Commentary (Part 4)

This week I have been blogging comments and observations on life from my own perspective. This is the 4th and last entry bringing me up to 100 comments. Feel free to read the previous three "commentary" blogs as well if you wish. They are all thoughts meant to lead the reader on a voyage of their own thinking. They all occurred to me when thinking about my own life and its circumstances but they are also more generally applicable.

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71.

Revenge is really a matter of ego and ego, quite often, is not a very helpful thing in a social context. “Winning” can happen in such as way that the win is both entirely sour and entirely hollow. And what good is a win that doesn’t feel like a win?

72.

There is no feeling so powerless as not being able to communicate. Spare a moment’s thought for the voiceless.

73.

“The criminal prospers, and the just are brought low.” True enough, life is not organised on strict moral principles. People do not pay for their crimes and often misdeeds result in earthly success. I wish I could ascribe to one of these figmentary flights of fanciful imagination that religionists have where they extend earthly justice into some ethereal realm where justice always happens and criminals always pay. Alas, I think the law of the universe is “Take your chances, you might get away with it.”

74.

I know there are things I am good at. My problem is that I can think of no reason why anyone else should care about that.

75.

It was suggested to me the other day that even the amoral have morals. That may well be true but I don’t think that understands the term “amoral” correctly. To be amoral is to eschew public values and, instead, to take your own without regard to others. Now does anyone truly act without regard to others? Not if they have any mind for consequences, no.

76.

Death as comfort. The big escape. Perhaps this is the hell and that the paradise….. of nothingness?

77.

I have some sympathy with those spiritual people who speak of emptying yourself and of nothingness. It can be seen as a foretaste of the hereafter.

78.

So many words. And yet, there are always more.

79.

With maturity comes the expectation to act and think for oneself. So why then do so many still try to influence and cajole you?

80.

I will try not to use my upbringing as an excuse. But, you know, you are the sum of where you’ve come from….. or something.

81.

There is a certain kind of naive political campaigner who bemoans the fact that there are the powerful and the powerless. Their hearts are in the right place but it’s as if they don’t realise that the world is a dirty place and their opponents will be more than happy to get down and dirty. Good is not achieved with your head in the clouds but with your hands in the muck.

82.

When I think how many times in life I’ve been hugged or embraced I’m staggered by how startlingly few times it is. This causes me to reflect on my form of life again and its relation to my views. As it should.

83.

I stood in Tempelhofer Feld again, all too briefly. I cycled there especially in a 50 kilometer round trip. There was an hour’s worth of torrential rain. I didn’t really care even as the rain worked its way through my clothes and I stood there literally dripping wet. The Feld was almost completely deserted, as you might expect, and I stood under a tree which was not up to the task of shielding me from the downpour. Then, when the rain ceased, I did one more lap of that special place on my bike in soaking wet clothes. I have a kind of romantic glow about it even as I write now. If there was a heaven that would be it.

84.

Is life a constant struggle to be yourself, unashamed and unbending to social pressures and mores? It can seem that way. I cut my own hair the other day, as I have done for decades now. I wasn’t very careful because I could care less what it really looks like. But I went out and wore a hat. I didn’t want people to laugh and point. I hate myself a little bit for that show of insecurity. I was just saving myself the little bit of stress that comes from having to deal with it. I’ve been laughed at in the street just for wearing cargo shorts when the weather was thought not suitable for such things!

85.

What would real isolation be like? I obviously have no idea. I’ve lived a “one foot in, one foot out” kind of life.

86.

What is worst in life? To be merely tolerated.

87.

I don’t want a tombstone. I want to be forgotten. I want time and space to rush and claim me and wash over me, blotting out that I ever existed.

88.

Living life with your eyes shut sets up some strange conditions of life.

89.

Honesty to yourself is perhaps the most important thing you can ever cultivate.

90.

In life you often need to accept loss or lack of control. If maturity is about accommodation to the circumstances of existence, then this is surely a decent part of it.

91.

When you’ve had enough of rejection, you stop trying to be accepted. But I’d be a liar if I said you ever completely give it up. But it’s head and heart. My heart would risk it all again. My head is determined I will never ever let that happen again.

92.

Better to dislike oneself and question yourself than to think you are the greatest thing since sliced bread. 

93.

The key to happiness: peace and enjoyment in yourself in the moment, creating a self that is not at odds with your existence. Happiness can never be about the external situations of life, although they can obviously affect you. Cultivate your being.

94.

The 9 year old has sat down, the tears have run out. What is left is a child sitting by the roadside, resigned to never reaching his destination. (Confession of a boy who got lost aged 9 and was found in the street crying.)

95.

People don’t choose the path of their lives. They will kid themselves that they do, but they don’t. So don’t listen to the (often American) preachers of “positivity” who say you can do anything you want and it’s all up to you. Even an idiot can figure out some of the myriad things in life you do not control. Take me. I do not control even the thoughts in my head, affected as they are by mental illness in the form of anxiety and depression.

96.

One of the things that makes you feel most powerless is realising that you cannot grasp time. You cannot stop the clock. It ticks, and only in one direction. Human finitude is a deeply profound thing.

97.

I think these people should mostly forget me. Oh, they have.

98.

I find this comment exceedingly strange. It’s a rare example of me looking forwards. Something I hardly ever do.

99.

It’s easy to be negative about the human race, very easy. And so we are. Rightly so.

100.

It is a fact that I am much more popular as several fictional Internet characters I play than as the physical being I legally am. What does this mean?