Words to think on…

Hello all,

Nothing very amusing today, but I stumbled on some words by the father of modern physics that I thought might be worth at least a ‘hmmm’.

The man never portrayed himself as a great thinker. When asked why he didn’t carry a notebook around with him to record his groundbreaking thoughts he responded ‘why? I so very seldom have them.’ However I think that anyone who has even taken a passing interest in his life would agree that when he did have an idea it was something worth pondering.

This is nothing to do with the state of the universe, but rather how we all fit into that tapestry we call life. Well worth spending a couple of minutes reading it.

Without further extrapolation…

“How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people — first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving…

“I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves — this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts — possessions, outward success, luxury — have always seemed to me contemptible.

“My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a ‘lone traveler’ and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude…”

“My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader. In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of low morality… The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.

“This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor… This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how passionately I hate them!

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man… I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.”

 

Life is full of challenges, face them with fortitude

Let me make an observation.

You’re an intelligent human being, witty, urbane, full of life, great fashion sense and an enquiring mind, your very presence here speaks volumes about your good taste.

But if you’re a member of the human race, and I assume you are because using a keyboard or a mouse requires an opposable thumb (if you’re a raccoon or a bush baby, welcome, I’m not speciast, every hit counts), then at some point of your life you’ve been faced by challenges.

These challenges can be faced in different ways, depression, an upbeat attitude, hiding in the closet, setting fire to the cat, but the point is that no matter how bad the situation is it’s not going away without some form of corrective action.

Any psychologist will tell you that many of the actions we take in dealing with stress or pain are just variations of avoidance, or ‘running away’.

What would happen to you if this avoidance behaviour just wasn’t an option, what would you do if you were faced with an eventuality that was just too terrible to contemplate? If your life was shattered beyond any hope of redemption?

What would happen if you quite literally couldn’t run away?

Well here’s the story of a man I would love to meet, someone who has the heart of a lion.

Peng Shuilin is 78cms high. He was born in Hunan Province, China.

78cms High, think about that. You would immediately conclude that he was a dwarf, a condition that brings with it challenges that many of us simply wouldn’t understand. But the reality is that Peng’s life is so far beyond the challenges of dwarfism, is so mind numbingly tragic that most people’s imagination cannot grasp what this man has had to overcome.

This is Peng Shuilin.

In 1995, in Shenzhen, a freight truck sliced his body in half. His lower body and legs were beyond repair. Surgeons sewed up his torso. Peng,  37, spent nearly two years in hospital in Shenzhen, Southern China, undergoing a series of operations to re-route nearly every major organ or system inside his body.

He kept exercising his arms, building up strength, washing his face and brushing his teeth.

He lived, he grabbed life by the throat and lived, not as a cripple, but as a man determined to squeeze every last drop of existence from his time on this planet.

Now Peng Shulin has astounded doctors by learning to walk again after a decade.

Considering Peng’s plight, doctors at the China Rehabilitation Research Centre in Beijing devised an ingenious way to allow him to walk on his own, creating a sophisticated egg cup-like casing to hold his body, with two bionic legs attached.

RGO is a recipicating gait orthosis, attached to a prosthetic socket bucket. There is a cable attached to both legs so when one goes forward, the other goes backwards.

Peng Shuilin has opened his own bargain supermarket, called the Half Man Half Price Store. The inspirational 37-year-old has become a businessman and is used as a role model for other amputees.

At just 2ft 7ins tall, he moves around in a wheelchair giving lectures on recovery from disability. His attitude is amazing, he doesn’t complain. He had good care, but his secret is cheerfulness. Nothing ever gets him down.

I would never belittle the suffering that many of us go through during the course of this great adventure that is life. All we can hope for is the courage to face our own individual challenges and keep our self respect intact. We owe it to each other to recognise bravery where it exists, and lend a helping hand when and where we see others begin to slide into that terrible and frightening landscape of despair that is fast becoming a reality of modern life.

Life is full of joy, sadness, beauty and love. Take great happiness in the rising of the sun, raise your hands to the sky at the coming of spring, welcome the passing of the seasons, wait for the rain, grow, learn.

Never give up.

(Thanks to Snopes)

Get in touch with your inner child

I’d actually wanted to post about the fantastic weekend I had. Clean air, fly fishing, good company, Whiskey (of Irish and Scottish types), Red Wine, beer and the laughter of children.

A wonderful place to spend a weekend

What could be better.

I’ll write about that weekend in the next couple of posts, but something else has been nibbling at me.

