A mind to remember by

Here's a test, if you were asked to keep a secret by a family member would you protect it as much as you would if the secret was that of a friend? Or vice versa? Or does it not matter?

Again it might be that your philosophy is that any secret, whether that of a friend or family member, needs to be put out in the open!

There are many of us out there who have the restraining strength of a dental floss and a stomach lining so thin that you could see the acid bubbling inside if we lifted out shirt in sunlight.

In my experience secrets are best forgotten once they have been ingested. Whenever a friend or a family member has told me a 'deep, dark' secret I must admit I have forgotten it almost immediately.

This does not come from my loyalty to my friend than it does to the preservation of the 'attic' in my head. Every piece of non-information is filed in the 'delete' folder.

All stored away for easy retrieval

(When I say non-information, I mean information that I do not intend to use later or such that can be retrieved without having to commit to memory. This is generally information that I can ask someone and get. For example there is no reason to commit to memory telephone numbers these days, since it is on my mobile and stored in a number of other easy to retrieve places; besides in these active times of multi-communication methods, people have multiple numbers and multiple links associated with them – unnecessary overload.)

In my mind (pun, intended?) there may be infinite space for storage but I feel it is unnecessary to store bits of data that I have no use for in the future, as a result the archive in my mind is easier to access since there is less 'clutter,' so to speak.

Not to offend members of my friend and family circles who have been made me a party to their secrets, I would like to just categorically clarify that I have not be relegated their secrets to the 'delete' files, but have been filed away from my immediate memory data bank.

Moreover, secrets are safe with me because I do not feel the need to share them with other people to a) gossip, or b) inflate my self-worth in the eyes of a second person (having decide early enough in my life that I will not look for approval from anyone for my actions or how I choose to live).

Having said that you can't simply 'delete' information from the cranial memory banks. Snippets of information is always left behind that, on practice, can be re-assembled to make up the 'forgotten' incident. In my case I think that the information is not retrieved, mind you, but re-assembled from fragments of other memories and life experiences.

If the memory is that of a hot summer's day – I remember what I was wearing or what I was doing not so much because I remember exactly what happened but on what I would customarily wear or do on hot summer days (unless it was something quiet out of the ordinary, but then it would be filed elsewhere for retrieval).

That the human mind is an amazing tool there is no doubt, I rely completely on my intellectual faculties (despite my best critic's notions of its fallibility) to recall any bit of personal historical trivia. If an incident has occurred with me as the pivotal point, I will be able to pull it out of the abyss. If it happened I will remember, and by the same token if I don't remember it never happened.

(Good way to erase any uncomfortable memories, if you ask me. Not that I have any such memories that need erasing, you understand).

Of course I fall prey to my own Talatism truth and my mind absorbs like a sponge all that I ask it to forget – if only to remember what I don't want it to store.

Square plugs for round holes?!

Either I've been doing a lot more reading than usual or stranger things seem to manifest themselves these days.

A man from China has devised on an almost fool-proof plan to save his precious bicycle from being stolen. He has taken off the front wheels permanently and wheelies himself across town on its rear wheels; in fact he has become so adept at riding in this fashion that he claims a top speed of 32 km/h!

Don't cut it if it works...

The first thing that comes to mind is that getting a unicycle might have had the same deterrent effect – but clearly this man was thinking out of the box AND thinking economically too (assuming he already had the bike in the first place). In my assumption the man had already come to the conclusion that a potential thief might be able to offload a unicycle but never a regular 'bi' cycle with only one wheel.

Obviously this man had been a centre of attraction, and most likely not any of the flattering kind. He has, in all likelihood, been relegated the unenviable status of 'a joke' among his neighbours and worthy of a good laugh by all those he passes on his commute everyday.

But as far as he is concerned... he probably doesn't give a rat's 'petunia' to what other's thought of his scheme. You know what, he may have hit on the key to true happiness when he had decided to do live HIS life on HIS terms; after all he was not inconveniencing anyone or asking anyone else to follow in his direction.

Which got me thinking (such a dangerous pastime!) that while most of us like to believe that we live our lives on our own terms, if we are honest, rarely do we really do so in public. When in public perhaps we succumb more often than not to easy conformity when we might want to do otherwise, lest we suffer disapproval or, worse, ridicule.

I am not of the opinion that people who conform are doing so to escape ridicule, but I think that over years of conforming or under the pressure to conform we may lose some of our latent individuality without knowing any better.

Granted exhibiting individuality by being irresponsible is not the goal, that would be idiocy. However, being something we rather not be can be idiocy too. Going with the flow might seem like a good way to live, but often if going with flow is contrary to our core individuality it can be cause for frustration... which leads to perhaps finding fault with everything and being angry with the world.

You know, sometimes jumping to conclusions is the easiest way to arrive at epiphanies... but seriously, we have but one life to live why not live it on our own terms.

The man in China was not looking out for media attention, he just needed to do what he needed to do. As eccentric as his solution to his problem seems, it does the trick and perhaps there lies the real truth... sometimes the best solution is not just the most obvious one (after all he could have just bought a sturdy lock to the same effect).

