Sociable Stamp Society

This is our blog for current stamp news and views of interest to the philatelist and beginner. Daily updates provide items on shows, new issues, events, what's selling, and timely facts.

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Tuesday, September 18, 2007

The Primitive Quest

Stamp collectors are a primitive lot. We haven't changed in a million years. We are non-conformist, individualists, in the best hunter-gatherer tradition. Each philatelist seeks his own grail, where stamps and postal history are but sign posts on the road to complete his quest. (Is it the same with other collectors?)

Wikipedia says: "Individualists promote the exercise of individual goals and desires. They oppose most external interference with an individual's choices."

There is something primitive about stamp collecting. Something learned in the caves. Each collector sets her eyes on her personal quarry but bands together with others to sharpen tools, trade objects, talk and learn about sources, and find solace on the long road. (Don't depictions of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons show the same?)

Our campfires are clubs and online forums, and our sign language is e-mail. But we're on the same path: seeking something to complete our desire. And it is something only we can find.

An interpretation of the legend of the 'holy grail' says that the actual object merely signifies our quest for an existence that stands apart from time, that has no past, no future, that is always 'now.' (Isn't that the feeling we have when 'time stands still' and all around us opens up? Isn't that what we feel when we fix our eyes on the Milky Way or watch mid-ocean waves crash into the horizon?)

So, live your dream, or to quote an old catch phrase, 'follow your bliss'. Tilt at your windmills, good sir knight. Go to a stamp show.

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Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do. - Dale Carnegie

the lanai guy | 6:32 AM | 0 comments |  

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