The Road Not Taken

I saw a trailer for a movie a while back, an Adam Sandler movie I think it was. The concept was that this guy had the ability to fast forward his life like a VCR in order to get past the hard parts or boring bits of his life. I am sure we can all see the humorous escapades that surely ensue in the movie along with the Hollywood moral of the story type ending which no doubt tells us that life has to have hard and dull times for us to enjoy the good times. I say bollox.

I would love to be able to fast forward the shitty parts of my life. Actually, aside from the really trying times that I would have loved to be able to fast forward past, the one that immediately springs to mind is weddings. They are so predictable I often find myself counting down the minutes until a particularly steroytypical event takes place at any wedding you attend.

They all begin with the awkward hanging about at the church with everyone in their best bib and tucker. Knowing nods from ten feet away to people you vaguely know and don’t really want to know, gentle chatter as the women get their mouths in the gear for the day and the guys talk sport or swap a recent joke or two, most of which are old, not funny or both. The wedding services are all the same no matter how much the bride and groom have told you that they have shortened the ceremony for those not of a religious persuasion then it’s outside where more chatting ensues along with a cheery send off for the B&G as they settle into their open top Rolls Royce for the ten minute journey to the reception.

Now here is really where the fast forward button would come in handy. From here on until about 2am I am bored senseless waiting for everyone to let the alcohol loosen them up to the point where people will talk to you just because they haven’t spoken to you at all and wonder who the hell you are. The bad raucous dancing takes place along with the awful wedding music. There is sometimes a saving grace in the form of someone who hates the predictable nature of these events as much as you or often just a knowing glance from one of the waiters or bartenders who must hate these events more than anybody.

I have been to the odd wedding which breaks the mold and is very different and fun to attend. But they are few and far between. So forgive me when I flinch at the sight of a wedding invitation as it pops through the letterbox and lands somewhat obnoxiously on the floor in my hallway. I am glad someone is getting married but for pitys sake do I have to attend the wedding?!

I find myself in the same position I have always been in. I have no direction. I have many things I want do do, to try, to achieve. Yet I rarely move in the direction of any of these, at least no more than thinking about them and perhaps edging a little closer to actually doing something.

This inactivity takes the form of procrastination. However, it has a deeper explanation.

To take a step closer to any goal or desire means to let go and move away from the many other goals. Nay not so, I hear you cry. Why, you can do so many things all at the same time. Perhaps this is true, yet for me, I need to focus on one thing at a time and that in itself takes time. So for me, to actually do anything means to leave behind the opportunity of doing everything else.

I am sure this is an easy fix for a life coach but trust me, it probably affects more people than you think. Mid life crises spring to mind. It is classic and corny at the same time but I don’t think these are crises at all. I think they are a fight against making a choice to do one thing or be one thing or even two things. An actor and a waiter, a teacher and a mother, a writer and a therapist. Why can’t we be all of those and more?

It may seem strange to hear it but I think we are all living more than one life. Now before you write me off as crazy have a read and follow my thoughts…

Apart from the life we think we lead, you know the one, waking up, getting dressed, eating, travelling to work and talking to colleagues, coming home, going out, drinking, having sex, arguing, laughing and going to sleep. Apart from that life we are also living numerous, nay countless other lives in our own heads.

Due to the constant stream of thoughts we have during an average day, it stands to reason that many of these thoughts are not related to our external physical lives but other internal musings. These thoughts can happen so quickly we dismiss them as if they never occurred but oh they happended alright. These thoughts come and go but they are stored, catalogued, cross referenced and pigeonholed ready to jump into our stream of thoughts at random or when called upon to justify an action, to create a fantasy or to recall a memory.

Given enough time these thoughts actually take on a life of their own. In my case they have more or less taken over from my external life as I have spent so much time in isolation recently. I imagine this is why writers are so good at their craft. If you do not have much of a “real” life then your brain creates it’s own world(s) in order for you to “have a life” as it were.

I personally find these alternate lives/thoughts remarkable. If you take time to analyse them they really make us incredibly more complex than we even realise.

Next time you have an hour to spare just sit and muse for a while and focus on the thoughts that take over. It is very hard to control your thoughts when sitting quietly. They will take you off like a raging river until you realise what is happening and you start your thought process again.

