the current distraction and leads you to another. When I was a kid and thought I knew what I was SUPPOSED to do because my parents told me, I was frequently distracted by them and other adults asking me what I wanted to do when I grew up. Well damn, if THEY didn't know, how was I to know, and was it really a question of what I wanted to do or what I was SUPPOSED to do? Adults were very confusing then, which partly accounts for why I've never become one. Instead I just followed one distraction to the next until I find myself here in Panama not blogging.

John Lennon is attributed with having said "Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans." Clever. And probably true for a lot of people. Some of us though, never really had any plans. We just followed the path the distractions led us down, which is maybe not so bad by comparison. By that, I mean considering the disappointments inherent in Lennon's statement.

Woowoo Charly chimes in with "Things are as they are because that is how they are SUPPOSED to be. They can't be any other way and if they were SUPPOSED to be any other way, they would be." This from the Buddhists, the Iching and George Clooney I think. Of course we really can't trust them, because they have probably been distracted and aren't really doing what they're SUPPOSED to, so how can they know for sure?

It's all very puzzling and that's what I would blog about if I were blogging today. But not to worry, I'll get to it tomorrow. If I'm not distracted.