A word to the wise.

I wrote a piece about 17 years ago and recently called it up with a view to publish it here.

In all the years since it was written, I hadn't actually seen it and I had built it up in my mind as this amazing and insightful perspective on the collapse, and recovery of the clothing manufacture sector in South Africa.

To my surprise I found the work puerile, unfocused and really nothing like I remembered it to be.

Some gremlin had opened my work and replaced my brilliant work with infantile ramblings.

What I took away from this bizarre  experience was that my memory of past events is clearly not as reliable as I would have you, dear reader believe. The years have filed down the rough spots and the constant telling and retelling has buffed, rather dull portions to a high gloss.

"The point being?" That is exactly the point.
If the events that I recollect are so subjective that they they don't actually portray the truth of the times they were meant to describe, then they are little more than fiction, and if we accept that the works are fiction, then why dear God do I choose to restrict my writing to documenting my own life's experiences.

This is quite a liberating thought and I find that if I am freed from the confines of the truth then maybe I could allow my characters to grow and "be all they can be".

Without the restrictions of credibility to contain them they could literally become anyone. Do anything. And if they did, all these amazing things, dear reader, would you bother to read about them?
Surely if you were looking to escape the reality of your life one could pick up hundreds of stories that would thrill and titillate you. Stories written by those who actually know what  they are doing.?
Surely the only reason anybody reads my rants is that they portray a time, and place that we can all relate to.
A time that is poignant with memories our own scraped knees, and broken teenage hearts.

The other "take out" from the experience I had, with the article was that, maybe I was now more mature, and as a result, everything I did in the past appears childish.
Take a minute to absorb this.
If things we did in the "not so distant" past, appear childish and futile to our current, selves, how will our current actions appear to the people we will be in the future.

To take the discussion a little further is to fear that there are those amongst our peers, who are a more advanced than we are today, (and it would be arrogant to assume otherwise)  and as a result, our current actions, would appear childish and puerile to them.

Maybe everyone's actions appear childish and futile to somebody who is a little further along the road.

Clearly wisdom is not a destination but a mode of travel.