#MYLDN (1028)

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

Its difficult not to get to this time of year, as the dying leaves, beautiful as they are as they get the life sucked out of them, scatter everywhere reminding us that another chunk of time is almost done. It is virtually impossible not find yourself reflecting on what you had hoped this 12 month period would bring and what it, in fact, actually delivered. We use these imposed time borders to instill self-appointed performance related appraisals on all aspects of our life activities..personal, professional and now even digital.

The actuality of our yearly achievements are finally forced to compete with our yearly aspirations. The fantasy crashes head on into the reality. This generally instigates a dwelling on the shortfall, the gap between these two goalposts as we all always tend to aim higher than we can reach. But failing doesn’t have to be regarded as failure. In some ways it is impossible goals which forges progress.  You don’t achieve what you wanted but you get closer than you would have if you had set yourself no target in the first place. This is what has fuelled human evolution since year dot although it does seems unlikely that early man would have over-complicated their accomplishment planning quite as much as we do…

Top 5 Homo Erectus New Year’s Goals  (*these are totally real btw. I have a time machine and went back to around 300,000 years ago and did an extensive survey. Lovely lot the Homo Erecti. Very down to earth *)

1. Don’t get eaten
2. Don’t get killed by competitors
3. Don’t get ostracised by tribe and left for dead
4. Don’t eat anything poisonous
5. Don’t get lost in the woods and die

You might notice a bit of a theme running through the choices. Strangely orientated around avoiding being dead. My favourite phrase at the moment is “survival is victory” (which I nabbed from  the Dunkirk movie poster) as its simple observation gives you the ultimate perspective. It makes a mockery of anything we create that is more complicated than that. We live in an era beyond survival. In the absence of something trying to eat us or having to forage and hunt for food (which doesn’t include going up and down a supermarket aisle looking for pesto) we have found ourselves searching for purpose and meaning because our primary drive has actually been taken away from us. And so we have been forced to make things that don’t really matter…matter.

Maybe we don’t need to constantly judge our own achievements in life or make everything performance related. Does everything have to be marks out of 10? How well did I do? Could I have done better? Do we need to approval on everything? Either self-imposed or judgement by others. Maybe by virtue of actually existing we already winners. No matter what. And that is really all you have to focus on. Everything else is just details. So instead of wishing we were this, that or the other and maybe berating ourselves for failing to achieve our imposed goals at the end of each year we can actually just be appreciative of our current and continued success at staying alive..that’s all we are really supposed to be doing. So if you are still alive, pats on the back all round I reckon…