Tag: existence

One Day At A Time

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As some may be aware I am currently in Greece and for the last few days the idea of where I will go next has been on my mind. The exact details of where are not important, that isn’t going to be the point but more everything that goes into making these decisions. In the past I have stressed about where I will go next and over the last ten years there have been a lot of ‘nexts’. As I’ve got older these have evolved from thinking it would be pretty cool and exciting going somewhere to viewing a place with eyes aware that I may settle there. This idea of settling somewhere stresses me out. It influences my decisions massively and it shouldn’t because so far I haven’t stayed in any of these places but also because it’s completely pointless overly concerning yourself with such an unknown.

The problem with this particular unknown though is that it is enormous. When something is enormous we are bound to become overwhelmed by it and allow it to take over our minds completely. Of course you can’t pick somewhere based upon your entire future, it’s an impossible decision to make, too many unknowns and you’re not only choosing an idea but arguably a fantasy. Everything has to be a one day at a time thing. Right now spending too much time thinking about something like this is a waste of energy because you’re currently doing something else and if your mind is absorbed with a future fantasy then you’re not being present. You’re not doing what you need to be doing and you’re not giving what you should be focusing on the time and energy it deserves. Life inevitably starts passing you by as you’re never there to see or experience it.

There is one other slightly unrelated part but I have in the past thought I should return to cold northern places, like Scotland, because we need a little misery and suffering to appreciate real life. Appreciate in the sense of understanding and thinking but I suspect that misses the point. If you’re Nietzsche perhaps this makes some sense but his reality was only one version. The great thinkers so engrossed in the inevitable suffering of existence weren’t all Scottish, Scandinavian or German. The idea then is can you have fun in the sun while at the same time comprehend the pointlessness and absurdity of life. It does conjure up a strange and amusing image. Perhaps you would start comprehending life through a different lens. Maybe all Nietzsche ever needed was to take up windsurfing.

The Work Life Balance

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It’s a modern take on an age old struggle. How much are we capable of experiencing life and can we do this with the perfect amount of work. As is simple called, the work life balance. Although I’m sure I came across this before, my first real memory of being told I was about to experience a thing called a work life balance came when I was an English teacher in Athens. Teachers, like nurses, when passionate about their job have to give up far more of their time than the work manual suggests. There are people who like certain subjects and teach, and their are teachers who teach certain subjects. There’s a bit of a lazy cliche or moment of romanticism in there, the ideal of the passionate teacher, but I have experienced people who were born for the job. I recognised this because while I love teaching, that style wasn’t for me. While I needed work; I found myself with perhaps twenty-five hours a week spread evenly over six days. Throw in another ten hours for the planning and marking, more like three, and I should have had plenty of free time but somehow I didn’t. A morning class and then a few evening classes manages to take over your life. My work life balance was nothing more than an abstract concept.

Part of the training in the first week of term was on finding the perfect work life balance and what followed was a school run with what appeared to be the express intention of dismantling everything they had recommended. I was exhausted, I liked my students generally, but not the school and subsequently experienced Athens in a way that made leaving easy. Now I am experiencing a similar battle with this work life balance and am back to finding the whole concept bizarre. I’m working a lot and I’m exhausted but what I’ve realised is that what is ridiculous about the idea is that it creates a divide between the two realms of work and life. I have had some awful jobs over the years but people are capable of finding jobs they enjoy, they become part of their life. It doesn’t have to be the job itself, it could be the people you work with or even be your own business that you put your soul into. I see people working seven days a week and this is their life it’s not work anymore. They clearly don’t have a balance in the sense that would be idealised but they also clearly do have one for them. It would be too obvious to say that we just need to find something that suits us but it feels more likely that we evolve into or adapt to what becomes normal, we embrace that particular balance more than designing it to what we already know is good for us. I also know that’s entirely my perspective because I say that without a clue what would be something to aim for but there will be people out there who understand their needs enough. For me I just quite enjoy experiencing different versions of work life existence. I won’t be doing this forever and I’m sure I’ll stumble onto something one day. In the meantime I’ll just continue enjoying seeing the world through another persons eyes.

A (Future) Learned Techie

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I’m attempting to become a techie. I think that’s how you spell it, I don’t think that’s the word that describes someone who lacks patience and can be a bit pissy. The English language is so confusing sometimes and I have such sympathy for people who try to learn it. Why ie for techie and y for pissy? I’m going to either expose my lack of knowledge or show off but I’m going to say there isn’t a reason it’s just another example of the bizarre and unruly nature of spelling and the English language. As a now retired English teacher I know there is some truth in that but as I’m painfully aware much of my teaching involved winging it so really the true answer could be anything. As I was saying though, I’m going to become a techie, and hopefully not a tetchy one.

