this is another one that I had titled but completely forgotten about but for some strange reason, it all came back to me today while watching The Simpsons.
How responsible are you?
By that, I am not talking about regular responsibilties like keeping to your word, respecting those who deserve respect, and other niceties. Instead, I am talking about the smaller responsibilties that all the same play a big part in your life, albeit in a much more subtle way.
How responsible are you for your actions, not just your larger overt ones but the smaller, less noticeable ones.
Mies Van Der Rohe famously said "God Lies In The Detail" and so it is true that your nature is best revealed in the little things that you do and in the things that are often beyond regular perception.
I have said (after others) that we exist in and through our interactions the people and things around us. It follows that because we are creatures of interactions, we share an equal part of the responsibilties of each and every interaction, no matter how brief the moment. How often have you heard people shirk responsibilty but blaming it on fate, or luck, or perhaps more accurately, bad luck?
Is "it wasn't meant to be" a vaild excuse for anything?
Ok, while the reality is that sometimes, things really are not of our doing and totally out of our control but again, like many other things, this is something that only you can answer and how honestly you answer lies solely on your conscience. It is too easy to blame things on other people and even easier to blame something that is intangible but does that really benefit us beyond the bliss of ignorance of our irresponsibility?
Ignorance is often cited as being a device to protect ourselves from truth; the perfect example being the 30 seconds from doom scenario but that, as a descriptive scenario is deliberately extreme to aid in the description.
Life is not that extreme.
Our existance, that is our interactions with the things around us are constant. As I am sitting here, hitting these keys, I am doing something, thinking something and perhaps more intrigueingly, in a state of constant change. Every word I am typing is being processed and reprocessed for a reason. In this peculiar interaction, I am interacting with myself but again, bizzarely, I am interacting with myself as I was the briefest moment ago. These words are appearing on screen a moment after I think them and by the time the sentence has completed, I will be left reading what is essentially, my past self. After that, I read and re-read and occasionally, delete and re-type.
This is my primary interaction in this situation.
Let's skip a few steps and get to the part where you are reading this; that would be, your interaction with what I was thinking. Where does my responsibilty lie there? If you are upset or angered or elated or saddened, is that my fault? Would I be the cause of any reactions you may have from reading what I have written, especially if that text was written months ago and without reference to you or anything about you?
Perhaps.
Perhaps not.
That would depend on both our honesty.
That was perhaps a bit too cryptic and bit too confusing but you get the gist of what I am trying to say, no? How about we go onto something a bit simpler?
If I am unhappy with my friendship (or lack of friendship) with someone, who is to blame?
Let's for a moment ignore that it might not even be a blame issue and to seek someone/something to blame is indicative of something else about your nature and instead look to the situation and the responsibilties within that situation.
Any relationship, be it good or bad, long term or in passing, has at the heart of it, two people.
What ever happens, it is always about how those two people interact and so it is reasonable to say that both parties are equally responsible for the outcome of that relationship.
The problem is that people have developed a atural tendency to point out when things are good and how that is a result of them. At the same time, when things are bad, they instanty find fault with the other side.
To that, I say bull.
Even if the other party has a fault (note: not "IS at fault"), you are still, if not more at fault for not bringing the issue up. Who is to blame if you don't say anything? If you don't tell them you're not happy, whose fault is that. That is of course a trick question as the answer is in the question...
All this is a very long winded way of going back to the title:
in/balance
There are two sides to that title, just as in our interactions.
It is easy to blame others for things but always so hard to blame ourselves.
People alway say that you get what you put in, so my question to you is this;
if you're not getting a lot out of something, how much are you putting in?
Titled: 9th December 2007
Published: 6th January 2008
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Thursday, January 03, 2008
modern life 1. Heroes: Part 1
We all have dreams.
