Che

Just watched The Motorcycle Diaries tonight by Walter Salles, starring Gael Garcia Bernal as Ernesto 'Che' Guevara.

Now all my tightly controlled emotions over break-up with T are now overtaken by an overpowering restlessness.

At 33.5 years of age, i have finally accepted that my life is not meant to be conventional. All my life, i wanted to be nothing but a conformist. To slip into the convenient mould of conservative- traditional, to fall neatly into comfort zones that never challenge any boundaries, to restrain, to fall in line, to walk the straight and narrow, to speak in charming decibels, to be a fountain of sensibility, to be morally uncompromising, to be discplined.

I don't think restraint is wrong - i think it's a strength - to disengage from a maelstrom of emotion to avoid capriciousness and ill-considered decisions.

But if i wanted to be honest it's most of all, really, to control.

To control events and ideas to produce picture perfect results to have a trophy partner to command status and attention to project self esteem to be intellectually formidable to be a stalwart of society an NEP success subtle signals of affluence climbing up the value chain to influence to have power bases professionally personally ambition drive opinion emancipation

In watching the film tonight, it struck me that the passion of Che is really in the sincerity of his ideals.

To de-focus from one's self. To live outwardly, and to be instropective, only for the sake of serving others better.

And it's not altruism in a sacrificial, cross-bearing sense, it's very much self-serving.

To obtain genuine and sincere pleasure out of service, and not to serve because it's a duty, or responsibility, or to elevate one's own status. Because it's what you really want and it makes you happy.

To fight against the notion of advancing the self merely for it's own sake, but for the betterment of something bigger than itself.

Or something like that.

"I want to be useful, somehow"
Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries