Going back through my blog posts I guess there are many different sorts of trigger – things which spark some sort of idea in my mind that leads to some sort of outpouring here. Often, I guess, the result is quite out of proportion to the cause – many times the trigger takes me off at quite a tangent.
Year: 2016
We Are What We Are
I received an email the other day that widened my thinking on the subject of “we are what we are”. Previous blog entries have already delved a bit into my thoughts about there being no room for any consideration of going back and “changing history” by making different decisions the second time around. This email added a new “dimension” to this issue.
A Modicum Of Doubt
Many say it is of vital importance to hold true to your beliefs. Belief is a concept that is central to “being human”. I would like to suggest that it is more important to have doubts. That Doubt is not so much central to “being” as to “becoming”.
Time Marches On
In recent days I have had a couple of discussions about “getting old” – and more specifically about a slight feeling of disbelief about how old we actually are. Is “oldness” a state of mind – quite separate from “age” which is clearly a measure of time?
Hypocrisy Must Be Avoided
A tendency to see everything in terms of right/wrong – or black/white – or any similar binary distinction is a blight on many people’s view of the world. In some very rare cases it is true that you can make such clear cut distinctions, but mostly you come up with either a “shades of grey” type of situation or a boundary that has been set pretty much arbitrarily somewhere between the two options.
What Is Not Real?
Has there ever been a work of fiction that didn’t – in some way – draw on reality? This is, of course, sort of the reverse of my previous thoughts on whether our memory of reality is accurate or intermingled with its own fictions. In some cases the “fictional” world is created within a reasonably accurate representation of a specific environment. In others a “new world” is imagined in which the characters interact – often in a very similar way to what we are used to.
Why A Madeleine!
Having written A Different Sort Of Madeleine I realised that my readers (always assuming I have any….) will have been completely thrown by the fact that it was written on the assumption that I had earlier posted a piece about madeleines. It turns out that I must have dreamt it!!
What Works For Me
In just under one week’s time I will reach the milestone of 39 years working for the ‘same’ company – we have had many names, numerous owners and a handful of different sites, but, in the same way that the apocryphal broom that has had its handle replaced four times and the head replaced seven times but is still the ‘same’ broom, I am still with the company that I started working for back in 1977.
A Different Sort Of Madeleine
This is not the first attempt to put this into words. Usually, my blog posts are triggered by a thought that develops easily into a stream of ideas that are (hopefully) connected and lucid and coherent. Most times the writing is easy – perhaps too easy – as that doesn’t always lend itself to reviewing to ensure that it is expressed in the correct way. This one is a bit different….
More Talking About Mental Health
The recent news about the chronic underfunding of treatment for those suffering from mental health issues may well have completely passed me by had I read it a decade ago. This sort of shows that it is very true that what catches our attention is predominantly the things that are ‘close’ – I have written elsewhere about how we are affected by the way in which the news is reported and “what catches our eye”.