Indeed, it is one of the fundemental things that makes us human. We all have desires and ambitions, things to aspire and things that inspire us. It is this want/need to have more, do more and be more that has lead us to where we are at this point in time. Is it good? Sometimes yes, sometimes no but there is no doubt that it is this ambition that has given us so much. In a time when everything comes and goes so quickly, it is all too easy to forget that as little as 50 years ago, nay, 20 years ago, you would not be able to read what I type so easily, let alone read what someone halfway across the world is typing at the same time.
20 years ago, could you have imagined that you'd be able to converse with multiple people in multiple countries all at the same time from your home?
Think about what your parents had when they were your age.
Think about what your grandparents had at that age.
This might be because I come from a family where as recently as in my grandparent's time and even my own parents' time that they were very basic and simple farmers but I am very aware of the "magical" things in life. I am, as you might know, a compulsive horder of trivial things and I cannot look at those "trinkets" without thinking of how lucky I am. The thing I am most grateful for though, isn't my horde of bits and pieces but rather the fact that I am free to be able to horde. I am thankful for being in a position where I can decide what I want to do. Certainly, I do have a path I should be taking but I am more free than most to walk that path at my own pace (although I know I should go a bit faster....). I am very aware of my freedom.
But what of my parents' freedom?
How free were they do really do what they wanted to do?
I don't really know my parents.
My father died when I was doing my A-Levels so I never had the chance but even before that, I never really the chance. The one thing that I will always remember is that my parents were always working. This might've been because they made a few not so good choices earlier but I also know that it was because were for lack of a better term, poor. Remember this, my mum and dad came to this country with not a lot in their pockets and not much English to help them get by. Subsequently, they worked asmuch as they could to buy a house, a partnership in a restuarant, then the place outright, then a smaller place where they worked even more hours just to put me and my sister through school.
I can't but help wonder now, whether or not they, during those working years, stopped to ask themselves if that was what they wanted to do in life? I know that at times, circumstances decides what you have to do but to give up so much of your life doing something that ultimately isn't for yourself is something I am finding hard to understand.
But that is just it, isn't it?
To be a parent is to sacrifce.
To sacrifice is the noblest deed of all, is it not?
And that is one of the constants throughout history.
Parent figures are always heroes.
They are the archetypal hero model. They raise a child and care for a child and give all for the child. In those stories especially, the parents are often shifted to the sidelines as a backstory for the main Hero of the tale but still, they sacrifice all for the child-hero. In some cases, even their lives are forfeit for the child-hero. As far back as recorded history goes, when-ever we have a hero figure, the parents of that hero figure are also heroes.
In the ancient tribes, we have chiefs, the strongest, wisest, bravest man in the tribe leading them to prosperity. Tradition has it that his son will take his place. In nature, the biggest baddest son of the alpha male takes over the harem. Again and again, it is as if it is in nature that heroes beget heroes.
Is that why we hero-worship?
Is that why we have a need to admire and to imitate others, in particular those we see as being better than ourselves? Let's be honest here, you might not admit to wanting to be like someone else but we all know you do. And again, let's be honest here about who those people are; I mean, how many aspire to be like that guy who sells the Big Issue on Charing Cross Road by the Oscar Wilde statue?
Are we forgetting what heroes really are?
The obvious answer is that in a modern society and culture where celebrity is the thing most celebrated, it is true that we have lost all meaning of what a hero is. Perhaps more importantly, we have forgotten what things are admirable in a person. In classical tales, heroes are people, often simple people who are faced with fearsome tasks against insurmountable odds. They are people who come a background of having nothing or perhaps even worse, of tragedy. They are people who learn to rise above it all, to overcome all dangers and to regain all that was lost. They are people who fight against all foes to reach the pinacle of their existance and achieve all they set out to achieve.
Heroes were examples of how to be a good person.
They were not gods with powers beyond mortals nor were they demons bound by their evil to do evil things. They were normal people, hindered from birth by the acts of an evil being/enemy who overcomes and realises dreams and that is why they are heroes.
