A Walk and an Apology

A story from the winter just gone:

Mum and I decided to take the dogs for a walk together. So we headed out optimistically, and enjoying each other's company. Thankfully the story involves no change in this happy state.

We headed along the Canal and hopped (not on one leg, we really climbed, but if I say hopped we sound more agile; please don't sue for false advertising) over one of the stiles back into a field to start heading back. We walked easily for a time and continued our lovely chat. Then it happened. That horrible feeling very rarely felt, and all the more terrifying for its rarety.

We suddenly sank. I mean suddenly. It wasn't as if we stood there going,

"Oh, I'm sinking!"

We stood there going, "Oh, I've sunk!"

This is a perfect advertisement for wellies.

Anyway, we felt the mud wouldn't last long and we trudged (no use of hyperbole there) through, so deep was the mud that it didn't even squelch. Mum seemed to be quite successful in her attempts to use the turf above the surface of the leg gripping stuff. I tried the same, except when I did it the turf simply sank into the mud and my foot swiftly followed. Hence Mum got across relatively quickly and I was stood, a mixture of laughter and fear combining to cause my cries of "Help me Mum!" Mum being the brilliant (look in a thesaurus at brilliant, you'll see all the words she is, I told her so the other day and she made me find a thesaurus and read them to her, funnily enough modest wasn't included (she is modest really, she'll be annoyed I told you that)) lady she is braved almost certain sinking in order to save her entirely stuck and almost completely horizontal son. Together we worked our way out, incredulous at the dogs, who appeared to be on solid ground.

I think you had to be there.

Hopefully this post is better than yesterday's. Since I started my blog these things no longer seem to happen. I do apologise.

A Futile Post, I wouldn't bother reading it

On Monday I walked into a wall, realised once again I can't catch, and got given a free ice cream.

Since then I have been stressed. And depressed. And wondering.

Wondering about those questions, wondering about me, and wishing.

Wishing.

Wishing is not the best thing in the world. In films and stories wishes become reality.

In life they don't, and it just depresses you. It is so frustrating.

There is little else to say, since I haven't been able to write well for months.

A Glimmer of Truth and Questions of Doubt

I was in Church today. And it was in a hall where the chairs needed to be put away afterwards.

Most people stood around chatting while three people worked hard putting them away.

One was an able-bodied woman.

One was a man with Parkinsons.

One was 96 years old.

I find this compellingly complex.

Here we have a room of at least 60 people, 50 of which would have no trouble putting chairs away. Only one of those fifty helps.

Two people who find it tougher pitch in.

I think here we have found something amazing. We have found three people who have truly decided to live out their faith. They will claim to have found the truth I am looking for, and those three people I would be inclined to believe.

But here are some problems I have with religion:

1. Would I be a Muslim if I was bought up in a Muslim country? Does that not make my belief or unbelief in a supposedly Christian country determined and therefore a kind of fake?

2. Religion causes war. Why?

3. God must be very arrogant and in love with himself to think we should worship him when he has given us a bit of a rubbish world, with Earthquakes and stuff, mustn't he?

If you believe you have a response to any of these problems please relay it in the comments. Thanks.

Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless?

I have been thinking about the world, and all that is in it.

I cannot comprehend it.

I cannot make sense of it.

Consider today's post on thwtd.blogspot.com

That guy believes in God whilst all those people are suffering. Why?

But then, why do those who don't believe in God give a dam? They have nothing to worry about but their short little and pretty irrelevant lives on Earth. I mean, if an eternity of non-existence is just around the corner then why worry that someone else is going to get there quicker than you and in a much harsher way?

I suppose that is a nihilistic view, and as such is too pessimistic. Then again, it was the view of Nietzsche who was quite a famous philosopher and possibly correct.

Now I shall continue to wonder, and allow you to do so too. With the following pictures as a possible aid.

A child sharing. Does it mean anything in the face of the following?

Part of the Universe

Something Horribly Ironic

I was walking my dogs earlier today, and on the way I saw a man smoking. Admittedly, it is not my place to judge anyone; especially not those who wish to shorten their lives by blackening their lungs (I know some people find it a necessity).

