Blog 1 | Wednesdays : Dave Races Ahead

Understanding New Beginnings Through Instinct

I arrive on a Wednesday. Once something replaces nothing, understanding new beginnings through instinct motivates me.

From then, for me, everything becomes different, nothing stays the same. All around me is new. I see nothing familiar. The sounds I hear are concerning. The nourishment I taste is strange. Nothing lingers in the air around me until a sudden conglomeration of smells bombards me. My understanding is weak. I grasp at nothingness. I am held. I am loved.

From then, for everyone else, nothing stays the same, everything becomes different. They see new life and new beginnings. They hear curiosity. They taste celebration. They smell birth. They understand potential. They grasp at hope. They interact. They love.

By the end of my first day, someone’s casual ‘he looks like a Dave’ comment had stuck, and Dave it was. Sorted.

‘It’s a boy’ they say.

‘He’s a bonnie wee thing’ they say.

‘Look at his tiny toes’.

I try to not listen for more. They continue with a tickle.

‘Enough!’ I scream. Sheer terror overcomes me. I cry and I wail. This is certainly going to take some getting used to.

Duplicating Matter In The Same Space And Time Is Impossible

I assure myself, or try to. We all have to start somewhere; we each have our own beginnings. No two beginnings can ever be replicated exactly, each are totally unique. There is only one me and there can only ever be one me.

To replicate two things at the same time and in the same space is impossible, isn’t it? Two things cannot even be in the same space at the same time. They can be in the same space at different times. They can be in different spaces at the same time. They cannot be in exactly the same space at exactly the same time.

Going all quantum, down to the level of auto-positioning quarks, if an object is replicated exactly – cell by cell, molecule by molecule, atom by atom – even so, at the sub-atomic level the quarks will never be in the same space even at the same time. They can coexist (in their own spaces and times), but they cannot both exist (in the same space and time). Can they even be in different spaces at the same time? Maybe we just haven’t yet slowed time down enough to verify this.

I’m frustrated already trying to understand the ways of the world we live in. Life and living would be so much easier if it didn’t feel as if we’re trying to solve a problem with most of the clues and pieces missing.

I’m just as clueless as everyone else who arrives in the world, and people have been arriving here for a long, long time. My brain doesn’t come prefilled with knowledge. I have to manage as best I can. I am fortunate.

No Point In Time Is Better Than Any Other

This Wednesday is as good a day to start as any other day. Besides, before Wednesdays were invented, I suppose people just arrived when they arrived anyway. Does arriving on a Wednesday even matter?

After all, how do we definitively know Wednesdays are Wednesdays? What if the person who invented Wednesdays got in a muddle and called the first Wednesday a Wednesday when it was actually a Friday, or a Sunday, or even a Tuesday? What if I’m forever a day ahead or a day behind myself?

Will one of the clever people ever resolve this mystery? Is it even significant? For now at least, I am reassured that Wednesdays are the only days that can be Wednesdays. No other day can be a Wednesday, and a Wednesday can be no other day.

Nothing of much consequence happens for ages. The grown-ups continue to stick their faces right up close. They keep talking to me differently to how they speak with each other. They don’t understand me when I talk to them because every time I tell them something or ask them for something, they get it wrong. I return often to the comfort of my nothingness. Life goes on.

Instinct Turns Nothingness Into The Somethingness Of Life And Living

I curiously begin to think that life will only offer a continuation of the nothingness that had come before. I like the nothingness though. There is something calm and complete about the nothingness. The nothingness comforts me. Disconnection unsettles me. Life surprises me. A dawning awareness, day by day, month by month, year by year, resonates through my emerging consciousness. Nothingness lingers, to begin with. To follow, nothing stays the same. Nothingness becomes something.

Instinct grounds me. Once somethingness replaces nothingness, instinct turns out to be a marvellous thing which I can neither explain nor ignore. This idea comes to me decades later from Agatha Christie via Poirot whose little grey cells are the envy of many but perfectly describes how I coped with life and living from my first Wednesday. Instinct grounds me. Instinct helps me understand the somethingness that my nothingness has become.

Endings become beginnings, beginnings endings, middles sometimes end up as dead ends, an unexpected event triggers an avalanche of unstoppable action, a highly anticipated, planned event triggers little but an anti-climax. I persist – navigating the complexities (and perplexities) of becoming human, trying to find my own anchors connecting me to the universe, to that increasingly reclusive nothingness and to the emerging somethingness of human experience.

Change Arrives Out Of The Uniformity Of Nothingness

The somethingness of life and living, with change as its only constant, causes me eventually (reluctantly) to forget the satisfying, ever-enticing nothingness from where I came and to where I will surely return. Once the blankness of unawareness stops clouding the reality of change, I notice that my nothingness becomes broken by interactive bursts of life and living. I emerge. I disconnect. I bond.

How can we make sense of our humanity when the universe constantly challenges the status quo? Once, back then, all I had was nothingness, now change happens. I need to have faith that change is an essential aspect of life and living, I suppose. Even so, I still wonder – if our only constant is change – how do we decide what to accept and what to challenge?

