The photo shows me reflected in my little red car with my boyfriend’s big red bakkie (pick-up truck) behind me. The cars are pretty symbolic of our lives at present. My car is a small red town traveller. It gets me to work and back and has low fuel usage. Florian’s bakkie we take on rural roads where my Fiat would be swallowed by a pot-hole, it takes him to townships where roads are non-existent, it rattles and roars on the highway, it has no air conditioner and it is extremely heavy on fuel. We use my car most of the time. But when we want to get away from it all and take the dogs with us we use F’s car.
I would love to have a lifestyle where I can get rid of little red car and drive the big, resilient red car. But I love the comfort of the small red car. The way she nips into parking spaces, the blessed cooled air, the funky red leather seats, the sound system blaring and the smooth ride.
For me the office is blue and ordered, with air conditioning. I spend my days analysing and simplifying processes. Home is red. It is filled with passions, shared laughter and conflicts. Sometimes things at home gets confusing, it boils with unexpressed emotions and suspicions. I yearn to get away to a place where people put on a cool work mask and the day is spend classifying and arranging life into neat best practise processes.
I find myself balanced between my present life and my future. I yearn for that future, I want to let go, surrender and take life one day at a time. But I fear giving up the comfort crafted from receiving a good salary. I want to have the time to explore myself at home but I will miss the mental discipline imposed at the office.
The question is really: “Can I create a space at home where I can diffuse red with blue and create purple? The purple of far of hills, peaceful yet filled with possibilities?” Mmmm, I think I will spend the weekend setting up an office at home. A peaceful burrow filled with purple shadows and reflected sunshine.
2 comments:
A great bit of food for thought.
I always seem to be one step off with the pace of my life. When I'm in the office, I long for the comfortable chaos of home. When I'm home, I can feel my brain trying to crawl out of my skull and back to the efficient organization of the office.
At the office things are organized and you know what you should be doing and when. There is comfort in that. At home everything is chaos - should I be doing household chores, should I cook something, can I just sit on my butt and surf the internet or does my partner want to do something else, what should be done?
At the office people wear masks and there is a clear interface defined between you and others. You know how to ask them to do things, you know how you will be asked to do things.
At home it is all over the place. A silence, a look, or a little something being done quietly in the background where you hardly notice can be a signal you should be interpreting.
It is confusing, but it is also alive. The office is not alive.
At the office you are a square block with a square hole to fit into. You are a cog in the machine. While you have some freedom of expression and creativity in your own little block, your interfaces with the rest of the machine has to be well-defined and you can't do anything in your little block that will output something to an interface that is not being expected there.
At home you are yourself, evanescent, or steady, or a swirl of moods and colours. And whoever you share living space with is the same.
The trick is blending red and blue, and the yellows and greens and blacks and infinity of life into a shade that works, instead of some weird greyish streaky colour that nobody wants.
The last paragraph is both powerful and funny
Post a Comment