I'm pretty cynical about the whole thing. By the whole thing I guess I mean everything, the new Arcade Fire album, the last thing I wrote, your myspace profile, my sniffling nose, the idea of Christianity and the idea of life and friendship and working and all that stuff. But being cynical hasn't really gotten me anywhere at all. It has earned me a lot of awkward moments between people, I mean, who really likes that moment where someone says something sucks and the other thinks otherwise. Cynicism seems to sap us from being excited and sometimes being excited, even about the worst things is a great privilege.
The more and more cynical I get (I usually like to think the cleverer and cleverer I get) the less good the whole thing seems. By the whole thing I guess I mean everything, going out late at night, rain, sunny days, being able to work, hearing organs, my ipod; it is all so passe really. I think my spirit needs to be redeemed, so I can love again perhaps or just so I can enjoy the nothing that always happens a whole lot more than the everything. I just want to be simple and remember people and how special they are and love those in my life and those who pass me in the street or sit next to me on the train.
Being cynical will make you cool but it won't make you happy, it is almost like a ball and chain dragging you down and away from wondering. As you fall the list of things you can enjoy just decreases and decreases until nothing really means anything anymore except the most visceral of acts like sex and war and having a really high flying job and a huge television and all that really physical stuff. Stuff that is like an exclamation mark to everybody else; showing off and saying 'I get lots of sex' or 'I killed hundreds' or 'Have a look at the picture on this baby'. I think really that we want to impress people because we are lonely and we want them to say they love us and then know that we are good and worthwhile and important. And we do what the world says in advertisements because we all think that is what it takes for people to say that we are special and important, all the ads say that if we own this car we will have a feeling of power or a feeling of exclusivity. But companies discriminate; they want money and the poor don't have it and the poor suffer as being lesser humans and they probably feel like they can't be special or beautiful or important (but I don't know really because I am not poor).
Imagine if you were very rich and had a lot of friends and knew a lot of important people and then just chose to quit your very important job and go and wash homeless people in some warehouse in a forgotten part of town. Imagine how much of a demotion that would be, people would imagine you were crazy. You would probably lose of lot of your important friends and you might not be able to keep your large house, flashy car and Bang & Olufsen sound system. But I think that would change you inside, you would be telling these homeless people, these people worth nothing in dollar terms that they are more important than the men you danced with in the thousand floor buildings and more important than all those business deals and handshakes and contracts and clients and Italian furniture and feta cheese. I think these people, if they realised what you did for them would look at you with tears in their eyes and probably just hug you or collapse. I don't really know what they would do because I have never done it. But you might start loving things again like hearing a certain cracked voice sing a song or feeling the sun on your face or coming home to a bed that you have by grace. When we don't deserve anything everything is a gift and imagine if we lived Christmas everyday, that would be exciting.
I don't think this is a change or anything different for me. I still think I am being cynical of all the usual things like capitalism and materialism and the whole rat race. I am praying for something to change though; I am praying for the day when I can sit on a train of suits and shirts and somehow show them a love that they have not known. Not a denouncing, ugly, cynical young man who is disillusioned but a bright eyed, enthusiastic old man still closing his eyes and smiling into the blue skies and their ability to search out and illuminate the shadows.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Friday, February 02, 2007
Romance
I think being single would be difficult. Most of the time though I think being in a long term relationship is harder, I mean that is why most people aren't in them right? I don't really know if it is a question of 'the right person' but probably a question of romance. After five years I obviously am not the same person I was when I began dating Marianne but I am inescapably the same as well.
As a child I was terrified of the idea of having to be romantic. I imagined that the world was swarming with these suave, debonair men just sweeping women off their feet with roses, horses and piles and piles of clever, sophisticated words. "I don't even know how to be a man" I thought. I was scared to buy flowers and terrified of walking into a jewelry store lest I be arrested for being there. I realise now though that I had a really narrow picture of romance, and I probably still do. Romance stretches far beyond my capacity to do anything. Romance is me listening; it is me looking and admiring and having my breath taken away. True romantics are changed from the inside by the wonder of the whole world and then, as an act of gratitude, pour themselves out into their beloved. The more I sit in the silence and wonder of life asking God questions without answers the more patient and distant I become with every hard word and business deal. All the advertising, all the concrete in the world cannot blanket the gift we have been given.
I think G.K. Chesterton said that: "The world is in no need of wonders, what it needs is wonder". I love that. If you are reading this, stop. If you are still reading, stop. Go outside, lie down and cry at all the tragedy, laugh at all irony and sigh at all the beauty. If you had listened to what I said earlier though you would not have read this and the above part; you would already be breathing life and not wasting your time reading the musings of a confused child.
