Life and Other Passions
I have a condition called Polymyalgia Rheumatica, just a fancy name for “Holy Shit, my body is attacking itself!”
Mostly, it likes to eat my feet, effectively preventing me from going any further than to the store across the street. It amazes me how a such a small spot on my foot can totally disable me.
But for some reason, I got a reprieve the past week.
Just in time to catch a bit of nature in autumn.
Thank you!
Last walks before winter. Last walks until who knows when.
It is ironic that the very things that makes us decent and civilized, are the very things that work against us.
As decent human beings, we extend compassion, empathy and the benefit of the doubt to everyone, even those among us who are incapable of doing so themselves. Those who have no understanding of it and no ability to change. Those who view such traits as weaknesses to be exploited. And exploit it, they do.
One bad apple can, and often does, destroy the rest.
I have read how our systems of democracy and socialism work against themselves in much the same manner. We treat individuals who are not part of the system, (the system comprised of those with the collective understanding and mentality of decency, honour and caring), with decency, and they use that to tear the whole structure down.
We mistakenly believe everyone has the same capacity to be decent, and this is just not true.
So we stand in shock and watch as people bilk our institutions, dictators commit genocide, people abuse us and leaders destroy our sense of normalcy.
Or worse, we become participants, the apples spoiled by one.
The common good is to excuse, justify, ignore and ultimately accept another’s bad behaviour, their disregard for social norms, laws and decency, especially one who has rose to great power or has authority over us. We think at any moment that good, that decency, will appear, that it is in that person somewhere. And this is how we get fooled. They give us that moment of normalcy, kindness or praise and we are hooked. And we seldom, if ever witness it again. This is how they spoil the barrel of apples. They have to have enablers.
We fail to see that they do not respond as a normal person would, so our ways of punishment, or redirecting such people, namely through laws, reasoning, therapy and common understanding do not work. They easily disregard such things because they are on a different level, they live in an entirely different reality. The threat of punishment does not work on a person who has no understanding of decency. Their values and priorities are so removed from ours.
The answer of course, is not retaliation, because then we are no longer part of the common good and are now them. I believe the solution is in education. To recognize such individuals and stop or severely limit their ability to wreck havoc in our society before they do. If you know a persons game before you get involved, you can choose not to participate. Without participants, such people are not enabled and cannot cause harm.
Why are we not taught about humans? Why are we left to struggle through life figuring it out for ourselves, with faulty logic and reasoning? Why are we not taught, in our education system, basic human nature and how to get along with others? Why are we not taught about governments, politics, society, money?
Why are we not taught how to think?
I am a notorious note taker, that is I keep track of a lot of mundane things, like when I last changed the kitty litter, or did my laundry, and other stuff, like how much product did I actually get for what I paid for, compared to last purchase.
One thing I’ve noticed is that quantities of purchased items sometimes get discreetly smaller. That is, less stuff for the same price.
This is not new by any means. It is an old trick. I started noticing it when I was younger, how chocolate bars were just slightly smaller for the same price. No, it is not my imagination. Mind you, candy bars were a bit more honest about it, they recorded the change in grams, but they kept the same size packaging.
A few weeks ago I noticed that my loaves of bread are almost one slice less. Almost, because the last slice is now a very small, untoastable bit of crust, where as before it was a whole, toastable crust. There used to be 16 complete slices, now 15 and a bit.
It is a consistent anomaly. Every loaf is the same. I eat lots of bread.
The package claims the same amount of grams, and no doubt the difference is so slight as to be excusable, except, I notice.
I know, big deal.
Still, it irritates me a little.
Today I discovered that the lined paper I bought recently is slightly less than 8 1/2 by 11. Not that I measured it at first, I didn’t notice, until I went to put a bunch on my clip board under a stack of paper I bought last year. Then I measured, as I could plainly see the difference. Last years is definitely standard letter size. This stuff is 8 1/4 by 10 3/4.
Interesting no?
It doesn’t make a whole lot of difference to anything actually, just to me. I find it sneaky and a bit unsettling.
Whenever there is a change in season I usually start to get restless, mostly just for a change of scene. A change is as good as a rest – well, maybe later after you’ve made the change, then you can rest. Making your apartment different takes a lot of work. Moving stuff around in a tiny crowded space is a challenge.
So, I moved some furniture around while cat supervised.
I got sweaty and tired, and did a good cleaning too. Actually got rid of a piece of furniture, a bench I made, that although I made it to last a thousand years (I could not get the thing apart!) it was mostly useless and hogging space. Not easy to discard stuff you make yourself, but sometimes you gotta.
And as usual, I experienced the same phenomena that happens every time I think I am making things better.
That is, I end up with many displaced items, wondering where the heck it all came from, and where the heck am I going to now put them?
Yeah, I know, a purge is a good move.
That is where the other strange phenomena happens.
I can discard bags of stuff, and I mean, BAGS of stuff, and nothing looks any different.
This time, there is a bit more space to walk around, in the living room, but now the bedroom has taken on the brunt of that.
Sigh.
