Fradam

I’ve long heard that those who are pregnant notice a lot more pregnant people around. The same for those who wear glasses - suddenly it seems like everyone wears them. No, I don’t have any large announcements to share.. but anyone who has been on the roads with me probably has had heard enough about the abundance of Excels on the road

More and more does this concept come true for me; any topic that crosses the mind seems to suddenly come alive in music, movies, conversation. Lyrics, random movie lines, new people and old alike.. the power of active thought seems phenomenal, almost scary and just a little bit magical. A part of me almost wonders whether the thought does more than simply draw the attention to the thought - whether it somehow creates the effect in the world around us. Ofcourse, by now you are crying things like “Ludicrous!” and “Entertain us further with your ridiculousness!”.. but is it really so strange?

What if I saw someone smiling, and that caused me to smile? OK, a smile isn’t an Excel.. but it’s a start. Perhaps if more people drove a purple car, there’d be more smiles!?

I apologise for the scattered nature of this post, but there was something on my mind that needed to get out. I saw two different films yesterday. The first was the new X-Men movie – Wolverine. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I’ve been an X-Men aficionado since childhood, something about the idea of humans being more than they are has a curious appeal. Possibly because a strange part of me feels that I might just have superhumanly long arms or something. I’ve never been a comic book person – my knowledge of the characters stems from morning cartoons, so with those memories in mind, I can’t say the experience differed far from expectation. The storyline developed around his relationship with Sabretooth, the various betrayals and counter-betrayals seemed only appropriate considering the somewhat confused state we find Wolverine in, in the first X-Men movie. Getting to meet Gambit was certainly a treat, and I hope to learn more of his history in future films. What I supposed surprised me the most were the action scenes. Aside from a few cheesy/movie-cheating moments, lots of it was quite “cool” (as witnessing people with superhuman abilities can be), but… hang on, it was cool?

I realise it’s just a movie. And movies aren’t real.

But when did scenes of violence, become cool? When did I become so desensitized that it didn’t affect me? What’s curious is that very concept was a storyline element in the film itself (Wolverine’s character developing a conscience and distaste for rampant destruction of life)… yet here I was, a viewer, who had the same issue. I know there are some films I’ve seen, which cross my own line. But the sheer majority of them, I wouldn’t bat an eyelid to the levels of violence depicted within. I feel guilt when considering this. Reflecting upon this makes me think about the films where they create animals out of humans by subjecting them to inordinate amounts of violent media; the theory being that what you put in, is what you get out. That principle does hold true for a lot of things, I can appreciate that… but I hope that all the violent films I watched growing up, hasn’t left me as some sort of raging beast, waiting to be let loose. I don’t dream of things like that, so I suppose that must be a good sign… i.e. the next time you see me, I don’t think you need to run.

The other film I saw yesterday was a video of my cousin’s visit to Australia back in 1997. My family took lots of photos of us growing up, but we couldn’t afford video. This was the first time I’d seen the younger version of myself moving around; talking and interacting with other people. The games we played. The things we laughed about. Aside from realising that my father could pass for an Indian film star, one of the things that stood out to me was the amount of wrestling/jumping/squashing sort of games there were. Part of me thinks of that as just part of the natural growing up process. Part of me considers a voice heard in the background of one of these scenes – “Where did they get so violent?” Thinking about that saddens me, as it’s a part of my childhood that obviously I’m not quite as proud of. I don’t recall being violent outside of the sibling rumble/tumble, so perhaps it’s not something I should worry myself over. I mean, we all went through that, right? That’s what I’m telling myself at the moment.

Perhaps what should worry me is the other side of the coin. What of apathy at the plight of reality for many, due to desensitisation from the media I’ve been exposed to? I realise we make decisions, on how we choose to respond to such stimulus, so don’t take this as blame-shifting. It’s not just the not-doing of things violent that concerns me, but the not-doing-anything-about of the violence in the world that concerns me. I want to respond.

