It is bad enough merely to mark time. It is worse yet to consider what it means to do so. Marking time has as I am certain you know  but a speck in its favour at the outset; basically it involves doing little while waiting for something that is going to happen. To acquire an insight into the condition, it helps to recall that synonyms include dallying, diddling, dillydallying, shilly-shallying and lallygagging – not exactly the most energetic inspirations.

Unfortunately for me I become irrevocably entwined by misunderstandings – an impossible state of being from which I unhesitatingly believe there is always an escape. I am happiest when I understand what is going on.  But to be left standing in a field with the equivalent of a Martian space ship as the getaway vehicle is not my idea of rationality or reality. Herein lies the impurity of marking time – it is simply a waiting game – usually waiting for someone else to do something.  This is an unfavourable agenda at the best of times. It offends my sense of individuality to rely strictly upon the beneficence of others to clear the sky of contaminants. Nor am I about to succumb to the intellectual efforts of others when my instinct tells me otherwise.

To clarify this academic arrogance, I concede that I crawl before the opinions of such professionals as doctors, lawyers and accountants. Their knowledge is generally speaking far too esoteric for me.  Where however the inductive leaps transgress the common playground of experience, I am less inclined to confess what is natively incorrect.  Accordingly I end by engaging myself in the summation and casual analysis of an innocent. I have learned that unearthing a conundrum is time-consuming but not inconceivable.

Sometimes the challenge is as fundamental as identifying the question, not the answer. It is nothing short of remarkable how contorted an issue may become when simply not synthesized sufficiently. It is this bit of intellectual engineering which succeeds ultimately to clarify the ingredients and isolate the specifics. A more colloquial expression might include the mocking adage, “If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, etc.”

“The duck test is a form of abductive reasoning. This is its usual expression:
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
The test implies that a person can identify an unknown subject by observing that subject’s habitual characteristics. It is sometimes used to counter abstruse arguments that something is not what it appears to be.“