A few months ago I started learning how to code. It’s both a mix of frustrating and satisfying, and in that way that you can’t have one without the other. As you get better it probably becomes a little less about working out what you’re supposed to be writing and more about formulating all the knowledge you have in a working way. I’ve heard it said that coding is slightly like learning a language and there is truth in that. Just like successfully asking for and understanding directions to the local train station, seeing your code creating the outcome you’re after, results in pat yourself on the back levels of satisfaction. Admittedly I am still not far beyond the Hello, my name is… and I am from… but we’ve all got to start somewhere.

Fun though it is making pizzas, doing home renovations and driving a bread van around I suspect I will need something else at one point. I seem to have a constant desire to learn new things and with an equally strong one to go to new places, having a way to make money with just a laptop from anywhere in the world seems like an appealing necessity in a way. People would certainly be happier I’m sure if they could find an existence that suits them and how they want to live. I doubt I’ll ever be a nine to five, five days per week kind of person. As I’ve mentioned previously we do have an incredible ability to adapt as a species and while I don’t doubt I could adapt to that way of life I don’t think I really want to. There’s too many other things to do. And do from interesting places. Learning something new again. Always learning something new.

Life’s Twists & Turns

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I was going to talk about something important, as always, but I’m currently wallowing in the post breakfast euphoria of this…

Focaccia eggy bread, with blue cheese, wild smoked salmon and a ‘garnish’ of rocket

I’m so painfully middle class I’m not even fighting it anymore. I also managed to remember that I was going to talk about different and uncontrollable paths in life. I realised last night that had this virus not become a thing I would have just been departing an Easyjet flight from Edinburgh to Athens, ready to say hello to some old faces and getting excited about a summer sailing around Greek islands drinking beer and wine, and eating too much of the world’s best cuisine. Yes I just made that statement. But that was what could have been.

I’m currently making pizzas as previously mentioned. This won’t go on forever and the lifting of lockdown will have an affect upon it but at most it’ll be a summer gig until the schools go back and the tourists disappear. This was never meant to be the plan as I said but it’s just what I’m doing now. Maybe in July I’ll have had enough of it and realise I’m wasting my time but that is something for future me to deal with. The point is that we clearly can’t control life’s ever evolving patterns. We can influence certain elements of it but let’s be honest in most things we’re pretty powerless. If you can’t sail, you just do something else. You meet other people, make other bonds. And you go with that and see what happens.

The truth is that while undeniably I’m longing for a holiday sitting on a beach somewhere in the sun and waking up whenever it pleases me, I’m perfectly content with this version of existence and how it’s unfolding. Maybe something will ruin that contentment, maybe something won’t. The point is not to tell you I’m living some kind of perfect life because I’m not, there’s no such thing, but there’s a good chance the whole world is doing something completely different in this Covid-19 version of existence and I just enjoyed the fact that last night I was sitting there and had a fairly good idea of exactly what I would have been doing. That I think is a rare pleasure, and a pleasure because I’m not longing for either. If we make the most of whatever we do end up doing we’re less likely to long for anything else.

And that goes for my breakfast too. It is Sunday today and while I love to think I would be in the Koukaki district of Athens looking for some little hipster brunch place, most likely I would be grabbing a spanakopita from the first bakery I could find from the few that open on a Sunday in Greece before driving to Preveza and fixing up a boat. Yes I desire that, but I’m pretty happy with whats sitting in my belly currently too.

As I read over that I felt at one point I wanted to vomit on myself. Don’t get me wrong the sentiment about uncontrollable existence and riding it’s wave still stands. It’s just I’m painfully aware that the two possible versions of existence I know of are pretty decent and there are plenty out there who don’t even have one decent version. “If you can’t sail, you just do something else“, I mean come on, what a wanker. But I don’t feel guilty, I don’t feel bad and I don’t feel I want to give up my blue cheese, what would that achieve. I’m just aware I’m incredibly lucky. Maybe I should find a way to share my blue cheese instead.

A Ramble On Death

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I was watching a video this morning on Facebook, on what I can’t remember; a telling indictment of the zombie social media turns us into. I do remember at one point some footage came on of men in the First World War. It was coloured footage which I always find really fascinating because it makes old film real and relatable in a way black and white can’t be. The Great War was from a time past and those involved have all died now. I haven’t checked it but I seriously doubt there is anyone left. You know you’re looking at dead people, they’re younger than I am now, but there time has been and now they’re dead.

