Navel-Gazing For The Disenfranchised Man-Boy

Dear Octopus,


Last night Pongo and I watched a suitably high-brow BBC2 documentary about the development and future of British manufacturing industries and their affect on economic recovery. (Needless to say Honksy and Dutch skulked off to their rooms mere minutes in....further evidence of Woman's surprising ability to take no real interest in even a modicum of intellectual endeavour....) Part of this rigorous examination of British mercantile expansion included the strangely charismatic and yet mediaeval-looking Evan Davis flying in a Typhoon jet. I recalled to Pongo that flying fighter planes, admittedly over Nazi Germany, had long been a dream of mine as a very junior Action Squidlet, a revelation prompting an extensive and expansive discourse on childhood employment dreams of yesteryear.


The standard / generic dream jobs on any self-respecting boy's list are of course; spy, cowboy, racing driver, soldier, astronaut. The big five. Das grosse funf, if you will. Probably all linked by a boy's desire for danger, and therefore bravery in the face of it. And while these were all the permanent idylls of a happy youth, they weren't - with the exception perhaps of the soldier - ever actually achievable. Could never have been a cowboy; there's no real need for them in Devon (the cows are so inherently slothful that they don't need marshalling....if anything they need more in the way of mental stimulation). Only four Britons have ever been in space. Even now I can barely afford shoes, let alone afford a go-kart as a child. It's okay: dreams aren't realistic, after all. That's why they're only dreams.


We reassure ourselves with that. It's not technically true.


One becomes accustomed to the minor (and occasionally) major scrapes, knocks and bruises to their self-esteem naturally acquired along the way, and in doing so build their plasters, bandages and gauze from easy alibis for apathy, and conformity. The sad fact is that I probably could have been anything really, if I'd wanted it enough. 'I should have been a doctor, but it was too hard. I should have been a soldier, but I was too scared.'  And therein lies the answer. Maybe we avoid actively pursuing our aspirations because trying is just not worth the risk of failure. There would be nowhere else to go.


I've realised now that this is wrong. Really wrong. It's cowardly to not fight, and work, and take risks for what you really want. After all: 'a real loser is someone who's so afraid of not winning that they don't even try.' 


In short: I'm going to try and get my book published. That was my dream.


I hope if I'm ever lucky enough to have children I instil in them the value of having facetious, irrational and unattainable desires for later life. Living a life of failed dreams must be hard, but surely dying a death without having tried to achieve them must be harder.


If all else goes sideways maybe I'll just invent sudoku for the bovine market, and blame Evan Davis. Although I genuinely think it could be massive in Japan.


Your loving friend,


Action Squid