Insight from...Paul Kelly?

Yes, that's right, the well-known Australian singer/songwriter/poet!

I have just had to caption a Triple J concert which was a tribute to Paul Kelly (and if you're curious as to why we would be captioning a music program for deaf people, I'm as much in the dark as you are!). But having said that, such programs are always easy to do - pretty much all you have to do is look up the lyrics and then format and time them with the music.

Anyway, the point to all this is the lyrics to one particular song, Dumb Things, really struck me today. I know the song and I really like it, but obviously I've never really considered the true meaning of the song, especially verse 3!

And I get all your good advice
It doesn't stop me from going through these things twice
I see the knives out, I turn my back
I hear the train coming, I stay right on that track

Don't those lyrics just sum up self-destructiveness so well, whatever the bad habit is where we are being self-destructive? We have friends and family giving us good advice because they care. Yet, even though we know they are right and we know their advice is well-meant, we do exactly what he says! We lie on the track knowing full well that train will run over us. We present our backs for the knives to go in. The song is called Dumb Things - do we do those things because we're dumb? I guess in a way, yes, we are being a bit dumb, but I think there's more to it than that. I think it has more to do with fear - fear of change, fear of success, fear of losing a catch-all excuse for whatever is wrong in our lives. Or, to put it another way, it's what CH calls "circular behaviour", doing the same thing over and over because it's, as the book says, our "default setting", what we are so used to.

So, is this the year/decade when we are going to keep doing the "dumb things", going round in circles cos it's just easier to keep doing it? Or are we finally going to be smart and break our programming?

Thanks for the insight, Paul. :)