As a child I was terrified of the idea of having to be romantic. I imagined that the world was swarming with these suave, debonair men just sweeping women off their feet with roses, horses and piles and piles of clever, sophisticated words. "I don't even know how to be a man" I thought. I was scared to buy flowers and terrified of walking into a jewelry store lest I be arrested for being there. I realise now though that I had a really narrow picture of romance, and I probably still do. Romance stretches far beyond my capacity to do anything. Romance is me listening; it is me looking and admiring and having my breath taken away. True romantics are changed from the inside by the wonder of the whole world and then, as an act of gratitude, pour themselves out into their beloved. The more I sit in the silence and wonder of life asking God questions without answers the more patient and distant I become with every hard word and business deal. All the advertising, all the concrete in the world cannot blanket the gift we have been given.
I think G.K. Chesterton said that: "The world is in no need of wonders, what it needs is wonder". I love that. If you are reading this, stop. If you are still reading, stop. Go outside, lie down and cry at all the tragedy, laugh at all irony and sigh at all the beauty. If you had listened to what I said earlier though you would not have read this and the above part; you would already be breathing life and not wasting your time reading the musings of a confused child.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
How to get more money in less time with less stress
Step one: The Realist / Wonder
I actually don't know the first thing about how to do anything with money. Except buy books; I am good at that. And if I did know anything about making money I think I would be out in the real world striding across concrete fumbling habitually with my ring and beaming my gaze across and through the horizon. Instead of the visceral world I would break upon the earth blazing in formulas and success- a beacon of truth of one sort or another. The numbers would fly through the air just waiting for that masterful hand to raid their providence. That masterful hand, of course, would be mine and I would not sit behind a computer after a day contemplating the futility of the rat race with good friends, great friends actually who, on a day overcast and ugly, all pretended that the sun was shining across a cloudless blue sky. With my money I could prove the unprovable: money = happiness. All good research only needs benefactors. I would be the Santa sack of the world: an endless, pouring, benevolent gesture capturing the imagination of a society obsessed with all my accomplishments.
Step two: The Emerging Megalomaniac
I know it sounds evil but so do you when you chime on and on about saving society from all its ills. I'm pretty sick of it really. Here is the point: you are so content and stuffed (see the Leunig cartoon of the same name for this reference) that you have nothing to bigger to do than place those contributing members of society below you in a hypocritical rave. All production adds value and morality unto society; whilst some production is misdirected Nietzsche's theory of eternal return sees that this fluff floats off and is forgotten as if it never existed. All other goodness of industry catapults down the snowy mountain picking up speed and weight and power and terrifying beauty until it imposes itself as a juggernaut against eternity itself. All this of course is the pathway of humanity so that if we are not unified underneath the glamour of purpose our forces become unstuck and like a snowball breaking against a cliff face we scatter the earth and fall white over the entire landscape. I believe that there exists a similar downfall: Babel, supposedly their cliff face was God.
Step three: What our forgetfulness breeds! (a lament)
When all falls at the feet of eternity in a great garbage heap of hopeless exhaustion we will finally see that all human endeavour was only for the purpose of not being bored. Our time is both short and neverending but we only count for one split second burning like a rocket through the hole of forever. Today you set the catapult in time against the rest of your soul's life outside of time. Our eyes burn with the fragility of this decaying, heaving, choking husk of life and then they tire out and grow dim and light becomes hard to see apart from where it is thrust against us in a haze of neon fantastic. The cities of our sprawling stacked atop one another weep and sweat at all of the misery they have seen. And if concrete could wail we would lose our ears to the din raining on us day and night. All of this, at our hands, we spent, we bred and we nurtured because we were bored. And now plunging our heads through the entirety of infinity we have so much time to think about all of the times we forgot to take time to plan for the time in which there would be no time but instead an endless supply of it (time, that is). I don't know about you but the thought of perpetually remembering how I wasted my life tearing down a planet in order to build a machine is a thought I cannot ignore.
Step four: Reducing Stress
While the principles of stress reduction run through all of the above principles in neat, discernible lines it is also necessary to allocate space specific to stress reduction techniques. The reduction of stress can only really be examined properly by first understanding what stress is and where it is birthed from. Stress is a culmination of mental, emotional and physical weights and may manifest itself in all three in any particular combination although increasingly today's society there tends to be an increasing emphasis on physical well being and emotional fitness over mental health. Consequently mental health in the Western world is losing grip (excuse the pun). Because of this phenomenon we will tackle some strategies for reducing mental stress and anxiety first.