Apathy does frighten me. I care… but am not always sure how to go about showing that.

     cant we        give ours          

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 t we give love that one more cha     

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e give love give love give love giv   

e love give love give love give cau     

se love’s such an old fashioned wor     

d and love dares you to care for t     

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  ht and love dares you to chan        

    ge our way of caring about          

      ourselves this is our l          

        ast dance this is o             

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That’s right; I’ve found the secret. After a (relatively short) lifetime of saying goodbye to friends (as much as you can do when you live in your home town for 20 or so years), and struggling terribly with it, I’ve made a discovery which will possibly shock the world. Or at least this part of my world. Or well.. at least, it shocked me. As most would know, I distance myself from change as quickly as a leaf-dependent sloth gets away from a lithe jaguar. i.e. I invariably get caught, but hopefully make a tasty morsel for the change agent. All that could change (!) now, and become a thing of the past. In the future, I might just become a sloth that consumes more than leaves, I could sup upon branches too, and we may find that the jaguar no longer finds me quite as an attractive prey.

It’s really quite simple too. What is it exactly that I fear? Saying goodbye. The thought that I might not see the person(s) again. The thought that the world will not be the same; specifically, that the world will be particularly less pleasant from someone’s absence. The key to conquering the fear: don’t think of it as a goodbye. Believe that the world will not be the same, but that you might see the person again, and that although it may feel less pleasant initially, in the long-run it could just turn out okay.

Yes, I am quite aware that many people have been telling me this for literally.. years. But why in the world would I listen to friends and family who were trying to help me cope with saying goodbye to people? That sounds like way too good of an idea.

So, you’re probably wondering, how did such a revelation as this, come to me? What happened, that this simple piece of wisdom that so many have tried to impart to me, finally broke through?

On Friday night, I went to a farewell party; a common scene that I often struggle with. This time, it was different. Although I was farewelling a friend, I knew I’d be seeing more of her once she left (as peculiar as that sounds)… so I was able to very easily rationalise that life was actually going to get better. It was easy to do it in this case, because there was a matter of 3 days involved; I could connect the dots from the sadness of separation to the joy of joining myself.

As I reflect upon periods of saying goodbye in my life, these same dots existed, but usually had weeks, months, or in some case, years, connecting them. In the moment, my vision would be limited; I couldn’t see that far… but in hindsight, it seemed to always work out for the best. Someone looking out for me?

Tomorrow is a new day, and I’m seeing my recently farewelled friend. Hurray

Roni Tropper and Allen Applbaum met at summer camp when they were both 15 years old. They had secret crushes on one another, but as luck would have it, he was dating someone else. Fast forward a few years: they found each other at the City University of New York in Queens, but again in relationships with other people. They stayed friends for a while but eventually lost touch.

Nearly twenty years after they first met, Allen found Roni again—this time on Facebook, where they were able to catch up and share memories of how Allen even helped teach Roni how to drive. And this time, they were both single!

Despite being on opposite sides of the country, they found a way to be together—Roni and Allen spoke every day and used Facebook to stay in touch. “It was like no time had passed, and we still had feelings for one another,” Roni said. Eventually, Allen moved from New York to Scottsdale, Arizona, and they are now engaged to be married.

Originally posted on the Facebook blog; hurray for wedding bells that are coming! I love stories like this. Pretty easy to make me happy isn’t it? The origin of where love blooms always interest me. It can be a peculiar thing to watch sometimes; when two people grow in a mutual admiration for each other, all wrapped up in those other emotions and feelings and whatnot. It’s something I’ve wondered from time to time.

What if one person grows in that emotion before the other?

Does the other one just get pulled along for the ride?

What if they didn’t want to come along?

Or what if the pull is what helps them discover the emotion was there all along?

Or what if they make an intellectual decision about the emotion, and justify it to themselves in hindsight claiming it was there all along?

Okay, so perhaps its not an equally growing feeling that seems to find balance in each other as it grows.

