Wow !

I haven't written in a long long time. So much has happened in the past year, it's impossible to capture all the detail, all the feeling, right now, and in words. So I won't try ! But it's been a wonderful year. (Touchwood and Thank You to whoever looks after us!)

It's strange, but I have this feeling some times, that every event of my life so far - from school, to college, to career, to relationships..to everything - was a prelude to what lay ahead. And what has now begun. I suppose that this is a tautological observation in some ways, and basically a fatalistic view of life. But I don't mean it in that sense - it's as if, I've reached a point in my life where I can stand, pause, look around, feel, think, observe, love, and feel that this is it. I could not want anything different. Not in a materialistic way (we all want more of that!), but in a sense of feeling completely at peace.

It's been an elusive feeling for me, this "peace". But I may, after all, have found it.

Long time...

It's been some time...

Life's been up and down, sideways, knotty...but good. Nothing spectacular. But feeling peaceful. After a long time.

I know not what lies ahead, on so many fronts. But there's somewhere within me, this feeling that I am happy. In a way that I haven't been for a long long time.

Thank you life.

Musings...or more

Misdirected. Questions. Hindsight. Self-destructive. Selfish. Aimless. Caring. Emotional. Alcoholic. Hard-working. Trapped. Giving. Self-doubting. Loving.

If only life was clear. It makes sense so many times, but mostly I'm just floating along life, without meaning, without direction, without a sense of who I am or what I'm meant to do. I ignore. I get carried away by the current or the tide. But it haunts. It returns. This feeling that despite every thing I have, despite every body I know, despite all the happy times I've had, life is meaningless. I'm not sure what meaning it is supposed to have. But it seems empty. A blank.

I should stop thinking like this perhaps. It's pointless. I don't get answers, but only more questions. Maybe it's just best to keep floating. Eventually I'll reach somewhere.

What is my calling? Increasingly it seems like life is beating me to a race - a long race - that we started together. I'm getting tired, but life is running and not tiring. I want to rest. But the increasing gap between life and me won't let me rest. I must carry on. I must not tire. Eventually I'll catch up.

How do I achieve peace? Happiness. A sense of self-quiet. A feeling that life is good. Not this nagging feeling that this is not how it was meant to be. Perhaps I need to take a break. Not a holiday. But a break. A break from life. Like finding a tree and just sitting under its shade while I watch life keep running ahead. May be I need to watch life running, but sitting under that shade, smile to myself with this feeling that I don't need to run like that. I need shade. I need rest. When I am recovered, I will not run, I will just be. And my being will encourage life to take some rest. To stop.

On Success

"What does success mean to you?", I was recently asked by someone. I had not given this question a lot of thought before, or at least not in a way as to come up with a coherent answer on the spot. I replied that it was being in a position where I could ensure that my family were comfortably provided for, and that professionally I was in a position where I was a leader, setting an example for those working with me.

On further thought, this is a very vacuous answer. Of course, I want to be in a position where my family are happy, financially comfortable. Of course, I would in some life want to be a big shot at a company, 'leading', making decisions...these are banal excuses to define success.

But really - what does it mean to be successful? After a point, doesn't it become a meaningless, futile concept, designed only to lead us to become ever more greedy, more ambitious, more soul-less? Why can't success be measured non-relative to other people? Why can't I / you define success independent of what we see around us?

Success always is a state of mind. I don't think it entails 'reaching' a given point in life. Instead, success should be dotted around everyday life, filling up spots. Success is knowing you are being the best you can ever be. Of course this rarely happens....

....but that's what we to need to aim for.

Time for a new start?

It's only apt, having not posted anything for over two months, that I come back with in style ! And what may that be? A desire to start something new in my life. A new beginning of something. I've lived my life exactly how I've wanted to - for the most part - and I've enjoyed it. But increasingly I've come to realise that almost every action in my adult life has always been focused on the 'here and now'. There's been no long-term planning, no vision, no grand plans, just a single-minded determination to complete something in the present. Joy as this approach has brought me, part of me has come to realise that in the long-run (or medium-run !) it is self-destructive.