I have a feeling that those unfortunate enough to have schizophrenia have crossed the point where their subconcious personas that I feel we all really have back there in the depths of our minds have broken free.

It reminds me of a line in a song I once heard…”To find your mind, you have to lose it first”.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder? I hope so. I have not posted for a while as I have been busy working towards new certifications and just took a test yesterday. I am pleased to report that I passed with a 97% mark. So close to the 100% mark, only one question wrong but there you go. I have to decide whether or not to continue and get more. They can be addictive. Well, the passing can be at any rate.

I will be posting some thoughtful essays soon so watch this space.

Our everyday lives are full of stress and random thoughts. Take some time to bring your mind home today.

Sogyal Rinpoche offers a few suggestions;

“Go out into nature. Go for a walk at dawn in a park, or watch the dew on a rose in the garden. Lie on the ground and gaze up into the sky, let your mind expand into its spaciousness. Stand by a stream and mingle your mind with its rushing. Sit by a waterfall and let its healing laughter purify your spirit. Walk on a beach and take the sea wind full and sweet against your face”.

Its no wonder we are not in control of our lives these days with all the crap that we fill them up with. According to some sources, up to 13% of people in the United States suffer some sort of mental illness. What does that tell us about the way we live today?

What are you doing with your life? I’ll bet that most of you are fitting in and making the best of it. Is that really enough?

Why not start the new and improved blog with a bang and talk about something everyone ponders over from time to time, especially when drunk or perhaps just when the subject comes up.

It is difficult to know where to begin a discussion about life and its meaning but I will just jump right in at the deep end.

Let’s face facts. We are all going to die at some point of that there is no escape. I use the word escape but for some death is not an escape but a passage to life (if another sort) after death (more of that later). So, given that fact we realise that we are here on this planet as a life form for a finite period of time. We are not alone. There are billions of others keeping us company albeit we will never get to meet the majority of these others. For a good 15 or 16 years we are looked after (if we are lucky) by our parents who feed us, clothe us and teach us how to behave in order for us to survive and flourish in the world when we flee the nest.

It is then primarily up to us to determine what we do from then on. Given that we live to the average age these days we have another 60 years or so in which to fill up our time. Now we all live in societies of some sort that are constructed of rules and laws and agreed sets of behaviour which pretty much stop us from doing whatever the hell we like and therefore keeping anarchy at bay. So we must conform to the society in which we are surrounded in order to fit in and keep out of jail.

For those of us in civilized societies that generally means we must work for a living. We then have to choose a type of work we are capable of and potentially plan a career that will allow us to live and prosper in our chosen (or given) society. Those who choose not to fit in are considered outcasts or layabouts or scum.

Most humans have a desire to be in a monogamous relationship with another person and to have children. Most will do this. Most will rent somewhere to live, move on to buy a place to live and take on a mortgage. Most will work hard to earn more money to live a more comfortable life and perhaps retire early in order to enjoy the rest of their life outside of the workplace and choose what they then want to do with their time (whatever is left of it).

This is what many capitalist societies consist of. This is what makes them tick. In fact over the years this has changed dramatically due to the rapid growth in consumerism which is a way of “feeding” the system. The more we spend our money the more the economy grows and the more we prosper and the more we spend etc. We consume stuff for no other reason than to make us feel better, happier, richer, stronger, prettier, healthier and many other ways of boosting our egos.

It’s not a bad way to spend our time really. It’s better than having to hunt for food all day or work in the fields day and night with the possibility of bad harvests forcing us to grow hungry. No, it’s a good way to live.

However, you have to ask yourself, why the fuck am I here?

There may not be a reason why you are here. Think about that. We always look for reasons and logic but there may be none behind our existence. That is hard to swallow as we all feel important to some degree. We must all be worth something else why don’t we just kill ourselves and be done with it? Why do you think you are important? Perhaps you belong to an organized religion and that religion has taught you that you are important, that your God loves you and cares for you and wants the best for you. If so then why do babies get killed? Why do innocent people die while other nasty bastards get to live lives of opulence and perceived joy? What about Karma?

