Thursday 4 June 2009

Today's inspiration

I am an ambler. In the city and in the wide, open country. On the polluted streets which greet my feet and on the sterile highways of the internet. Ambling is good for the body, the mind and often, the soul - and it is through ambling (in a truly aimless fashion) that I found this video, which made my heart swell and my spirits soar.

Thank you, Susanna-Cole and Sophie for bringing this to the forefront of my awareness.



It isn't always that advertisements as well thought out and very carefully worded as this are made. Very rarely do advertisements make me think, and even more rarely (almost never, in fact) do they inspire me - especially not in the way this has.

It is a challenge - one which very few of us truly seek, let alone embrace - to be different, and it is challenging being different. I would know, for I was once (as the advertisement said) "a misfit, a rebel and a troublemaker. Someone who saw things differently" and I was, as many of the individuals in the video were, "disagreed with" and "vilified".

It wasn't easy for me to be different. And for many years, I carried around a glaring stain on my hide, a result of the many insults that my soul was subjected to, which no one saw. Not even me. But I am one of those lucky ones, for when my being different almost broke me, I met someone who, not only patched me up where I needed to be patched, but also saw that nasty, glaring stain and presented to me the tools and detergents that I didn't know I needed to clean the stain that I didn't know I had.

The stain is almost gone now and as the last molecules of dirt await obliteration, from my hide and from my memory, I accept more and more the fact that I am different, that I am indeed "a round peg in a square hole". And very soon, if not already, those who did vilify me will see that I was far from crazy: I was, and remain to this day, a genius.

2 comments:

Bliss said...

a good post and i must say, a very inspiring advert.

Anna said...

I definitely think so too, Arthini. Thank you!