I’m not obsessed with death, it doesn’t fascinate me in some morbid way and I once used to dismiss it in that way people do when they’re young and like to pretend they don’t give a shit about anything. That doesn’t mean either that I’m about to tell you all I’m scared of death but I am trying to understand it. I am trying to understand it because it plays a huge part in our behaviours as a species. We’re aware consciously of our own existence and as a result our own deaths too. Are we alone in this awareness? One day all this is just not going to be there.

This idea of nothingness is hard to comprehend. Imagine you go to sleep and that feeling of deep sleep is what you will be experiencing for eternity, except you don’t experience deep sleep consciously, arguably we don’t even exist in those moments. How then can we imagine not existing. We try to imagine something we have little empirical understanding of and it’s impossible. This is almost scarier than death itself, which kind of isn’t scary at all.

These soldiers were living in their time. This is the thought that inspired me to start this ramble on death. Why do we fear getting old and dying. These people, that was there time and they lived it, they got old and were replaced by other people living their experience of time. This is my time now and I need to live it because one day I will have to let it go and I want to do it with a smile on my face, content. Not content that I lived life to the max or whatever slogan you can come up with, but just content in the knowledge that now my time is up and it’s time for others to take over. There are plenty out there who are like that and plenty who can’t let go. It’s fear ultimately. Fear of stepping into an unknown time in life, closer to the ultimate unknown. I’m just curious, if I’m lucky to live that long of course. And also, in a way, if we’re to understand death do we first need to understand life? Certainly there’s an order to these thing and maybe with some kind of understanding comes a form of acceptance. It’s especially interesting because, in a way, there are no answers and what’s more powerful than that.

An Unknown Transition Into The Unknown

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I’m not someone who feels the need to play music all the time. I enjoy silence. I enjoy podcasts. I enjoy music. But a balance between them is vital, as is my mood on their regularity. I have been listening to some music for the last half hour while I was online and avoiding writing this. When I see people listening to music and being able to study, read or write, basically concentrate, I have often wished this was something I was capable of. The words coming on this page would be inspired by the sounds around me but I can’t focus and not even one word follows.

I was listening to some dub and desiring a party or a festival. These last few years have been an interesting transition in life. Everyone goes though different chapters in their lives, even if they marry at 18, never divorce, never leave their home town and keep the same job, there will still be chapters within this. Mine have been slightly more adventurous and I can recognise periods when I wanted nothing but travel and others when I felt a need to rest for example. It took about five years from my first desires for rest to get to were I am now but life is all so extreme that I’m still longing for adventure equally alongside some kind of ‘normal’ existence. ‘Normal’ is a strange and inexplicable concept, which is why I won’t even try explaining what I mean by it and I know my version of it will still be a long way from the man with many chapters in the same town above. But fuck, right now having listened to a little music and recollected a few memories, there is a part of me that wants to put down the ‘normal’ so much and pick up the alternate once more.

I have also come to appreciate this life though recently and value the people living it far more than I ever did at the height of being a prick in my more adventurous moments. I’ve come to realise there is as much value in this existence as one lived with daily excitement and variety, it’s different value but it’s still value regardless, as it too is exciting and varied regardless. That doesn’t stop me wanting to drop it all and jump on a boat heading somewhere wild and exotic though but I doubt that will ever leave me. Equally this current existence is an extreme in the other direction as I know the ideal will be somewhere in the middle. I only meant to come here for a few months to help a mate out and it’s been nearly six months. He’s taking great pleasure in reminding me a few more months and I’ll have broken my longest job record. With this pizza takeaway now being a thing and coronavirus being an even bigger thing it seems I may still be sitting in this same seat in four months trying to understand what the drink in my hand represents.

Is this now life? Well it’s the current version and I’m starting to learn enough from it that interesting things happen when we roll with whatever comes up. In a way that’s a freedom more real than any enforced search for a liberty that ultimately becomes constrictive. There are always things out of our control which make us jump between paths, enduring the grey transitional space between, but once we’re actually on it; life never really seems all that bad. Quite often the opposite. It has become clear to me recently that we’re owed nothing, their is no destiny, that desires will never happen if we wait for them to and ideas of fairness miss the harsh unknown nature of life. It is an irrational and absurd world. Nothing bad has happened but seemingly I’ve managed to understand the knowledge I previously had and it all seems to make a little more sense. This is why discipline is necessary. Why being able to focus the energy to achieve the goal is the only way we can really get things done. Why I’m curious, excited and unsure about what comes next. It’s a little unknown. But then everything always has been.

