Programming is an Extension of Care for the Self

Why do we take for granted that the well-beaten path is the path for everyone?

Should everyone travel on this one road, then the world swould surely become a golden city, frozen in time; Castles towering --- slums everlasting.

Programming is an extension of care for the self. It is the rejection of the idea that the current path is the one and only path that should be taken.

Because perhaps the current path, while well-beaten, curves a little too much around a particular raised hill. Or while well-beaten, is fraught with the noise of horse-drawn carriages and devoid of scenery. Perhaps the current path causes suffering. And to take this path, without change, guarantees a reliable, unchanging experience; it also guarantees prolonged, unchanging suffering.

Better a trek into an unexplored path, for better or worse, than contentment with the pleasures of the current path --- and its pains --- forever.

Yes, knowledge --- the mere knowledge of what we may be missing, is enough to turn pleasure into pain, to make wrong what once was right. Our perception of the homeostatic equilibrium of the human experience, however much we may try to convince ourselves otherwise, changes on a dime.

Like the mermaid that learns of man walking on land and dreams of air, the ocean may change from an expansive sanctuary into a suffocating cage.

So I tell you, dear friend, that programming is an extension of care for the self. It originates from a burning desire to change what is, and already has been, for better or worse; for hope of a better future. And as it is so, do not neglect care for yourself in pursuit of what you are programming. For you may find yourself forgetting why you began creating in the first place.

So take care of your body. So seek out what appears to “society” to be the issues of smallest, most mundane triviality; yet approach them with the full arsenal of your tools, so long as it is in service of your goal. Have faith the small, unexplored corner of a familiar room may yet open a pathway to the stars.

With Love, Andy