Personal Blogs

I was talking to a stranger while hill walking. He was complaining about how stressful his job was and how it was impinging on his health.

“Can’t you find a less stressful job?” I asked.

“Too many bills, “he replied.

He also mentioned a recent trip to Disneyland that cost him and his family £6000 in all.

“What makes you happy?” this stranger asked me.

What I’m doing now; walking in nature, stopping with my lunchbox in some isolated place and communicating with the Divine. Being grateful that I can be here. Grateful I have the health to do so. Grateful that I will return home tired, but feeling I have accomplished something.

He looked at me as if I’d lost my marbles.

Conspicuous consumerism is as old as the Silk Road itself. The idea of purchasing of goods or services for the sole purpose of displaying one’s wealth is losing ground as minimalism gains power in the West. Happiness is not achieved through materialism. We only need to look at the West to see that depression, and other emotional and mental illnesses caused by debt and reaching out beyond our means, is robbing society of happiness. Happiness comes from the simple things in life that cost nothing.

© 2023 Writer's Notebook: On Being Human

Some of my cosiest childhood memories for me is being tucked up in bed and my dad reading me stories. Peter Pan, Pinocchio. Oliver Twist. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrope and many more.

I often think, not occasionally, but almost daily, regarding the little children who must go to bed without the story because of absent fathers. This is no fault of the mother. Being a single parent is a challenging task.

When I was in my late teens, I became fascinated by another group of missing fathers. I read a book about HMY Iolaire. This was a vessel that was returning to the Island of Lewis on Scotland’s west coast on January 1, 1919.

On board were no ordinary group of passengers, but 283 men who were returning from WW1. As they anticipated returning to their families after much deprivation and discomfort of the war, they no doubt looked forward to catching up on the lost years of absence.

The waters were hostile that day and the captain struggled to negotiate a safe passage. Suddenly, the ship struck rocks and 201 of the 283 men perished.

When the bodies were recovered, in their pockets were toys. Yes, toys. Toys for their children whom they had dearly missed. Gifts that would re-establish the lost years with their relationship with their little ones.

In an ideal world, there would be no absent fathers. Many, if not most, are absent by choice. Some by circumstances beyond their control. And my sympathy goes out to the latter.

 Imagine the scenario, a charity organisation that organised fathers with loving family lives to volunteer to pop round to the homes of children of missing fathers and read them bedtime stories. But in today’s world with many child predators, the idea seems absurd.  On the plus side, I’m happy that literacy is high in the West and many children learn to read for themselves. And I’m sure many single mothers take time to read to them despite the challenges.

Image by Barrett Ward (Unsplash)

When studying Social Science some years ago, I learned of the Kitty Genovese murder in 1964.

Apart from being chased down the street, sexual assault and then murdered, what made this case

more shocking was the bystanders that ignored Kitty’s screams for help.

This came to mind whilst reading Kathrine Boo’s shocking testimony to life in Mumbai’s slums in her book Behind the Beautiful Forevers.

She writes about a one-legged girl whose is set on fire by quarrelsome neighbours, many bystanders gather and watch like it’s the next episode in a soap opera. She writes,

“The adults drifted back to their dinners, while a few boys waited to see if Fatima’s face would come off.”

Fatima’s husband in a effort to get her to hospital is shunned by rickshaw drivers concerned about their rickshaw seats becoming bloodstained.

I see the expression "Enlightenment now" in books  and the media. Just exactly what do we mean by it? In what ways have we become enlightened?  

I was thinking of yesterday’s post and wondered if the theme of death is worth a blog.

A friend, who was a charity worker that looked after the needs of refugees had a Chinese man walk into his office one day. The man never spoke English, so, with a video link to a professional translator they were able to answer the man’s query.

“Can you tell me, what happens when we die?” was his question.

The Chinese man is not unique. We all ask that question and believe me; the thought becomes more frequent as you get older.

Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is this lump of matter and electrical charge we call the brain aware of itself? Why are we so unique that we can explore these matters? This is the boundary of science. These are questions that will never be answered by science. Despite the grandiose claims, we are nowhere near answering these questions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF54xqYhIGA&list=WL&index=17&t=29s

There cannot be a God, there’s too much evil. However, why is there so much good? And think of the statement, “There’s too much evil.” Where do we get that moral absolute? Where does this invisible standard of right and wrong come from? If we are products of blind chance, then why is there the demand for justice? Justice has no place in a blind universe.

I will return to this question tomorrow.

Ah! Robert Louis Stevenson, a man after my own heart. I go everywhere with my notebook and my current reading material. Chance favours the prepared mind. A random thought emerges. The thought is pursued and drafted into the notebook. Less I forget.

“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.”

― Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson

And current reading, if you're enquiring. The Penguin Book of Prose Poems

‘Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.’― Frank Turek 

Hello World. Did I miss the meeting?  The London bus, I mean. The one that read ‘There is probably no God. So stop worrying. Enjoy your life.’ Oh dear! The telling word is ‘probably’. It doesn’t inspire conviction, does it? The adverb sticks out like a scaled down version of Pascal’s Wager. Like ‘There’s probably no God, but if there is, he might just let me off the hook for my lack of complete denial and reverence.

And then there’s the ‘enjoy yourself’ part. It is so refreshing to see that the atheists are the only ones on the planet that are enjoying themselves. I guess the drug addicts, alcoholics and escapists must be believers. How strange, I never noticed. Someone must inform our secular neighbours who are swiping down the antidepressants at record levels that it isn’t allowed. They shouldn’t be enjoying themselves that much.