Spring will come and I will do it all again. Move stuff from the bedroom back to the living room.
With the same results.
Is all good.
I have posted many rants about mask wearing, because to me, it is very simple. Covid is spread by your breath. Wear a mask and covid cannot go anywhere, and to some degree, prevents you from breathing in someone else’s covid. It has been proven in other countries to be very effective, and this whole mess could be over if everyone would just comply.
Simple.
But humans, with their big, mostly useless brains, have made it an issue, and so complicated.
However, I have adopted a mask as part of my daily attire. Much like, I usually don’t go out without underware, kind of routine. I don’t think about it much, including the foggy glasses. It just is.
When you need to make a quick trip to the store, the fuss of how you look is eliminated. I don’t have to wear makeup or worry about bad breath. It hides a lot of ills. My friend says he doesn’t have to shave.
It also can make a fashion statement. I have seen some pretty ones, some clever ones, some very comfortable looking ones. And then there are the ugly ones, the ill fitting ones, the ‘I don’t give a F’ ones. My personal pet peeve is the below the nose mask. It aggravates me in the same way those pants worn at the hips do, I want to pull them up!
I watched a doctor on You Tube don one mask after another, up to 6, to prove you do not compromise oxygen transmissibility by wearing a mask. So when I had a biopsy done recently I wore 8 masks! I tell you truthfully, I had no trouble breathing. And since I had 2 surgeons hovering inches from my face, I felt a bit more secure. So a lot of the BS you read about ‘I can’t breathe’, is, well, BS.
So just wear a mask and enjoy the benefits, like, still being alive.
We used to joke about looking at the world through rose coloured glasses, until I worked for an optometrist and discovered this really is a thing. Not only that, a very desirable thing, as it can soothe eye strain and relieve headaches for some.
But today, I view the world through fog covered glasses. With a mask on my face, the lenses are perpetually fogged, and I’ve gotten used to it. Just one of those ‘givens’ we must adapt to. There are a lot of new ‘givens’ during the pandemic.
Some days I have little rain showers inside my glasses. Fog condenses, and it rains, droplets run down like tears. Sort of like being in a car with no windshield wipers. I’m moving forward, but with little idea of where.
When I used to go to the gym I was teased about being my own cloud burst, that is how hard I sweat. It spurted off me with little exertion on my part. I was a walking rain shower. Well, times have changed, and now the rain shower is scaled down to my glasses, with the same amount of minimal effort.
I leave my ‘smoky’ glasses on because they provide some additional protection, or so I have heard, and I can’t see great without them either. In fact, I have them tied around my head, because they keep falling off and you are not suppose to touch your face! Being so tethered, they are not accessible for the odd wipe, so there you go. The end result is, I basically just can’t see any more, and perhaps this is not so bad. There are a lot of things I’d rather not see. A lot of things I wish I had never seen.
Additional bonus, no one can see me now either! Glass-less persons can’t see my eyes, and those with lenses are just as fogged up as me. So none of us knows who we are or where we are going.
Zaphod Beeblebrox of the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy fame, had glasses that automatically blackened at the first hint of danger. So, the pandemic has given me fog, with a light drizzle. Enough to soften and distort the world, but let me know shit is still happening.
Foggy glasses used to be embarrassing, and annoying, now it’s a new normal, and no one notices or cares, except if I bump into them.
Next week, some thoughts about masks.
When I was working I accumulated piles.
No not, hemorrhoids!
Actual piles of ‘to do later’ stuff.
Piles of ‘I can’t deal with that now’ stuff.
And mental piles, virtual to do lists that clog up the brain like sludge.
Come to think of it, they are sort of like hemorrhoids. Ugh.
Piles destroy your quality of life. You cannot live well when you have piles, of any type.
I quite literally had decades of stuff piled up. The actual piles of stuff like paper etc. were annoying to clean up and time consuming but once all was sorted, trashed, cleaned and put away, I could start working on the mental piles.
Things that are stashed away in your mind are the things that make you exhausted and irritable and sometimes crazy. They are unfinished business, and your brain hates unfinished business. It will work 24/7 to solve your problems, to get what you want, to complete your lists whether you are conscious of them or not. This is what your brain is suppose to do; think, solve, plan, organize, be a manager of the rest of you. So mentally file something away and your brain is on it! And no, writing them down does not quiet your brain. It will work even harder on those because they are in writing
The tasks of finishing the unfinished, loving the unloved and the neglected is gut wrenching. From the simple things of sewing a bra strap back on, to finally writing a thank you note (it is never too late for either, your bra and friends understand) I gradually cleared all those mental to do lists out. In the process I discovered many things I’d forgotten about. Embarrassing stuff. Silly stuff. Oh, that would have been great to do stuff.
The great thing about being retired – no matter how short term this may prove to be (money!) is I seemingly have vast expanses of time to do more. Seemingly, because now I really don’t want to do more. I’ve stopped collecting piles, real and imagined and just live for the moment. If something catches my attention, well, if I don’t do it now, I probably will never do it. I will not file it away as a to do later, or sometime if I feel like it.
