Tunnels and blinkers

I'm tired of looking at the bigger picture. My peripheral vision is getting strained.

Although staring at your own belly-button isn't exactly conducive to personal growth either.

Belly-buttons are a strange part of the anatomy. A lot of people often wonder whether Adam and Eve had belly-buttons, since they weren't born from mothers. I suppose they wouldn't have had them.

Other than that, everyone pretty much has a belly button. (Well, unless you're one of those people who used to be morbidly obese, and then lost lots of weight, but then you end up with lots of loose, wrinkly skin because it's been stretched for so long, so you go and get plastic surgery to get it all cut off, and in the process they cut off the belly button, so then they usually put in a fake one. But that's a different story.) Err...where was I? Oh yeah, everyone has a belly button. In a some ways, it's a symbol of your independence more than your own car, your own house, your own job will ever be. That moment when the doctor clamps off that blood supply from your mother, the lifeline that delivers oxygen and nutrients to your body...well, you're all on your own.

It's probably a good thing we don't consciously remember being born. I suppose it would be a rather traumatic experience (yes, I mean for the baby). I mean, you would probably be going, "What on earth is all this stuff?? Air? Light? ARGH!! Put me back in, put me back in!"

My parents once joked about how the first time my dad saw me after I had just been born, I was yawning, as if I was bored already. Which I suppose would have been an interesting first impression to make on your parents, these days it's usually kicking and screaming, since the parents would most likely be present at the actual birth. (Yes, it's rather funny now I think about it, how neither of my parents saw me being born, my mum was under full anaesthetic, and they didn't allow dads into the operating theatre back then. And my mum didn't get to see me until I was two days old. What a great way to start off their one shot a parenthood :P)

Back to belly-buttons...yes, it is rather clever of God to allow us to be able to scab from our mothers for nine months and then be separated with minimal fuss. Although of course these days, some people like to punch holes through it so they can decorate it and show it off. Maybe in the future belly-buttons will be a bit of an ethical statement, kind of like saying "I'm a REAL person, I wasn't grown in a petri dish!" But thankfully, I think that's still a long way off.

Now that I've dedicated a whole page to a reduntant part of our anatomy, I can't remember what I was originally meant to be writing about. Ah yes, looking at the bigger picture. And needing to stop being so self-focused. I suppose as always, balance is the best way to go about these things. A sense of self without being myopic and a sense of the bigger things without getting lost in the vastness of it all.

Sometimes I think they have the right idea with horses. You put blinkers on them so they can see where they're meant to be going, but they don't get distracted. So they give you tunnel-vision, but at least you're focused on the right things, right?

I guess what I'm trying to say is, having a sense of direction is very important. And I think I'm somewhat lacking in this department, although this was probably evident from before I was born, when I didn't know you were meant to turn around in utero. (I mean, it's not like I had a compass in there, how was I meant to know which way was south?) Well, maybe not entirely lacking, I know where I'm going in the end, like at the very end, but in the mean time I'm just kinda hanging around, waiting for it to happen...

Really need to stop talking about myself so much. Post is getting long and rant-y. And never get around to talking about the things that really matter. Someone get me blinkers for my head, please...