What do we take joy in? It’s not a difficult question on the face of it, you can ask your best friend, enquire of the people you work with, ask your significant other. I’m willing to bet that each of them will have the same answer.

A simple response to a complex question; what makes us happy? I bet that everyone you know will respond with variations of the following, “the love of family and friends”, “being with the people I love”, “a couple of drinks with my mates”, “a night at home with my family’.

It doesn’t take (as my daughter of six says);  ‘a brain scientist’ to see a thread here.

Family and fun.

I stumbled on something last week which made me think. Let it be said that I hate chain letters, but sometimes, not often, but sometimes you open a mail and you pause.

A good friend sent me a copy of a mail that has been doing the rounds and it really grabbed my attention. It was a list written by a woman of 90 years old (I’m sure you’ve all seen it by now).

The wisdom of age, combined with a joy of a life well lived shone through.

I’m not going to go through each of the pointers that she gave, there were a lot of them and each made immediate, visceral sense.

But there was one which was resonated with me due to my experience on the latest fishing weekend.

During the course of one evening, after day at the dam one of my companions turned to me and  said “you’re such a child sometimes”.

Now the lady of whom I wrote earlier had,  as one of her pieces of advice this to say (and I paraphrase):

“You’re never too old to have a second childhood, you choose when the time is right”.

I’m 40 years old and I’m lucky to have two other immediate loves in my life (i.e. those who share Mallach World Headquarters in Johannesburg), a woman who is seven years younger than I,  and a daughter of six.

Both know that I suffer from what I like to call the Peter Pan Syndrome.

I strongy believe that J.M. Barry was right. You have to reach into yourself and find your inner child. If you have kids you owe it to the little ones. Most people lose it and become hard. I’ve seen it happen to those I love.

I believe that we can all take a moment to look around at our family and the world at large and see both beauty and harshness.

Choose your own path.

We all want the best for our kids.  Can you balance the economic needs of  your family with their emotional needs? To use the words of the people who write books on business, I believe that it’s an imperative . I’ve learned from my own experience growing up and trust me  it’s a none negotiable.

Although you may not feel it immediately, the dividends (again with the economists) pay off in the short, medium and (I hope) the long term.

Life is difficult, at times maddening, all the time challenging. Sometimes you feel anxious and afraid; we all do.

Don’t panic. What you’re feeling is part of the human condition. Winston Churchill used to call it the Black Dog. A horrible depression that chased him throughout his life.

That feeling of despair,  hopelessness and nagging insecurity  is something we all experience.

The last 20 year’s of my life have been filled with panic, dread and insecurity.

A wise man once told me; this to shall pass.

And he was right.

Reach into yourself, wake up to see another sunrise, lie down on the grass, roll over. Look at the clouds. Have fun. Poke fun at your friends (at all times gently), kiss, roll in the grass, jump in the pool, throw a water balloon, look for lizards, pick up a frog, revel in the sunlight. Run in the rain.

If your family are not too old, grab them and pull them down, roll on the lawn, get the dogs to roll around with you. If there are kids, squirt them with water (buy cheap water pistols, the most fun things in the world), turn on the sprinklers. But the kids need to have water balloons and the dogs need to have kids.

And this is the best advice that I can give you…

Laugh at yourself. Be a child.

Difficult I know, but try, you’ll be surprised at the rewards of visiting that island where Captain Hook, Tinkerbell and Peter Pan play catch up for eternity.

Remember what Hook hears all the time. Tick Tock, Tick Tock, time is fleeting.

Another wise man said to me, “in all you do have fun”.

Sometimes difficult, always possible.

The crocodile of time of time is lurking in the waters of your life. This is not a dress rehearsal.

Reading what I’ve just written I realise it’s all over the place, sorry. There doesn’t seem to be a thread that  runs through it. Sometimes you’ve just got to go with the flow.

This is a blog, just my thoughts. I’ll be more journalistic next time.

Have fun.

PS: I cannot emphasise more, waterpistols are good. Adults shake their heads, but they want to take part. Encourage your children to soak them, they love it.

PPS: If the adults don’t like it then they haven’t had enough red wine.

PPPS: If they still don’t like it then fuck them.

PPPPS: Invite me over and give me a water pistol. I’ll fly over there,  just like Peter Pan.

If they don’t, then maybe I can recommend some reading matrial for them. JM Barry might have some pointers for all of us.

If not, then we should all gather over the nearest bridge and play Pooh Sticks. I bet you that my stick beats yours on the trip down the river. It’s all about the drop and the laughs.