Friday Night BUI*

Friday night at the end of a pressure week that was somehow unsatisfying, drunk and inspired (do those two things really go together? ever? Think about it... ) to re-tell a moment from my day, which struck me with a poignant profundity.

After returning from lunch for a departing colleague (the worst steak ever) Stilly and I stopped to watch the big-assed construction machines next to our building, that were digging big holes in order to build more apartments, (Australia needs lots of apartments, nobody gets any space over here). There were three digging machines, making tremendous noise and smashing rocks and stuff.

Mainly because it was so noisy, Stilly and I just stood there for 10 minutes watching them. And that's where the profoundness came from. Watching these enormous machines operating with enormous power, in the process of creating something that I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to do, I felt like a little kid.

And I felt like me and Stilly were both kids -back when you'd just be friends with anyone, and you wouldn't judge anybody because you hadn't learned how to be jaded and judgmental, and those seeds of doubt at your own value and worth hadn't been planted by the awkwardness and despair of adolescence.

We had a great work experience guy from ginninderra high helping us out this week. He was quite a skilled guy for 16, and I bet he'll grow up to be a good programmer one day. But the thing that always strikes me about these kids is that they are always really nervous.

I remember why this is. When you're sixteen, you have this perception that the world is an incredibly organized place - one with an intricate complicated system, that you as a total noob could never hope to understand. You feel like everybody else has a copy of the script and you don't. And eventually, as you grow up, you realise that it's total bullshit. Everybody else is just making it up as they go. Things that you thought were incredibly organised are only designed to give the impression that they are organised. Life is really one big adlib. And as an adult, you're expected to contribute to, and maintain this illusion. And for some reason, you do.

For that moment, I captured a little bit of that childish awe and wonder about the world. And maybe it's latent in all in all of us - that we're all just big kids, and we could just as easily ditch our evaluatory fingerpointing ways and just play together, because it's fun.

*Blogging Under the Influence