But this man I saw smoking was cycling at the same time.

It was as if he wanted to make the fact that he is helping the environment by not driving redundant.

I mean, you cycle to get fit, surely? Why then smoke and cycle?

Sometimes the world's paradoxes amaze me.

Responsible Freedom or Wreckless Freedom?

"How can we dare to predict the behaviour of man? We may predict the movements of a machine, of an automaton; more than this, we may even try to predict the mechanisms or "dynamisms" of the human psyche as well. But man is more than psyche.

Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast."

I had never really considered this before, which is rare when reading something on philosophy or psychology because as you know I think a lot.

This is what I think the quote is trying to get across:

Freedom needs responsibility in order for it to be worth something. That sounds immensely crazy, and in some ways it is. Some may argue that the beauty of freedom is in the choosing between responsibleness and wrecklessness. That is exactly Frankl's (the guy who wrote it) point. That is why he calls freedom the negative side of the phenomenon and responsibleness the positive side. For we all know that freedom could cause wrecklessness which results in negativity and often (as I previously called it) worthlessness. But Freedom taken with Responsibility could well cause a tide of generosity, love, patience, kindness, gentleness and all kinds of other wonderful things. These result in positivity and always worth. Immeasurable worth.

May we all learn to have a Statue of Liberty in our heart and a Statue of Responsibility in our heads, that we may become truly worthwhile people.

Sponsor a Child

The Wednesday after school discussion group that I go to decided that we should sponsor a child as a group just the other week, partially because of one of my previous blogs, "A Rant". It was decided that I would find out about the best way we could do this.

So I visited the Compassion UK website where I found a number of children in need of sponsorship. I printed off some information about the charity and we met in a cafe where we could access the internet to see which child we would like to sponsor as a group.

Initially everyone seemed to think sponsoring Pedro was a good idea simply because of his very cool name. Then someone decided to take it seriously, and eventually there was a group split between two children. After much pondering and discussion we decided that it would not be fair to settle it with the flip of a coin. So we chose one of the children. As it happened it was not the child I had chosen.

I was the one given the task of sorting out the sponsorship so later that evening I went online to sponsor the child we had chosen. I spent a while filling out the form, and then a screen came up:

PLEASE WAIT... LOADING...

Needless to say I waited. And waited. And pressed back. Then I tried to do it again.

PLEASE WAIT... LOADING...

And I waited. And the screen loaded.

We are very sorry but the child you are trying to sponsor was sponsored whilst you were filling out the form. Please feel free to sponsor another of our children.

Thus I emailed the group leader and asked whether I should sponsor our second choice (my first choice) instead. He laughed about it (over email) and said we should do that, although we'd be accused of not really trying because we both wanted the second choice child. (We were simply outnumbered eventually.)

So I sponsored the other child.

Thank you for choosing to sponsor Emeetai.

Today I was in bed when I heard the post clatter through the door. An envelope sat there (several did really, but this way it sounds more dramatic) inviting me to open it.

I did. The first sentence I read?

Dear Mr. Montoya,

Thank you for sponsoring Rodel and Emeetai (the names of the two brilliant children). Your sponsorship will make a huge difference to their lives.

I was gleeful. I had thought about sponsoring the one we hadn't decided on but wasn't sure. My decision was made by a blip in the computer.

The Flowers Grew

The flowers grew,
as poppies bare,
the grudges,
shouts, and victories past.

The pain,
ripping, tearing, shredding,
jacket, skin and heart,
and Death settles.


Silence in the wind,
silence that no one hears,
no one left to appreciate
that the pain has stopped,

Even if it did mean Death settled down,
it was worth it,
for this peace,
this silence,

It is democracy's victory,
that ripping pain,
now silence,
now peace.

Why Inigo?

Some of you may be wondering why I have called myself Inigo Montoya. Please permit me to explain.

The Princess Bride is a book written by S. Morgenstern abridged by William Goldman. It was later turned into a rather decent film.