My thought process was altered considerably by events of the past week. I fell sick last weekend, sicker than I had ever been my whole life. As a devoted pessimist, my mind was conjuring colourfully macabre images. The sickness itself was a consequence of just the kind of short-term view I take on most things. Suffice to say that I brought it upon myself (details available on request!!!). I haven't fully recovered, but feel well enough to type this blog.

Where do I go from here, is what I ask myself? What action(s) do I take to feel like I've made a genuine difference to my life? I feel like I cannot 'decide' or 'plan' this change. Instead, I've just got to live it. Every day. From small actions to major decisions, I just have to act in that moment, act and choose like I mean to act and choose - not just 'live the moment'.

I don't know if there is a God. I hope there is one. I've never been a religious person because I despise religion. But God, I've gone through phases of believing and being indifferent, and not believing. Now, more than ever, I hope there is a God. To make me feel like I deserve what I get, but also to have faith in something. To make me want to change, to feel like I owe it to myself, to many other people. Maybe this God is just conversations with myself. Honest conversations. I don't know. I'd like to think it's more than just me.

It's time that change came.

My first Swedish film

I watched my first Swedish film this weekend - Let the Right One In. It was beautiful. Incredible. The examination and development of the relationship between the film's two protagonists, Oskar and Eli, two "children", set within a dark, cold, lifeless suburb of Stockholm, is so tender and moving, yet so tortuous, that you don't know how to feel about it. Eli overwhelms you with her loneliness; Oskar is alone too, but more fortunate than Eli. Not only is this relationship so beautifully developed, but the film is also aesthetically one of the most amazing I have ever watched. It's like every shot is one caught perfectly on a photographer's frame. Whether it's the bleakness of the estate-like housing development that Oskar and Eli share, or Eli sitting in her cold, empty room, hunched and staring at the wall common to her and Oskar's room. The film is not about vampires. In fact, the whole vampire theme I think is merely there to emphasize the emptiness and melancholy of the film's two protagonists. Also to emphasise the coldness, the bleakness of the suburb where they live. This film is pure art - and at its very, very best.

An evening well spent?

Haven't been here for a while. Thought it was time for some self-talk....

I watched '2001: A Space Odyssey' last night, and what a waste of time it was! I just never get Stanley Kubrick films. There's the metaphysical and the artsy...and then there's Kubrick. For me, he's just plain pointless. I don't get his films. Maybe I don't possess the subliminal intellect one needs to understand what Kubrick is trying to say most of the time, but jeeez...that was one completely pointless film !!

However, I did get a reminder of the sheer impossibility of the universe. It kind of made me feel like maybe there never was a 'big bang'...maybe the Universe has always been and will continue to be so...I thought this because I just had this overwhelming feeling (during the film) that it seemed impossible that the Universe, as we know it, could have been created in the normal sense of the term.

I think the Universe is infinite. I think that even if it was theoretically possible to do so, one could not measure the Universe from end to end. How is an infinite space created?

There must be physical proof of the 'big bang', and I don't doubt any natural explanation of the way the Universe is. In fact, I am NOT a Creationist. My thoughts above are more philosophical in the sense that I - and probably most - cannot comprehend or even get the mind to imagine the wholeness of the Universe. Even if I try, and that is a rare way to pass time, I always ask myself in what or where is the Universe contained? It's weird I guess but that's where the limitation of the human brain - not in an unintelligent sense, but in the sense of being unable to form even a basic sense of the 'problem' - really shows: I cannot imagine something not being contained in something else. I am in my room; my room is within my flat; my flat is within the apartment block; the apartment block is in London; London is in the UK; UK is an island on Earth; Earth is a planet in the Milky Way; the Milky Way is a galaxy in the Universe.....

And that's where it ends.