But does that even matter?

If people do love each other, does it matter how they got there?

Perhaps not, but I like the story all the same

What defines an individual, as that? Generally, we look at the makeup of the person. Personality. Characteristics. Sense of humour. Mannerisms. Views on life. Appearance. To find two people who are exact matches in all those areas would be nothing short of amazing. The long running debate of nature vs nurture credits our genes and environment as the key factors to the final product. Yet even identical twins who share similar experiences in their growth invariably develop into unique people with their own thoughts and their own lives. Something different still happens, which results in different people. A new, individual.

But what is that existence? I suppose I cannot comment on any but the one I know the most, which I find a little puzzling at the moment for reason of a single question: are my thoughts, my own? Generally, the output of our thoughts are our speech and written word, so reviewing what is said is a fair measure of my thoughts. Reflecting upon the origin of the things I say, I find the following (no particular order); Simpsons, song lyrics, wikipedia, movies, the Bible, books I’ve read, things I’ve heard from other people. What of this is mine? Is any of it? To regurgitate what I’ve heard/seen elsewhere makes me a thought thief.. a pirate of intellectual property. Yaaaar. I could posit that my commentary on any of these thoughts is mine; my own critical opinion. But isn’t that opinion simply what was once a blank canvas and has had many many other influences paint it again and again, till it too is simply the evolving creation of a lot of other entities? Where is the individual in this?

Case in point, this very process reminds me of someone staring into a puddle and beckoning their reflection, “Who am I?”

I don’t know…

I’m currently in the process of moving. Boxing things up is a trip down memory lane for me; I find I burn a lot of time simply looking through old old things, reminiscing. Whilst doing so, the pattern is even clearer. Little objects, scraps of paper, photos.. all symbols of people who have had an impact on my life and helped shape it, change it.. create it? More and more, I feel I’m a union of a lot of people I’ve met.

It got me thinking about a patchwork quilt. Each person I experience, each film I watch, each episode of Simpsons I see.. it sews another little patch onto my quilt. When someone sees me, they see the quilt. All the little bits and pieces of what I’ve seen. That’s me.

But… it does make me wonder how anyone else is any different to that though. Maybe that is what every individual is. If the collection of patchworks is different between each person, then what makes us unique is our particular combination of experience, and the fact that every permutation creates a different person. Unique thought is born.

First of all: Happy New Year everyone!

Strange sometimes to realise how quickly another 12 months pass by, and how fast the next 12 will as well. 2008 saw its fair share of newness in my life - new home, new friends, new job… just about anything that could change, did, and it all transpired in a short span of time. I wonder if all this rapid fire alteration of life could be responsible for the motion sickness that I’ve been feeling as of late. I’m told that I am meant to be looking at the roads and the outside world when in a moving vehicle, so that my brain isn’t fooled by what it feels (motion) versus what it sees (something constant, if I’m not looking outside). To transpose; motion sickness in life could result from holding onto what is constant whilst everything changes; rather than opening my eyes to watch the motion in my environment at the same time. Simply Red said it best perhaps - “I’ll keep holding on“. Hmm..

Change has been my age old enemy; a foe that I battled valiantly for many years and resisted the overtures for much time. Yet in 08, its clammy hand closed in and changed much with little thought or consideration for the consequences.. strangely enough; the majority has been to my delight.. a great delight. Much in fact, has been at my own instigation and my own provocation. So if the hand that wrought the change was my own, it makes me wonder why I should feel any sort of motion sickness - surely I should be enthralled by the thought that choices I made have bettered life, irrespective of the costs?

Tab posted a note yesterday about God having a plan for us (Jeremiah 29:11), and these past few weeks have been a testament to it. Maybe I just need to accept that it is all part of the plan… which is certainly a comforting thought. In fact, that thought reminds me that most of this change, I’ve actually enjoyed! So perhaps it is not the change itself…

Being as I’m moving at the moment, I think about the difficulty of moving a fridge - the fact that fridges don’t like being moved, but that when they do move, they need some time to sit upright at room temperature (i.e. not turned on) before they are used, to allow the oil to settle. I feel that is a little like me: I don’t like change, but when I do have to change, I need just a bit of time to sit upright at room temperature before I’m doing things again… definitely a clear cut case of fridge-id living!