It is a fairy tale of true love, rhyming and revenge. It is the revenge that is relevant here. Inigo Montoya's involvement with the story revolves around his talent for fencing. He fences excellently because he has practised for hours every day for years that he may avenge his father's death, which was at the hands of the six-fingered man. When he finds that man he plans to say,

"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

Inigo's quest for revenge is unfaulted and unyielding. I have decided to liken this search to my own search for truth.

As you know, I am not sure that I will ever find 'the truth'. What I am sure of is that it is worth looking and we may just see a flicker or a glimmer in one of the windows we look through which affirms our initial reasoning for looking through that window.

I recommend you read Goldman's abridged version of the story; it is excellent and he misses out all the boring bits.

A Thoughtful Quote

"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labour to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."
- Walt Whitman

This quote is one which challenges me because I struggle to complete all of the tasks set. I also disagree with some of it. To dismiss whatever insults your own soul may be to dismiss constructive criticism. This would be stupid and crazy and although this might get people to stand up to you it would not help in the long run. However, most of the rest I believe to be sound advice.

Rambling Thoughts

There is a verse in the Bible that says,

"When I determined to load up on wisdom and examine everything taking place on earth, I realized that if you keep your eyes open day and night without even blinking, you'll still never figure out the meaning of what God is doing on this earth. Search as hard as you like, you're not going to make sense of it. No matter how smart you are, you won't get to the bottom of it."

This may be a problem for me who is searching for truth. There may of course be no problem because maybe God is doing nothing on this earth because there is no God to do something.

However, when searching for truth one should not dismiss religion for its apparent paradoxical nature. Plenty of people claim to be proponents of love and then start wars, I'm sure. Admittedly not so many people claim that God spoke to them directly or chose them explicitly and then kill millions of people (Mr. Bush), but that might not be uncommon in places of power.

All I know is that Muslims, Jews and Christians all believe in one God who stems from Abraham. To me this seems remarkable. And yet some seem to hate each of the other religions. I don't know. (How strange to start a paragraph with "All I know" and finish it with "I don't know.")

There is one other thing, which in some ways I have jumped, that bothers me. Which religion is correct? Is it possible that one is exclusively right? What if I had been brought up a Muslim? What if I had been brought up a Nazi? Would then I be so scathing of war and tyranny?

There are many more questions that sometimes bother to trouble me, but we shall leave them be for I have rambled enough.

Interview

One interview done. One more to go. (11:24am)

The other was done by 3 pm that day.

I have been offered the job.

A Little Something

I am tired. But I feel obliged to write something and so I shall.

The day has been an interesting one. After two days back at work I cannot wait for the weekend, although I have a job interview on Friday.

I returned from work with a list to complete. One of the things was to attend a place of discussion: Marks and Spencer. There the topic of my blog was brought up. How flattering. And then we discussed someone else's too. It was good.

Then the end arrived and I was asked to give one of the guys a lift home (3 miles away and a bit of a trek, especially during rush hour (or the "busy period" as it is now called)). I felt like being kind and thus was inclined to aquiesce to his request. On the way a biker passed in front of us. With a T-shirt that was too high. And underwear that was too low.

Needless to say we had a chuckle.

This evening I walked the dogs with my dear sister and I have done some preparation for the dreaded interview. Then I watched The Apprentice.

I don't want Alex to win. That is my only condition, and exactly because of that he will.

Lastly, before I go to bed and to the land of sleep, I will tell you that Hammy Bear is charging around the room in his ball whilst my dog whines relentlessly at the door. For this my father will probably moan at me for causing him to wake up. We shall see.

A Rant

What I wrote about money on that train follows. After I tell you that it rambles slightly, as I am prone to do. I wrote it after hearing the man opposite talk about his emergency board meeting the next day, and one of the two girls talk about something I'd rather not disclose explicitly.

"The world revolves around one thing: money.

Some people think it revolves around sex, some people think it revolves around drink, but to do the first safely and the second at all you need money.