Remember: it is all in your head. For mental stress nothing works better than an illusionary cure, also known as a placebo. Think of something that you can trust as really relieving stress and by simply believing that it works you will see your mental health climb like a monkey. Some ideas include: squishy, coloured stress balls, sleeping, insulting your boss in shrewd sarcastic ways, pirating music, buying things, sugar pills, heroin or cocaine (even crack cocaine will do although not if you are used to A- grade purity), exercising, biting your nails, screaming at your wife and children, combing your hair till it falls out, playing golf, blogging, crying in the dark, laughing loudly at unfunny jokes, wearing clothes, being naked, organising events for your company social that involve the harm of other employees (paintball etc.) or breathing correctly.
I actually don't know the first thing about how to do anything with money. Except buy books; I am good at that. And if I did know anything about making money I think I would be out in the real world striding across concrete fumbling habitually with my ring and beaming my gaze across and through the horizon. Instead of the visceral world I would break upon the earth blazing in formulas and success- a beacon of truth of one sort or another. The numbers would fly through the air just waiting for that masterful hand to raid their providence. That masterful hand, of course, would be mine and I would not sit behind a computer after a day contemplating the futility of the rat race with good friends, great friends actually who, on a day overcast and ugly, all pretended that the sun was shining across a cloudless blue sky. With my money I could prove the unprovable: money = happiness. All good research only needs benefactors. I would be the Santa sack of the world: an endless, pouring, benevolent gesture capturing the imagination of a society obsessed with all my accomplishments.
Step two: The Emerging Megalomaniac
I know it sounds evil but so do you when you chime on and on about saving society from all its ills. I'm pretty sick of it really. Here is the point: you are so content and stuffed (see the Leunig cartoon of the same name for this reference) that you have nothing to bigger to do than place those contributing members of society below you in a hypocritical rave. All production adds value and morality unto society; whilst some production is misdirected Nietzsche's theory of eternal return sees that this fluff floats off and is forgotten as if it never existed. All other goodness of industry catapults down the snowy mountain picking up speed and weight and power and terrifying beauty until it imposes itself as a juggernaut against eternity itself. All this of course is the pathway of humanity so that if we are not unified underneath the glamour of purpose our forces become unstuck and like a snowball breaking against a cliff face we scatter the earth and fall white over the entire landscape. I believe that there exists a similar downfall: Babel, supposedly their cliff face was God.
Step three: What our forgetfulness breeds! (a lament)
When all falls at the feet of eternity in a great garbage heap of hopeless exhaustion we will finally see that all human endeavour was only for the purpose of not being bored. Our time is both short and neverending but we only count for one split second burning like a rocket through the hole of forever. Today you set the catapult in time against the rest of your soul's life outside of time. Our eyes burn with the fragility of this decaying, heaving, choking husk of life and then they tire out and grow dim and light becomes hard to see apart from where it is thrust against us in a haze of neon fantastic. The cities of our sprawling stacked atop one another weep and sweat at all of the misery they have seen. And if concrete could wail we would lose our ears to the din raining on us day and night. All of this, at our hands, we spent, we bred and we nurtured because we were bored. And now plunging our heads through the entirety of infinity we have so much time to think about all of the times we forgot to take time to plan for the time in which there would be no time but instead an endless supply of it (time, that is). I don't know about you but the thought of perpetually remembering how I wasted my life tearing down a planet in order to build a machine is a thought I cannot ignore.
Step four: Reducing Stress
While the principles of stress reduction run through all of the above principles in neat, discernible lines it is also necessary to allocate space specific to stress reduction techniques. The reduction of stress can only really be examined properly by first understanding what stress is and where it is birthed from. Stress is a culmination of mental, emotional and physical weights and may manifest itself in all three in any particular combination although increasingly today's society there tends to be an increasing emphasis on physical well being and emotional fitness over mental health. Consequently mental health in the Western world is losing grip (excuse the pun). Because of this phenomenon we will tackle some strategies for reducing mental stress and anxiety first.
Remember: it is all in your head. For mental stress nothing works better than an illusionary cure, also known as a placebo. Think of something that you can trust as really relieving stress and by simply believing that it works you will see your mental health climb like a monkey. Some ideas include: squishy, coloured stress balls, sleeping, insulting your boss in shrewd sarcastic ways, pirating music, buying things, sugar pills, heroin or cocaine (even crack cocaine will do although not if you are used to A- grade purity), exercising, biting your nails, screaming at your wife and children, combing your hair till it falls out, playing golf, blogging, crying in the dark, laughing loudly at unfunny jokes, wearing clothes, being naked, organising events for your company social that involve the harm of other employees (paintball etc.) or breathing correctly.
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