I am happy to be free of piles for the time being. Life gets so far ahead of you when you are working. Your life belongs to the office and everything else is neglected. So glad those days are OVER.
Often lately I’ve been hearing we are in end times, and over the last few years, it definitely appears to be. I have been surprised that even atheist friends have mentioned we are stepping into the Book of Revelation. This is not said glibly, but with some panic and belief.
I once read a book about the Book of Revelation that suggested this is a period of enlightenment as opposed to wanton destruction. That all of these problems; fires, floods, pollution, corruption, poverty, suffering, political upheavals, all this chaos, is a call for us to embrace love. It is meant to open our hearts and make us see the truth.
That is what Revelation is, an awakening. Enlightenment. The truth revealed.
The truth is, there is no US and THEM. There is only WE. We are one.
We are all humans, living in the same place, with nowhere else to go, despite what Elon Musk might envision for Mars (an entirely hostile place. WHY would we leave this Eden to live there?) We are a global community. You can’t separate one place from another. Not with walls, moats, fences, hedges, conspiracy theories or hoaxes! All other living creatures, plants and lo and behold, viruses, understand this. It is just humans with our little egos that don’t. The sooner we get this, the sooner we can fix the world.
My cat is a cat, and I don’t have any prejudices against tabbies, or tuxedo, or persians, or scottish folds or . . . they are all CATS.
We are all humans. It does not matter what we look like, where we live or what we think. We are all the same! We share the same world and the same problems. Why can’t people get this? Because they are not enlightened. And this is what it is all about.
This age of Revelation is going to continue until we smarten up. Our resistance to our problems perpetuates them. And that is probably why the Bible gives us such a terrifying account. It shows us what our ignorance is capable of, and it ain’t pretty.
The sooner we all return to love and oneness, the quicker our suffering will end. The faster our global disasters will subside. We created our own messes, we can clean them up.
There is only WE.
Getting a notice on your door from the City informing you that your area is now deemed a Covid-19 hot spot is a lot like being told, oh by the way, your house is located on ground zero.
“We’re going to test you and let you know if your house is on fire.” Okay.
I make light of this, only because, it was pretty terrifying.
Testing is strictly voluntary, but it is the right thing to do, and we all know it. This way we can know what the demographics are, and do contact tracing. We are so fortunate to live in a country that is making every effort to arrest the spread of this disease. It is an uphill battle as people get tired of the whole affair. Especially the young, which is where the increase of infections are happening now.
And so they came and tested all of us, in our parking lot, one beautiful summer weekend. We stood outside in a long line, six feet apart, with our masks on, waiting our turn and trying very, very hard to pretend none of us is worried. At least I got to see some fellow tenants I haven’t seen in ages, that were once regular fixtures in my day to day life. But we didn’t talk, just nodded our recognition of each other, and kept our thoughts to ourselves.
The mobile testing unit was extremely well organized. The staff were so professional, courteous and talkative, well, when you haven’t had much human contact in a long while this was almost a pleasant outing. These are strange times.
The test itself is slightly uncomfortable, but the person doing it took their time and were so reassuring. I commend them for their patience. I’m not a youngster anymore and it takes me a while to accept a swab up my nose and in my throat. But hey, at my age, I have had way more invasive tests than this, that lasted forever and have traumatized me for life. So if you want the test, be assured, this is nothing.
No word is a good word, that is, if you don’t hear from the Public Health Nurse the next day, you are okay. But I checked my results anyways on-line and I am negative. Which, strangely, is not all that reassuring.
If you are negative, then you are still extremely vulnerable to getting Covid-19. And now I am a hundred times more afraid to go out.
If you’re positive, then it is like sitting on a time bomb, wondering when it will go off. Listening to it ticking each day. And then you fear, have I given this thing to someone else, someone I love?
All this just added to the ambiguity of my life at the moment and kind of makes everything that has happened since that fateful day in March, when they told us to close our office and go home, surreal.
Now that I find myself in a situation where the future is a vast unknown, I am adrift and basically trying anything that comes my way to see if it fits, I have learned the difference between trust and hope.
Most of my life I have hoped for better. Hoping for things is merely wishing. Hope is limp. It is lame. It has no action attached to it. “Oh, I hope for the best.” Blah.
Trust however, is empowering. To trust in something is to have faith, and faith that is unshakeable can move mountains.
To trust that everything will work out means that I will put forth the effort necessary, safe in the knowing that the universe, the Divine, God, is not indifferent. I do not know what the results of my efforts will be, but I can trust that God has my back. No matter what happens, it will benefit my growth, or someone else. Something will happen.
Hope means I am looking for a certain outcome. Trust means whatever happens will be good in some way. Hope closes you off. Trust opens you up. Trust helps you get past fear.
Hope is to give up and do nothing. Trust is to plunge forward and do everything you can, God will direct your path.
Though the corona virus has severely curtailed what actions I can take in the outside world, it just means working a bit harder on the inside. I am discovering a lot of interesting things.