People crave money; it allows them to be comfortable. Comfortable!? How ridiculous. Comfort, in the face of death, is all that we want. The people dying of AIDs around the world are to most of us irrelevant; insignificant. And you care when you read this, when you think about it. But set your alarm for in one hour and forty three minutes time. See if you have done anything about it, or even thought about it since now. If you do it is probably because you've wanted to prove me wrong. For once I will be pleased to be proved wrong if you do do something, and someone else in the world probably will be too."

Let's do something about it.

Another thing that annoyed me was heard on the radio the other day. Mugabe is attending some conference in Europe and this was before it had started. The question was put "Will Mugabe's presence distract from the main talks?" (ie. to do with economic stuff) The answer?

"Yes, and it will be a shame because that is only one African country's problems."

Excuse me! I don't care whose problem it is, or how many countries it is affecting, people are dying unnecessarily. I was cross.

Trains

Last Thursday I was depressed. Utterly so.

Mum and Dad were going away camping and persuaded me to go with them. I did. I travelled with Dad and I cheered up a bit, only to find it was raining when we got there. Let it be known that I hate camping when it is dry, let alone when it is wet. OK, so 'hate' is a bit of a strong word, but I find it very annoying. To top it all off the toilets were ages away.

I was cross. Plans were made. The next day I caught a train to go and see my brother who lives not too far away from where we were. The train station where I was to catch the train had no ticket booth and I only had a fiver on me. I asked Mum for some extra cash, but after Dad asked a workman if the conductor accepted cards it was decided that I needed none. How wrong that was.

The train arrived, only slightly late, which is good for England. I made myself as invisible as possible and waited for the conductor. And presently he came. Slowly. Very slowly, so I read calmly as he made his way down the carriage (there were only two carriages on the train) a book called "Man's Search for Meaning". As 9 million copies have been sold it is quite possible that you have read it. If you haven't, do. I have finished the first and largest part called "Experiences in a Concentration Camp". It is incredible and the author quotes Nietzsche, a quote I hadn't read before.

"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."

"Why to live?" is the next question you ask of yourself when you read that. Now, having been very depressed the day before you will be aware that this quote was important to me, and it was essential I discovered a "Why?" to my existence. Here you are expecting some immensely fascinating story of me realising my why. I didn't realise my why, and I still don't know it. Perhaps my why is to search for that most important why, which has, as yet, eluded me. Perhaps my why is to care for the poor and the oppressed, or perhaps it is to become a billionaire. I do not know my why, and read on, surprisingly unperturbed.

The conductor almost walked past me. I disturbed his walk with a nervous,

"Single to Manchester please."

"Five pounds sixty please."

Relief on my side that I knew he accepted cards. I ask anyway,

"Do you accept cards?"

"Yes."

I hand my card over, he inserts it.

"It doesn't accept that card, it is an electron."

Not the best news in the world to hear.

"Oh. I only have a fiver."

" Wait here." (Like I was going to jump off the train.)

I waited. He returned with a £4.60 ticket from a closer station. As you can imagine I was quite relieved.

It's not the wires that are dangerous, it's the lack of ticket booths.

I spent the day with my brother, and decided to return home in the evening.

I caught a train. I paid at the station, cash.

Everyone else caught that train too. Whether they paid in cash I neither know nor care about. What I care about was the fact that there were so many of them. We waited as the train arrived and for the arrivals to get off.

Then we stormed on. Too soon though, for we had to squeeze to the side to let some more people off. I waited next to a man who was sitting at a table with four seats around it. Whilst I stood there everyone pushed past me, and stole the seats I had had my eye on. I apologised to the guy who had coped with my bag in his face and sat opposite him.

Then two girls joined us. It became much less quiet. There were two guys on the opposite table who were quite deaf and so couldn't speak properly. I tell you this so that you can understand the poem I wrote. It isn't an exciting one. It doesn't rhyme, but it is how I felt.

A Train

A train,
packed,
all seats full,

the men who can't talk properly
ask an unknown question,
and the pretty girls laugh,
about their night out.

A train,
edging out of Manchester,
and one of those men wave,
"Bye there,"
Legible despite their deafness.

the girls talk incessantly,
the announcer announces
and I have to cope,
for two hours.


I also wrote about the world revolving around money, but we have already had too much for one day.