The Tenable

Your shoes keep turning different shades of blue The colors of the other fools before you And skin keeps turning different shades of red The colors of the other voice that's swimming in your head

Your hands keep turning lighter shades of white The color of the temperature that's dropping every night Your pair of shoes are turning back to black The color of the inner voice that's slowly coming back

~ Mattiel

Miller Time

There has been a delta between narrative and reality for a long time, but our apprehension of it entails only one lifetime—our own. It's as though we have tells but cannot see them for what they are. Nor can we be allowed to approach them, because we are careless and because even our footfall is contamination. Arsenals are required and lines must be drawn with such clarity that even our uniforms are not a casual surplus, even in good sport fairly judged.

We haven't changed an iota since the dawn of civilization, except perhaps in one way: our willingness to do nothing and thereby save our time and energy, believing it to be a worthwhile objective in and of itself. We do not take the time to silently contemplate alone. We doubt our innate capacity to think for ourselves, and in our forgetfulness we merely meet expectations that others demand rather than transcend their increasingly finite and monotonous patterns of thought.

We have broadly become two types. Either we lean in and work hard and pay the dire consequences of sacrificing our lives to the world of nation-states and corporations. Or we become the megaphones—using our bodies and our voices to drive others, separating the wheat from the chaff. We take the path of least resistance except in one way: when it comes time to draw on divined providence from within and say no to what neither serves the planet's interests nor aligns with our personal and private ones.

Our leaders are in too much of a hurry to do the right thing, with a list of priorities that put human lives before all life. The truism that in the long run we are all dead is becoming gone, baby gone. This is what it has meant, at long last, when it was once said aloud and finally remembered by those who wish to conserve things rather than use people: We have killed God.

And yet those born to advantage still preach the old creed. Those of us whose status is granted by God and by dint of where we were born and the journey our lives have taken have an obligation to lead by example in whatever way we believe to be divined through God's grace. We will heed no man's word unless our office demands it and our minds grant the concession. For we live in paradise in palaces, and they are ideal circumstances for guiding deliverance. We do not need Job. We learned his lesson and have his patience. We will live as long as God demands and we will live well. Mark my words.

For me there is no clear definition of when humanity began but there is a general notion that civilization began some 10,000 years ago. That does not at all preclude the idea that our faculties are so immature. However we do have a heuristic called the power law or 80/20.

Collectively we executed over the course of the last 2,000 years the most extraordinary and yet arbitrary decision to begin time at zero. We made our time metric instead of imperial and so too our money.

Before Christ we measured time in epochs or eras as the dynasties of truly powerful and seemingly permanent authority. The potentates who commanded truly arbitrary power over ordinary people. I cannot imagine the suffering of the millions who were subject to the arbitrariness of authority delegated by such Kings.

Those Pharaohs are long gone. Moses parted the seas so that we may cross. The wisdom and courage of Solomon and David were granted to us and then came the messiah who preached love in this institution and the brotherhood of man (or whatever that means). Our leaders today are such that we may brush past them and their outstretched hand on the street without hesitation or reservation - as though we were lost in some train of thought far more important than they could ever be. This is how I am.

Today many of us are granted modern conveniences that the Kings of Old could only imagine. Not a single one if given the chance would turn away the opportunity of returning as an ordinary run of the mill person living in the comfort of modern suburbia. Such are the wonders of the ordinary world.

Jesus of Suburbia

So, I beseech you. Those of you who are not so fortunately graced with favour and who feel instead fear and fury: Turn inward. Demand austerity from yourself. Speak clearly and align your own reality to this extraordinary arc of justice that we are all a part of. Do this first before dictating to others: Be Jesus of Suburbia.

If you must travel, pay your fare and carry tenable money—or instead tread softly on bare feet. Wherever you are, keep your eyes firmly on your objective and look both ways before you cross the road—there's traffic, and man, is it something. Quit school or quit work. Be restful and be your own authority on what is ultra and what is violet.

I may have appeared in my time a perfidious Albion. But I set a bar for myself that does not entail what I deem to be a compromise but rather a challenge. Call it a stretch target without boundaries. This may seem impractical, but it has afforded me a good life—and one lived with virtue. It is quite simply because my actions have now consistently spoken so loudly about who we all are and where we are going, and did so early, that they are baked in. I cannot fail because there is no such thing in my personal lexicon as failure. On the contrary it is the whole point of living.

I am a beacon that is a constant flare. It glows, but not for fandom but wisdom. It has teeth. It is up to you to take up a path towards it. Though your own path may not arrive to meet mine, you will—in my estimation, as a project manager who understands roadmaps—still be better for it.

What I say feels right, and it aligns to reality wherever you may be. For those of you whose work is the skill of positioning—the world of public relations, the marketing of ideas for mass consumption. The notion of manufacturing consent so that we may be led by modern pharaohs—this will be a difficult time. We do not mind. Your work is spin, and it brings us only grief because you insist on arrival and constant gratification—some kind of rapture. Get in line. We do not wish famine upon you but we will like Solomon be arrayed like the lily and forget toil in our time.

This is a time when we do the unscalable. We do ourselves—in our own bespoke manner. We answer the call to our Adventure.

Dignity is all, and I will keep my own company quietly when it suits me and the company of others only when my inner God demands I seek out an angle to push myself forward and set another bar. Moreover, this is how I start the conversation: Hello.