I consign these thoughts as distractions and resolve to set them aside to focus on coming to terms with the realities of living. I engage. I share. I explore. I experiment. I discover through trial and error. I live. I love. I learn. I hate. I think. I question. I trust. I grow. I become me.

Encouraging A Sense Of Self Instinctively Enables Personal Growth

Instinct carries me. I cannot ignore instinct and nor can I explain it. Instinct creates me. Instinct drives my experiences. Instinct furnishes my inner nothingness with somethingness. Instinct moulds my personality. Instinct shapes my emotions.

Like everything else, instinct is progressive, it evolves, it matures. Instinct is crucial to starting the process of separation from the nothingness of before and towards the growth of becoming an individual being. Slowly I come to know things. Eventually I come to know what I do not know and what I cannot ever know. Union. Meeting. Beginning. Ending.

I remember a race, an obstacle race. On that day, I had long forgotten to visit the old increasingly distant nothingness, but to build on the new somethingness unfolding around me. There, on the grass by the school, the grown-ups, as usual, were creating far too much noise. However, as if by symbiosis, even I was mildly excited.

Then, this teacher thrust me behind a white line, pointed at piles of objects on the grass ahead of me and told me to run to each pile and bring them back, pile by pile, to a basket at the starting point.

‘What?’ I yelled, confused (and a little scared).

‘Get ready!’

Why are they making us do this ludicrous race?

My friends were also lining up ahead of their lines, cheered into position. I tell myself, Dave, fear less and trust more. I feel marginally better. I concentrate on deep breaths for a while. I am calmer. I look around. Reassured by the collective validation of consensus, as well as by a respite from the relentless noise with a calming quietening of the crowd, at that moment, suddenly, I engage.

I’m fired up. I’m ready. I pant. I crouch. I’m on my marks. I’m getting set. I wait. I hear the whistle. I go.

We only grow when we are challenged. My anxiety was off the scale once I’d set off despite my uncharacteristic excitement. I ran for my life. I collected my first pile and raced back to the starting point to throw it in the basket held out for me. Laughter, noise, shouting, clapping all merge into one noisy cacophony as I speed to the next pile.

I continue in the same way. I stick to my plan. I collect each pile. I fill the basket. Soon I’m collecting my last pile and hurling it into the basket and then a final spurt as I finish and cross the white line. I hear cheers. This time the noise doesn’t sadden me. I confront it, encourage it. The impossible becomes possible. I win. I smile. I hug. I show off my medal.

Successful Living Emerges By Balancing Instinct, Reason And Determination

The more you stand back from something the more clearly you see it. I had done what the grown-ups had told me to do. This wasn’t a usual race, running straight on from the starting line with the first to cross the finishing line the winner, this was an obstacle race, with obstacles placed along the track between the starting and finishing points. Each lane had the same number and type of obstacles at parallel positions.

The race was fair. The rules were simple: from the starting line, once the whistle blows, run to each pile, pick the pile up, run with it back to the starting line, throw the pile of obstacles in the basket, repeat until all piles of obstacles are in the basket with the first runner past the starting line as the winner.

The product of instinct is survival. The product of thought is solution. By thought we prove (logically), by instinct we invent (ambitiously). Sometimes we are right. Occasionally we are lucky. Mostly we are ignorant. Usually, we just have to stick with it and work hard.

Experiences make us who we are. Our personalities and behaviours emerge from the cooperation between our reason and our instinct. Our instinct, propelled by curiosity, invites us to explore ourselves and investigate our own potential. We react to instinct and balance it with reason. Ignorance prevails, despite our quest for knowledge. The more we know, the more we realise how much we don’t know. If ignorance is bliss, and if ignorance is common, then why isn’t bliss common? I obsess.

All the other competitors of that obstacle race ran to the nearest pile first. I ran to the furthest. Do they all have some psychic connection with some collective consciousness that I am not part of? Do I have some intuitive disconnection? Am I too detached from everyone else? Did I do the race backwards, did they? The rules didn’t say which pile to go to first.

Unions Impact The Unfolding Big Picture That Life Is Revealing

Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, I suppose. Sure, sometimes we are right, occasionally very right. Sometimes (often, perhaps) we are wrong. Sometimes (hopefully rarely) we are not only not right, but not even wrong. Who knows the right balance?

Do all probabilities collapse into one reality, or do all possibilities exist, each in their own universe? One reality or one multiverse? Is that the only option? Does it have to be one or the other? Do probabilities or possibilities have to actually exist or is the potential to exist enough? This potential existence would exponentially open the windows of opportunity for life and living.

My life and living began from the moment when my nothingness started to become somethingness. This moment is not defined by a point in time. This moment is not defined by a position in space. This moment is not defined by consciousness, or unconsciousness, or thought, desire or reason, or dreams, ambitions, imagination, fears or even love. This moment is defined by union.

The rewards of living invite us to seesaw between nothingness and somethingness instinctively, as the unique jigsaw of life’s big picture emerges piece by piece.