Tag: distraction

A Momentary Coffee

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Have you ever got to the end of your coffee and realised you want more. That the desire you had for coffee hasn’t been satiated and you’re not satisfied. As you delve deeper into the thoughts of the moment, that you can actually barely remember drinking the coffee at all. If that is the case there’s a good chance you were also doing something else while drinking the coffee. Perhaps working on your laptop. Maybe drinking your coffee on a long road trip. Or even grabbing a quick sip while doing some gardening. Busy to such an extent we didn’t give even a momentary awareness to the thing we desired, merely hoping to absorb it’s energy induced benefits.

It can’t just be the need to fill the caffeine addicted desire that makes us crave the cup, there must be something else involved like experiencing the taste and the sensations that consuming it provide. If you drink your coffee while completing whatever task you are fulfilling then this lack of focus and awareness of the act of enjoying and appreciating the coffee will be missed and arguably while it may be in your body, you may as well have not even drunk the coffee at all.

You forgot to enjoy the moment you very nearly created, this lack of presence denies existence itself. I’ll have another please.

We live in a world that moves at such speeds that we often don’t allow ourselves the necessary pleasure of just stopping and taking that five minutes to really observe the coffee and appreciate the satiating joy it can provide. So busy we don’t even have five minutes. But we always have five minutes, no one is truly that busy. We just didn’t notice that we wasted that five minutes robotically doing something else. Facebook perhaps.

In the past when I smoked I would have similar realisations. You crave a cigarette but you desire the whole experience not just the nicotine. I would sometimes roll one ‘for the walk’ but while there was a different satisfaction from that version, you still ended up fancying another upon arrival at the destination. There was something that hadn’t been entirely fulfilling about that version of the cigarette, just as there is something lacking from the coffee you forget you’re drinking.

We are so full of distractions. Perhaps we can use things like coffee or cigarettes, both together even, to use as markers to just take that five minutes to bring awareness to our surroundings, thoughts and the moment we’re experiencing. Just five minutes, just the length of time it takes to drink the coffee. There’s thousands of years of wisdom on being present, it can’t all be worthless now we have smart phones.

I Miss Football

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I know this might not be appreciated by those who don’t enjoy sport, and I appreciate why people don’t, but I miss the football. I’m not entirely convinced whether it benefits society in the way I may idealistically like things to bring benefit but there does seem to be something lacking from the world now that the football has been suspended. It seems so stupid and trivial to say that and it is stupid and trivial, but that doesn’t mean football doesn’t bring something positive at the same time. In times like these when all our focus seems to be on an issue that isn’t Brexit, the distractive qualities of football are sorely lacking.

There was a time when I believed that sports distracting qualities were simply being used to distract a populace from their miserable existence, and while I do kind of still believe that, it could be bloody useful now. Maybe distracting the populace is not always a bad thing, I know I view football as something that may feel life and death but it clearly allows us a break from whatever real life and death things actually exist in life. Perhaps these things that keep us on the edge of the precipice to the underworld are there not because we live in a corrupt society but because we simply exist. There is a certain duality to existence and the possibility of it being taken away.

So in these times what a shame it is that we no longer have something to distract us from the fragility of life when existence is now being hammered into our senses at any given opportunity. It would be nice to take a break. I am sure the footballers would have something to say as they are dragged around the country risking their lives for the spectacle of kicking a ball for a lot of money. Despite all my wants and desires though that has to be the main priority. I don’t doubt a fit and healthy footballer will recover but that can’t be the approach because who knows who they’ll interact with afterwards.

There is one bonus to the football season being suspended though and that is Liverpool are either going to be prevented from winning the league or they’re going to do it in such low key circumstances. There we go that’s me half nailing my colours to the mast, or at least nailing my anti-colours, those who don’t know can guess my actual preferences if you care. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t because let’s be honest it is all pretty stupid to invest such energy and emotion into something so trivial and unimportant. It’s just worth noting that when everything seems so upside down; the once trivial gains an importance not previously known or appreciated. Ah to cheer on a goal and forget something weird is going on…

Historical Revisionism

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Revisionism in history is nothing new. From the dawn of record keeping people have been telling the stories of the past and re-telling them with their own unique take. From the days of the oral tradition with the traveling bards to the father of western historians Herodotus, we have simply had to take what was recording. In modern times we are able to revise this history, and this is not to say that history was never changed in the past, but with the development of technology in the last few hundred years the stories of the past have been recorded with an increased frequency. Prior to this events could be recorded and the re-recorded depending on the necessities of whoever the new status quo was within society. In modern times exactly the same happens but with the advent of first the printing press and then it’s contemporary equivalent the internet, the ability to hide events from the populace has grown increasingly difficult. The existence of a compliant media propaganda machine and an education system selective in it’s teachings still do much of the work of creating an ignorant populace but with technology evolving at ever faster rates it will be interesting to see what course establishment counter measures take.

China is an example of one way of dealing with the spread of information with certain sites blocked, disruptive opinions deleted and a general hardline approach to the spread of information. In the west we have the alternative approach, allow people access to information but discredit it as crackpot, hide it away from search engines and ultimately take a more distracting approach. It is hard to imagine which one will turn out the more successful. History has shown us you can’t keep people oppressed indefinitely but also they’ll eventually stop being distracted by the magic trick. Do they both then add certain aspect of each others approach, well only time will tell.

The point of this though was not to get into a piece on internet freedoms, but instead write about the manipulation and revisionism of certain characters within our own history. I previously wrote a piece on the myth of the barefoot doctor Li Shizhen, an example of China’s revisionism, and we have done the same with figures from our own past like Winston Churchill; responsible for leading the country against the Nazi’s on one hand and directly responsible for the death of three million people in the Bengal famine with the other. Can you guess which part of his life we are taught in school?

Today I listened to a very interesting podcast on Emmeline Pankhurst. It is undeniable that she was responsible for one of the greatest social changes in this country since the industrial revolution. Through her direct action, determination and network of followers women received the vote, some of the things they pulled off during the struggle were incredible and I’m in awe. However what is not always taught is that she was a classist. Throughout this struggle she wasn’t actually fighting for universal suffrage as is taught about her in modern times. Her intentions were never to get working class women the vote as she believed they were better being led by those above them in society. Arguably she was only ever fighting to get the vote for women of her social standing and above. She actively fought against the spread of communism which was in those days more about the emancipation of the workers than the spread of Soviet authoritarianism. When she moved to Canada in later life she then fought against ‘non-white immigration’ before returning to Britain, joining the Conservative Party and standing for them as an MP much to the horror of her daughters.

That is not to say her achievements are unworthy and she did some great things which should be recorded and educated but it is important not to ignore the less savoury, or the parts which don’t fit the idealised narrative. With technology and the spread of information, as well as misinformation only increasing, it may just be time to redevelop a little trust back between society and those directing it. If not we can only envisage the inevitable suffragette style movement to follow. People are fallible, get over it.