Indeed, it is one of the fundemental things that makes us human. We all have desires and ambitions, things to aspire and things that inspire us. It is this want/need to have more, do more and be more that has lead us to where we are at this point in time. Is it good? Sometimes yes, sometimes no but there is no doubt that it is this ambition that has given us so much. In a time when everything comes and goes so quickly, it is all too easy to forget that as little as 50 years ago, nay, 20 years ago, you would not be able to read what I type so easily, let alone read what someone halfway across the world is typing at the same time.
20 years ago, could you have imagined that you'd be able to converse with multiple people in multiple countries all at the same time from your home?
Think about what your parents had when they were your age.
Think about what your grandparents had at that age.
This might be because I come from a family where as recently as in my grandparent's time and even my own parents' time that they were very basic and simple farmers but I am very aware of the "magical" things in life. I am, as you might know, a compulsive horder of trivial things and I cannot look at those "trinkets" without thinking of how lucky I am. The thing I am most grateful for though, isn't my horde of bits and pieces but rather the fact that I am free to be able to horde. I am thankful for being in a position where I can decide what I want to do. Certainly, I do have a path I should be taking but I am more free than most to walk that path at my own pace (although I know I should go a bit faster....). I am very aware of my freedom.
But what of my parents' freedom?
How free were they do really do what they wanted to do?
I don't really know my parents.
My father died when I was doing my A-Levels so I never had the chance but even before that, I never really the chance. The one thing that I will always remember is that my parents were always working. This might've been because they made a few not so good choices earlier but I also know that it was because were for lack of a better term, poor. Remember this, my mum and dad came to this country with not a lot in their pockets and not much English to help them get by. Subsequently, they worked asmuch as they could to buy a house, a partnership in a restuarant, then the place outright, then a smaller place where they worked even more hours just to put me and my sister through school.
I can't but help wonder now, whether or not they, during those working years, stopped to ask themselves if that was what they wanted to do in life? I know that at times, circumstances decides what you have to do but to give up so much of your life doing something that ultimately isn't for yourself is something I am finding hard to understand.
But that is just it, isn't it?
To be a parent is to sacrifce.
To sacrifice is the noblest deed of all, is it not?
And that is one of the constants throughout history.
Parent figures are always heroes.
They are the archetypal hero model. They raise a child and care for a child and give all for the child. In those stories especially, the parents are often shifted to the sidelines as a backstory for the main Hero of the tale but still, they sacrifice all for the child-hero. In some cases, even their lives are forfeit for the child-hero. As far back as recorded history goes, when-ever we have a hero figure, the parents of that hero figure are also heroes.
In the ancient tribes, we have chiefs, the strongest, wisest, bravest man in the tribe leading them to prosperity. Tradition has it that his son will take his place. In nature, the biggest baddest son of the alpha male takes over the harem. Again and again, it is as if it is in nature that heroes beget heroes.
Is that why we hero-worship?
Is that why we have a need to admire and to imitate others, in particular those we see as being better than ourselves? Let's be honest here, you might not admit to wanting to be like someone else but we all know you do. And again, let's be honest here about who those people are; I mean, how many aspire to be like that guy who sells the Big Issue on Charing Cross Road by the Oscar Wilde statue?
Are we forgetting what heroes really are?
The obvious answer is that in a modern society and culture where celebrity is the thing most celebrated, it is true that we have lost all meaning of what a hero is. Perhaps more importantly, we have forgotten what things are admirable in a person. In classical tales, heroes are people, often simple people who are faced with fearsome tasks against insurmountable odds. They are people who come a background of having nothing or perhaps even worse, of tragedy. They are people who learn to rise above it all, to overcome all dangers and to regain all that was lost. They are people who fight against all foes to reach the pinacle of their existance and achieve all they set out to achieve.
Heroes were examples of how to be a good person.
They were not gods with powers beyond mortals nor were they demons bound by their evil to do evil things. They were normal people, hindered from birth by the acts of an evil being/enemy who overcomes and realises dreams and that is why they are heroes.
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