No Surprises... Creep! (Originally posted on 18/06/11)

Those of you who are total music nerds will have instantly recognised the very subtle reference to two Radiohead songs in the title of this post. During the course of this day I have continued to attempt to get a few thousand words of my New Testament essay written and have continued to fail. I keep coming back to these two songs or rather I have kept coming back to them, especially today. Creep seems to especially describe how I have  been feeling of late; I mean, there is more but let's not go there.

Human beings rarely see themselves in a positive light, it isn't how we are and it most certainly is not our nature. Occasionally we find someone who tells us how it is, doesn't beat about the bush, exposes you for who you are even if that exposed person is the opposite of who you always thought you were. Once you are faced with a true mirror image of yourself you have a choice, do you ignore it or do you keep looking at that mirror, see yourself for who you really are?

What do you see? On that rare occasion where you've looked into the mirror at the correct angle what do you see?

But I'm a creep
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here...

That's what I tend to see. I am going to pre-empt posts and say that I think when we all look at ourselves we see something along these lines, maybe it looks more like this...

But I'm a fool
I'm not who I thought I was
Why do I bother doing this?
When I see my true face?

Okay it doesn't rhyme and maybe I associate myself more with the first one but you get my point, we all have a Creep style chorus which defines our true reflection. How do we get around this? How do we stop this, can we change it?
Recently I have questioned the ability we have to change it, I am a creep and I am a weirdo, I will never know what I'm doing here but we can certainly try to look at ourselves in a better light, maybe get some surgery. We will all have our No Surprises moments, some of us will have more than others, but despite those moments we all have this innate desire to keep living and to keep improving on the reflection.

This is a post to say that whatever you see in that reflection, whoever you really are, however ashamed of that reflection you may be, sift through it. Find the good in who you really are. Sometimes you will find very little, but hold onto that little you have. The whole point of sifting for gold is that you get rid of an immense load of dirt but end up with a few gold nuggets which are worth more than a hundred thousand palettes of that horrible silt and mud you saw when you picked that sieve up. Sift for the gold... It will hurt your arms and you may not find a lot of it but just keep going, get rid of the dirt, expose the gold and then you'll be happy to look in the mirror.

For now, I leave you with love

The Rambler