A Quick Overview
I’m on a brief kick, not to be confused with a panty kick. My Minit review contains fewer than 500 words. I delivered a short commentary for this video. The third repetition comes here.
Brevity distills my journal entry into its core parts: an insight to begin, some commentary on my video, and an absurd simile. Insight: Today, I recognize how using fewer words can create a larger message. Commentary: My video is not good, but it’s progress. Simile: It’s like a slug, inching forward ever slowly. It leaves a trail of slime behind to mark its progress as it steadily pursues its dream to become a spider. It does not know it cannot become a spider, and it has even less capacity to understand that spiders do not experience metamorphosis. Without this intelligence, its motivation and gumption cannot be diminished. It weathers downpours, menacing raccoons, income taxes, and other bugs. It pushes forward with an urgency. It must not look back. Such hesitation would lead to second thoughts and self-doubt, rendering him an immobile pillar of salt like Lot’s wife. It knows nothing of the Bible, but its instincts make it fear salt, much like the dog fears the postman. The dog sees a threat posed by the stranger. The man may smile, but the dog only internalizes the bare teeth, a show of aggression in the animal kingdom. The man may call out in a sing-song voice, mimicking the soothing sounds of the dog’s owner. To hear a stranger parrot and sully the owner’s ever-loving kindness only serves to enrage the dog further. However, even the dog falters. Against treats and goodies, the dog’s resolve weakens as it weighs the danger with the reward. Food sometimes usurps the owner because food is life whereas the owner is shelter. Both are necessary on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but the animal’s limited mental faculties cannot stave off temptation. The treat is immediate; shelter is abstract, only tangible when without. Thus, the dog gingerly accepts the treat almost as a peace treaty. The postman survives this time, but the growing guilt in the dog’s mind will return it to its feral, protective state. This feral nature exists in all of us: the slug, the dog, the postman, even the spider who knows it is a spider and does not yearn to be a slug. Calm only comes to those who suppress this natural urge, but what a task that is, much like writing a succinct journal article.