I Miss Football

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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…

A Three Point Piece

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I suspect I’m going to attempt to talk about too many things in this piece, three to be precise, but I’ll try anyway. I should probably stop wasting words telling you this though. To start with I feel it necessary to be critical of yesterdays piece. My issue is that there seems to be a certain immaturity to how I write about politics, and most likely when I talk about it too. This is evidenced I feel by an excessive amount of rhetoric and the danger with this is that not only is it, in my eyes at least, a sign of immaturity but is also a sign of a bad argument, a lack of understand an argument suitably in depth and also perhaps a sign of being a bit of an idiot. I hope I’m not an idiot but I know theres a good chance I would accuse others of such things were they to write in such a manner. Ultimately I’m not happy with it. I could have written it better, made better points and made them in a more evolved way. The problem with not publishing these yet is that I am unable to get your (constructive) feedback, but if anyone ever reads back on these I would love to know what you have to think.

The second thing and third actually were inspired by my avoiding writing this and procrastinating on facebook. Greece is burning again and having lived there for three years, give or take, on and off, I feel a connection to it and a sadness at the continuing trauma that is the Greek tragedy. I may have lived in Exarchia, the anarchist run neighbourhood in the centre of Athens, but it truth I never really integrated and always lived fairly anonymously within it. The new right-wing government has seemingly followed through on it’s threats and has spent the last six months closing down squats. Tonight is the eleventh anniversary of the murder of a 15 year old boy by a police officer, who was coincidentally let out of prison a couple of months back, so expect the streets to be a war zone once more. I love Greece but it’s run by dangerous morons, who are elected by scared morons. Nations seem to repeat events and behaviours throughout their history, Greeks have spent the last hundred years killing and suppressing each other. I said Greek tragedy, but perhaps it’s more of a black comedy. Just not for any of those involved.

And finally, a meme I quite like and thought worth mentioning. Quote ‘The deer isn’t crossing the road, the road is crossing the forest’. It is all about perspective and until we change our perspectives on how we view each other, the world around us and the natural world we are a part of we are going to continue missing the point. Missing the point of our own existence and dragging down the remnants of the harmony that we not only stopped seeing but refuse to see and seemingly have lost the ability to even comprehend anymore or ever again.

That is all.

Death

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Last night I awoke at about four and was unable to sleep again. Today I’m a bit of a grumpy bastard. I just watched a video of a koala that was badly burnt in the bushfires that are still raging in Australia. It had burns all over it’s body and was screaming in pain, blood on the towel, no fur left. I feel like crying. I’m not normally someone who cries and I don’t say that in a proud way as it would probably be good for me if I did. They had to put the little fella down today because his burns were too bad. This is heartbreaking. Think with all the fires this year that raged through the Amazon, Africa, Siberia and currently Australia how many millions of animals have died. In a way this one little koala is more upsetting because we can relate to it. We can see his pain, we can hear his cries. The rest are nothing more than a number, and numbers don’t really mean anything.

Is it an issue of compassion or empathy. As a species do we lack this ability to connect with animals, and that includes humans by the way. There are numerous arguments that we have become desensitised to suffering and death but I’m not sure how true that is. Computer games and films do display graphic scenes but they’re not real and there is no great clamour to watch actual execution or snuff videos. There is no way to know how people dealt with death in the past but it was more common then, for humans at least. That made it a very real part of peoples lives, and this is something we don’t have anymore, not in the west anyway. I still continue to eat meat but less and it’s starting to feel more and more like a weird thing to do. I love my dog, I raised her from a two month old puppy and feel a connection to her in a way that I don’t have with any other creature, not more or less but it’s unique. When I see the koala suffering, I think of her and it’s that relating which is what connects us. Have you ever tried looking properly into someones eyes, they’re the gateway to their consciousness, nobody can tell me other animals don’t have that. We can put ourselves compassionately in the shoes of another human but with an animal whose consciousness we can’t comprehend we need to find other ways to relate.

When I carve a roast chicken sometimes I think it looks like my dog. I ignore the thoughts but it freaks me out none the less. I don’t want to eat chicken anymore. Many people the world over have pets and as I’ve never expressed this reaction to chicken before I’m unsure if others have it too. How do they disconnect and detach themselves from the fact they’re carving an animal when they have another one sitting curled up sleeping in the corner that they love so much. Is it hypocritical, more behaving unconsciously I imagine. Perhaps people just don’t think like that, they just carve the chicken and see it for the chicken, not what it represents. It does represent something though, it represents existence. Until we start to understand this all it does is put in jeopardy all existence, ourselves included.