Groundhog day

How many a post doth a blogger make?

Not every day seems inspiring enough to write about, though every day can be (if allowed). When we become fixated about ourselves in our minds, every new day can seem to be a depressing version of the previous day, over and over again. I think that I am this person, who sees things and life in a certain way and who likes and dislikes certain things and who goes about their business in a certain manner. Gradually, I become more and more involved with this image of myself, which feeds me and drains me at the same time. I take the balance and the confidence I need to carry on with my life from this rigid self-image, but I also sacrifice energy and potential for change to it. In this most vicious of cycles, I forget over and over again that I can choose the outcome of every single new day when I pick one frame of mind over another at the onset.

Phil makes for a lovely metaphor about our potential, given our self-imposed limitations. Phil is all about learning, through trial and error, about how to be a better person, how to become truly happy in a selfless and harmonious way. He goes through all the oh so familiar stages of the clueless apprentice, from rebellion to haughty allmightiness, from despair to surrender. Does he transform into a different person when he finally becomes creative and open to the world around him? Not necessarily. Arguably, we change with every new lesson in one way or another. Some things can be changed about us. Fundamentally, however, we remain the same unique individual. This is why each choice is so magnificently important, so special and precious if acknowledged and made use of. I do not have to give myself up entirely in order to be a better me. I can be a better me with every little choice I make to that purpose. There is beauty and hope in knowing that happiness is within reach even on the dullest and most despairingly familiar of days, as long as I see in it another great opportunity to learn something new.

PS How many a whine maketh a looser? Today IS tomorrow :)))

Day 1/2

Today I voted. It was less exciting than previous times and, as I am celebrating consistency these days, I just voted in agreement with my stronger instincts. Rest assured, I do have arguments to back them. However, I prefer to not preach, to myself or others. I see democracy in my country as just another interesting social and historical experiment and I enjoy allowing myself to be just another tiny wheel in the larger engrenage.

What I felt quite clearly was awareness of how easily we are coaxed into embracing certain attitudes and amazement at how efficient the most simple manipulation tools actually are. Yesterday I asked the professor in my constitutional law class about the implications of the referendum for our legislative. Her answer was brilliant in its simplicity and depth. She merely pointed out something I ought to have known as a graduate of political science. She explained the nature and outlook of this particular referendum (as an exercise of pure public consultation on a given subject, with no necessary legal or political consequences) and then elegantly swung through examples of similar exercised throughout Europe in recent years.

So I returned home from the vote happy to have ticked off the shinier item on today's to do list. Julie and Julia were waiting for me, as was the lingering scent of this morning's kitchen experiment (butter IS the key to all things tasty).There are no coincidences, even if many things are perfectly explainable in terms of our subconscious busily piecing together bits of reality that we strolled by and serving them up at what it deems to be the right moment. A single pink rose received from a waiter when leaving a sad drink and a dream behind can be God's way of rewarding courage and composure. Just as the persistent windshield washer at every morning's traffic light can be God's agent too, reminding me to take a fresh, clean look at the world every day.

PS ... the windows are wide open.

The beginning

I hate coming out of the bedroom in the morning to a living room that reeks of smoke. It’s just not the way I like to start a new day. The bedroom is clean and fresh and promising, the sun shines through the windows - and then I get hit in the face by those billows of second hand smoke. Now, I enjoy a good smoke. I thoroughly enjoy my cigarettes, thank you very much. But that is just it: they are MY cigarettes and that is my smoke, and I certainly don’t mind that. Although sometimes I do smoke too much... Still, it’s one thing to suffer my own smoke, my own untidiness and all the other consequences of being me, and quite another to put up with someone else’s. So I guess that is why I am, yet again, single.

I thought I had it covered this time. I thought I was doing things right, not putting myself first, making room for someone else in my smoke, sorry, life etc, etc, etc. And yet it did not work.

Now, I know all the arguments, all the kind, loving, supportive bullshit that we pass among ourselves when someone hurts – “it’s best this way, dear”, “it could have been much worse, honey”, “it’ll pass, sweetie”, “someone better will come along, kid” etc, etc, etc. We all know those lines and we all believe them heartily when we pass them along to the poor suffering bum of the moment we care about and try to comfort. I also know that between the more or less comforting talks the bum gets torn up between melancholy, disappointment, regret, angry spells, hopelessness, doubts and fears and determination, optimism, jolliness in the face of hardship, courage, hope and prayers. Yet the one thing that never changes is that, like me, the bum (who dat?) is left with a room full of smoke and a peculiar reluctance to vent and let it out.

For what better simile is there for my head (read life) right now, than “a room full of smoke”? When I say better, I mean more useful, more inviting and inspiring to pick up and move on. For I do not wish to suffer, I wish to thrive (think Eddie Izzard at his best dressed to kill voice).

I won’t hang on to broken dreams, I’ll dream new ones. Clean and fresh and promising ones, like my favourite mornings. Now, dear God, show me the way to the window and let me open it right and wide and...

PS ... and they put all the right things right where they belong and they're real plain to see; like the lines in Batman's beginnings about overcoming fear and about falling as a means to learn how to pick up and keep going. Good ones. Thumbs up and smirk.