The Maze Analogy

There is a massive hedge maze at Longleat, one in which it is very easy to become incredibly lost in that bewildering catacomb of narrow passages, walled in by the tall leafy walls. This particular maze is of the variety that is full of loops and swirls instead of dead ends, and in truth did stump both me and my sister in our quest to find the centre. We made it to bridge five out of six and then had to abort after almost an hour and a half to make it to the safari bus. It was a heady mess. Maybe next time we'll crack it.

A maze is an analogy or perhaps an allegory for what we all go through in the course of things. We trundle down our little corridors of time, not knowing where we might end up and hoping that we can retrace our steps if anything goes too wrong. And then when things don't go as planned we have to go back to the last turn and go right instead of left or just give up in disgust. Life is a merry of miserable little maze and all we can do is navigate it with good grace or be lost in the frustration. It's the journey, not the destination!

This it the two hundredth edition of the Quirky Muffin and in many ways very little has changed in net terms since the first edition. There has been a job, and a holiday or two but at this moment everything is exactly the same except for being one year later. One could almost say that I've taken a turn around the maze and ended up once again where I started once before. Perhaps the world is a little older now, and I certainly am of course, but the one irrevocable and essential advantage of the passage of time is that we learn. Learning is all we have so we had best enjoy it. Isn't it lovely?

The one hundredth post was about interactive fiction and went out mid-February of this year. It is entirely possible that I haven't even thought about the legendary medium of the text adventure since that day, as I became utterly absorbed in the work I was doing at the time. Someday perhaps there will be more work to become absorbed in. Work is itself a little maze that sweeps us all into strange swirls and loops of activity that always leave us energised and deranged in equal measure. Did that make sense? No? Then it fits entirely in with the theme of the previous one hundred and ninety-nine Quirky Muffins.

O.