Tag: scared

One Day At A Time

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

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.

Instinctively Morbid Curiosity

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Two ambulances just raced past my window. If this were a busy city and not a seaside village, and if it had been just one ambulance and not two, I would have thought nothing of it. Two ambulances racing passed in a slightly out of the way spot raises the curiosity alarm. Are they heading towards the beach? If so you’d imagine there would be a coastguard follow close behind, but maybe the coastguard is already there. Perhaps there’s been a crash on the road, even though there are small and slow roads around here idiots still treat it like there’re in a rally that only they know about. I’m sure there are endless possibilities and I should stop this bizarrely morbid curiosity i’ve got going on. We’re strange though human beings, we do want to know. We want to know what has happened. We want to jump in our cars and follow them. We want to drive by and slow down under the pretence of driving carefully and respectfully passed the incident even though we forget the road and don’t once take our eyes off the scene. I drove passed a fresh accident in Portugal once, the body of a once living, talking and breathing human being was just lying there beside the road in the rain with a white sheet over it. I won’t forget that scene, it also makes me slightly less tempted to drive slowly passed any other accidents. But I still will because I’m curious and human.

I suspect it is probably related to some survival instinct within us. The same thing that leads us to search out for the bad news instead of the good. We want to know what the danger is. Perhaps those two ambulances just raced off to an incident which I should know about because knowing about it will in some way help me to stay safe. Perhaps it’s part of some snowballing incident which I must see so I know to get out of it’s way. Most likely not but something instinctive within me wants to know and there is always a rational explanation we can use if we want to take the fun out of anything. It is far more satisfying to imagine we’re somehow uniquely curious beings, alone with our Sherlock Holmes levels of observation, understanding and discovery. But we’re probably not. We’re just scared animals wanting to know if what we just saw may in any way lead to something that could hurt us, or something that we could learn from so to prevent ourselves one day hurting ourselves in the same situation. Having broken it down slightly it does make me feel silly for wanting to jump in my car and follow them. Let’s be honest it’s pretty ludicrous behaviour. It’s so unfortunate that my instincts are therefore irrational. But irrational keeps us alive then. Or maybe not. I’m sure I can probably work out a rational argument to disprove that either way.

Politics

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Ideas come and go throughout the day but as quickly as they go through one ear and into the brain they have a habit of going straight out the other and out of the brain frustratingly soon after. Instead because it seems to have taken over our social consciousness recently with Brexit and now with the general election looming, perhaps before this thought escapes through the exit ear, politics could be worth a little mention.

There was a time when I referred to football, which I am a big fan of, as having evolved into a soap opera for men. Of course now with women’s football increasing in popularity and inevitably one day in quality, as well as women’s participation in the spectacle as a whole, there are certainly some who would class that statement as outdated ignorance. However I stand by it not on grounds of being a stubborn petulant absolutist, but on grounds that the real number of women participating is still most likely lagging far behind traditional male participation, assumption I know, and not that they don’t exist of course but that I am yet to meet a woman who actually really enjoys football, potentially ignorant to believe my bubble of existence is representative of the whole world perhaps, but I don’t give a shit because not enough has changed yet for me to feel content drawing conclusions that it is anything but a soap opera for men. Let’s leave why actual television soap operas are therefore for women for another time. Anyway the point of that tangent and it’s overly qualifying nature is firstly that discord involving something that may offend seems to automatically need qualifying and because it leads into another grossly generalised example of ignorance by suggesting politics is just a soap opera for bossy people.

I have my beliefs and I love to believe they are enlighteningly maleable but inherently they’re probably not. I will however take great pleasure arguing with and attempting to change the minds of other people to believe what I think and therefore do as I do. I am not alone. My manipulated little mind is as lost, confused and scared as all the others out there trying to convince others of something so that we ourselves can relax safe in the knowledge that the little realities we have created are correct and therefore safe. But like any soap opera it is anything but real and with excitement and verve we are going to spend the next three weeks lost in a world of confirmation bubbles and blinding illusion as we vote in the fella offering us nothing other than a different quality of lubricant for the giant dildo they are about to shove up our arse.