It’s a funny thing how putting the word ‘should’ before an action immediately turns it into something to be postponed. Indefinitely. The mere thought that ‘I really ought to… ‘ is sufficient to send my brain scurrying in the opposite direction, chasing whatever dubious, time-absorbing Rabbits of Distraction pop out of their holes to hop around enticingly on the horizons of my mind.
I really was going to write another post to follow Simon’s Takeuchi one. I really was going to make some smart-arsed-but charmingly-humorous comment about his ridiculous statement that skilled mini-diggering is a four-dimensional task. But somehow a little rabbit popped up and lured me ever deeper into the Warrens of Google, in search of an understanding of the Fourth Dimension. I am chasing it still. Trying to get a three-dimensional head around a concept so completely outside of its perceptual experience is not an Easy Thing. Some might even say that it is harder than operating a digger.
But ultimately, it is probably less useful. Being a Thinker rather than a Doer probably doesn’t make me well-suited to the farming life. Ho Hum. Who’d have thought it?
Despite his many years of employment in what was, ultimately, a Thinking sort of activity, I suspect that Simon is more naturally a Doer. Yes, he likes to research things. Yes, he likes to gather facts and store away information, like a squirrel preparing for the hungry day when one particular little acorn of information will come in very handy indeed. But when it comes down to it, he likes to Do Stuff. Put a tool in his hand, or a machine in his possession, and he is a Happy Bunny. He likes to mould and shape his environment to fit his needs. He doesn’t Go With the Flow. He makes the Flow go with him – or at least through the pipes that he has carefully placed so that the Flow will go where he wants it to go, and not run about willy nilly, doing the wayward things that Flows generally seem to enjoy.
Whatever the reason, it seems that this life suits Simon very well indeed. And the annoying irony of the thing is that it was my idea. It was me who wanted to live on a farm in the middle of nowhere, and breed llamas and pigs, and be at one with the seasons. We came here in search of my bliss, and Simon very generously went along with my crazy idea, because (as I believe I may have previously mentioned) he must love me very much. We came in search of my bliss, and inadvertently Simon found his. I am searching still.
Simon has just oh-so-wisely pointed out that he suspects he could probably find his bliss in all sorts of places. That’s the Really Good Thing about being a Doer. It doesn’t matter where he is, or really even what he is doing. So long as he is Doing, (preferably with the aid of a combustion engine), he will be pretty happy.
And I guess that has to be a Really Good Thing for me too. Because it means I can keep right on Having Ideas, which is, after all, what I love doing best in the whole world. And it means that whenever I emerge from a few days, or weeks, or months of concentrated disquietude with the immortal words, “I’ve been thinking… “, I can be reasonably certain that Simon will not run screaming for the hills , but will instead happily hear me out, and rise to the challenge of putting my idea into action.
Perhaps I have found my bliss after all, but have simply been too busy thinking to notice.
