You grow up and you calm down
You’re working for the clampdown
You start wearing the blue and brown
You’re working for the clampdown
So you got someone to boss around
It makes you feel big now
You drift until you brutalize
You made your first kill now
It’s little steps. Little steps are how horrors happen.
Someone is angry and frustrated about things in their life that they feel they have no control over. Unconsciously or not, they pick a popular scapegoat and start blaming. After a few months or a year of blaming this group for their problems, they’ve talked themselves into hardly seeing these people as human any more. Those people are those people, not like these people, you see. They spew hateful rhetoric, and eventually, start inciting violence or participating in it themselves.
Do they see how far they’ve come, how many little steps they’ve taken? Or have they rationalized it all to themselves already? (You drift until you brutalize…)
Or, a less dramatic, smaller scale example:
Someone wants to be an artist. “Oh, being an artist is hard,” they’re told, “you better have a back up plan.” After enough pressure, they get a “practical” degree instead of a degree in the arts. And then, after that, just to set up some savings and start themselves out, they start working at a job that they loathe. Then they get engaged, and then married – weddings are expensive, can’t quit the job now!
Suddenly, it’s ten years later, and they rarely think of their dream of being an artist. It’s only vaguely recalled & it’s hard to see under the spiderwebs that have formed with time, even though it seemed so close at hand all those years ago.
How do you keep the little steps from taking over your life?
Keep track of your goals – you can’t change what you can’t measure. You most likely won’t remember what you don’t measure, either.
Don’t just write them down, talk about them to other people, make inspiration boards & hang them about your workplace or home.
Don’t let your dreams die – feed them, take care of them, nurture them, even if you can’t actively partake in them at this exact moment. Figure out why exactly it is that you can’t partake in them at this exact moment, and then set about changing that.
And, most importantly, check in with yourself on a regular basis to make sure you’re all right – nay, “all right” isn’t good enough, let’s go with “ecstatic” instead – with where you’re at and where you’re headed.
Be aware of the actions you’re taking and how they’ll effect your life as a whole, and you’ll be able to spot the little steps before they become the big steps.