The problem we have with our lives is that we are so focused on OUR lives that we have no idea of what is happening to humanity. We are after all a species on this planet that should look after itself for the purpose of preservation of the species. Is it not a fundamental purpose of us all to protect our species? Why are we so focused on doing our utmost to find a way to get the best for ourselves in the time we have on the planet? Is that not extremely selfish?

Surely our purpose, the primary reason we are here is to continue to be here, to continue to exist as a species on this planet? If not, then are we not doomed? If we don’t give a shit about surviving as a species then we must be doomed. So do we really give a shit about continuing to exist?

I think not. I think most of us are so focused on ourselves that we forget all about our primary goal.

Buddhists like many other faiths believe in a life after death and that is the main reason why they cope with the idea and reality of death so well. It is not really an end. If there is no end then we want to do what we can to continue in whatever life comes after this one. They also believe that if you do not believe in life after death then you do not care about anything but your own time on this planet. There is more to this but that is the quick and dirty summary.

I do not subscribe to this view. I do not believe that I will live on after I die but I do care about humanity. I don’t know why I do but I do. I guess it is in built in me to want the best for my species. I want the best for us now and after I am gone.

To get to where I am going with this…

Global warming is now a real threat to us all. Everybody knows it. Governments know it, scientists know it, Hollywood knows it. The problem with global warming is that to change the predicted climate change we must change the way we live dramatically. The thing is, people do not want to change. Life is too good. People are wealthy as a result of our industrialized and consumer societies and economies are strong. The problem is, we need to change how we live and get our priorities right or in a hundred years or perhaps even less, we will have caused a shift in climate that will effectively change the way we live on this planet, for good. You or I will not be around to see it perhaps and therefore we may not give a crap but your children and grandchildren will be around. That is, if they are not killed by hurricanes, tsunamis or floods or famine.

To sum up…

The meaning of life is to continue the species. If it isn’t then just go clubbing, get drunk and take drugs and shag anything that moves and just have a blast doing so. The meaning of life is to have a good time right? To be happy as best you can?

You can thank your lucky stars that you were born when you were because if you were born 30 years from now you may be in for a tough fucking time.

We must, must, must do what we can about this. Of all the problems that we face in our life and all the problems that face the next generations this has to be the most important issue of our time. Unless a nuclear war gets in there first this will possibly be the downfall of our species and human life on this planet. We must wake the fuck up and act now!

For an in depth view on this subject please read “Global Warning: The Last Chance for Change” by Paul Brown:

I received some sad news today. My friend Myron McCauley died a few days ago. I met Myron while working in Colorado Springs and he became my staff manager and subsequently my friend. Myron was always available to help out and offer advice and guidance on both a personal and professional level. I can honestly say that he was one of the most sincerely genuine and thoroughly decent men I have had the pleasure of knowing.

I am saddened that Myron will not be answering my emails anymore and swapping updates about our lack of guitar playing prowess. I am sad I will not get to show him and his family around London as I had planned to do when they had eventually decided to fly over to London for a visit. We all have to go at some point but I would have liked Myron to have been around for a while longer. He was one of the good guys.

http://www.legacy.com/Gazette/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonID=19516971

I am back with a vengeance folks! The lovely folks at Bootsnall have moved my blog over to their new system so I can now update this blog as I was supposed to do back in April of this year.

This post is just an FYI to let you know I will be adding regular entries once again to this blog. Come back soon for recent updates on my life and state of mental health among other topics.

:0)

Have you ever noticed the way some people react when their lives have been upended by a tragedy?

A story on yesterdays news highlighted the resilience and courage of a woman who lost both her legs in the terrorist attacks on London last July. She now has mechanical legs which are state of the art and “have to be charged overnight like a mobile phone”, according to this lady.

She also stated that as Doctors are prone to do, they told her that she would not be able to walk again and all that nonsense. She is now declaring that she will soon be able to drive again and that she wants to learn how to fly a plane.
Read the rest of this entry »

As a rule most of us never really slow down and look at our daily routine. From the time we wipe the sleep from our eyes until we ease our tired bodies back into bed late at night it is almost as if the day has happened and we were just along for the ride.
Read the rest of this entry »