A chance question the other day made me wonder where Boxing Day came from. The notion of a public holiday for boxing (as old and respected a sport it is), did not… quite… seem right (although as mentioned, a public holiday for the sake of eating is not unheard of). So I endeavoured to research it a little and find the root cause. Someone tried to convince me that in drinking cultures, the amount of contact one had with in-laws on Christmas day often led to a high amount of tension that needed a means of release. A day off could either be used to partake, or to recover if participants were eager beavers and had got into a tension-relieving jousting match on Christmas day itself. Another explanation I heard was that the generosity of Santa was causing too many accidents in homes with young children due to an excess of wrapping paper and boxes left lying around in the middle of hallways, and that a practical solution was to have a day off so that the whole family could rid themselves of the plague of excess boxes once and for all. A less cheery cause could be the notion that people in general have poor present selection, and enough people spent the day after Christmas returning their boxes to the stores whence they came, in search of something better in tune with themselves. A final theory was the rumour that some people like to wear boxes on their head, and this fine appreciation of cardboarded headware led to a public holiday being declared in honour of it in the Commonwealth.

I have since confirmed that every one of these theories is false.

In particular the last one, since that was my theory.

Having said that, the part about it relating to the Commonwealth is correct. Boxing Day is celebrated in majority-Christian Commonwealth nations (e.g. Australia!), and is generally based upon the idea of giving gifts to members of society less fortunate; i.e. it was a tool of the class entrenchment of those times. Allegedly, if Christmas was for giving gifts to ’social equals’, than those below would be bestowed upon with gifts the day after. Of course, no gifts could be returned in the opposing direction, as that would subtly imply that those below were on par with those above, and such ideas would have been considered quite terrible.

Beyond that, there were quite a few different folk roots - for example, this has immediate hints of Saturnalia, a Roman festival which was renowned for role reversal. It’s not clear really which one could have basis in fact though, so I suppose it could be considered immaterial.

So there you have it: the origins of Boxing day, in a box. I like the gift giving aspect of it (more public holidays to give people gifts is an awesome idea), but dislike the enforcement of the class distinctions that existed in those societies. Equality is important.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”

No not the Bee Gees song. Who wants to live forever? came on last night, and prompted a discussion about if anyone really wants that.  I think the conclusive answer was: no. Not here on earth anyway, where we would be forced to watch our loved ones, those closest to us, finish up their time before we do. Whilst the opportunity to do good is increased beyond measure, the pain that would be experienced along the way… unimaginable.

The strangest thing is that those who wish it,  often do so from a lack of time to get everything they want done, done. I completely understand the busyness of life.. but more and more am beginning to find there is a LOT of time that we just don’t know how to use yet. Sometimes all that is needed is to take a step back, take a breather, and just watch life for a while.

“Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.” - Susan Ertz

Typically after a long hiatus from posting, it is acknowledged that life has been busy and that so many meaningful events occurred that it was not possible to keep updating… this is usually proved true with some profound truth being pronounced as the sum of gained wisdom during this absence. With that in mind, I would like to point out that yesterday morning, it was raining, so I took my big bright rainbow flavoured umbrella to work. Morning rain doesn’t phase me - quite the contrary really, the scent that lingers after an overnight shower has a certain appeal. However, the business world seems drab in the morning - and that seems even greater during times of cloud. I like to add a little bit of colour to the sea of suits in North Sydney, and the rainbow umbrella seemed the way to do it. Whilst I didn’t see too many smiles on the bus, by the end of the day the sun had come out in glorious form and I didn’t even need it. So, lesson learnt: make your own rainbow if you want to brighten things up.