The mind is full of possibilities and innovative outlooks, but can be also bogged down with pre-conceived ill perceptions if we let it. Then there is the added unnecessary burden of being concerned with what the neighbours could say.

In my experience, no one really does give a 'rat's petunia' about what I do or how I live my life, save for idle gossip; I am just not that important in their lives, besides each one of them have their own problems and insecurities to contend with.

Funny thing is, they may even be worried about what I might think about them. And I don't.

Given a basic moral backbone and an affinity to do the right thing (most of the time) on reflex, we shouldn't disregard our thoughts completely; after all a square plug could potentially fit in a round hole – granted it might not make an ideal plug but it could very well get the job done.

And if the neighbours do talk, is it so hard to just let them?

KA-BOOM: the Schwarzenegger and melon story

Two interesting but unrelated stories are going around the newspapers – 1) millions (okay, scores) of melons in China are self-detonating thanks to hormone injections (perhaps implants would have been safer), and 2) the self-detonating antics of Arnold Schwarzenegger (who again has also probably had too many hormone injections at some point).

Reports have come in that chinese farmers have been injecting their melons with steroids to make them grow bigger (what IS with this global obsession with size?)... and like just the Governator, things have literally begun to burst at the seams.

Whether it is Schwarzenegger husbands or Watermelon husbandry – good things can quickly turn bad if you are careless.

Reports from Beijing are that over-ripe watermelons are bursting in their fields in eastern China. Xinhua News Agency reported that this farming disaster has occurred across 115 acres of melon farmland in the city of Danyang in the Jiangsu province.

It is suspected that an overdose of the growth chemical forchlorfenuron, coupled with heavy rainfall after a drought in the area has resulted in this unprecedented (and exploding) phenomenon. Healthy watermelon prices in the past year had prompted many farmers in the area to jump into the market. It was learnt that all of those with the exploding fruit were first time users of the growth accelerator.

Here's another piece of useless trivia – apparently use of forchlorfenuron in fruit is safe and can be effective if used properly; it is used in the US on kiwi-fruit and grape. Which in a way provides a fair idea of the size of fruit this chemical can be associated with safely – not one of the fruits mentioned are even near the size of a melon.

A "melon" size omission?

Which ironically brings us to the size of the recent admission of a faux pas by the former California governor, one time box-office action superstar, and Kennedy clan 'can't-be-anymore.' Seriously Arnie, the maid?!

The man really had it all. He was rich; he was famous; and he had political influence. The macho man was once famously quoted as saying that three things had made him successful a) coming to America, b) working his butt off, and c) marrying a Kennedy. Now he can really only count on only two.

Both stories, while completed unrelated, share the same moral – don't put things where they don't belong. Whether it is injecting hormones that don't belong in the seed or injecting seeds that don't belong in the hormone, it can all prove hazardous in the end.

Farmers in China and former governors in California have quite the weekend ahead to think about what they have done. Recovering from their mistakes might not be that easy to get over.

In a way the two stories enlist upon a Talatism truth – there is never any improving on 'what is' if it also means cheating a little.

Loving to death is a hard choice to make

Something that caught my eye yesterday was new report about a 70-year old pensioner who was facing charges of killing his wife of 40 years, four days before Christmas.

I am sure many people have thought about 'doing away' with the spouses at one time or the other – in fact had all those who thought about it actually carried out their desires, there would probably be literally NO married couples celebrating their 4th anniversary.

If looks could kill...

Photo by Jacques Naude; Image from Mercury website

But I digress, as a rule most people who die in the hands of their partners probably do so in a fit of rage. Our man admitted in court that even though he was sad and despondent he was fully aware of what he was doing and could have stopped himself. A crime of passion this clearly was not.

The motivation of the pensioner was that of unmitigated devotion and utter helplessness at his inability to take care of his chronically ill wife, who had been bedridden for the better part of 14 years.

As things were, his wife had taken both chronically mentally and physically ill in 1994 and then in 1996 the man had taken early retirement from his job as the chief provincial traffic inspector to care for her full time.

Following is an excerpt from the Mercury newspaper that carried the story, on the fateful day that he took his wife's life:

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“On December 21, 2008, he gave her breakfast in bed as usual, and then helped her up. She fell down and he could not get her to the chair in the lounge.

“Realising that she could not walk at all and that he was too weak to even drag her, he called for an ambulance.

“Several calls later - including calls to his adult children - when the ambulance had not arrived, he got out his gun and shot her.”

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The man's police officer son testified that his father was fully dedicated to his mother but that he was under deep financial strains due to the high medical expenses associated with the treatment of pre-senile dementia. The financial strain was compounded further when his father lost his car and everything of value in a violent house robbery in 2000.

The courts sentenced the man to six years of imprisonment, suspended for five years, for the murder of his wife... and then set him free as a “victim of extreme circumstances,” stating that “imprisonment is not called for and would totally destroy the accused” because it was very unlikely that he would commit another crime.

Barely a day goes by the man admits that he is not shaken with remorse at what he had done. The day before his sentence was passed he was quoted in the Mercury that “this court cannot punish him anymore than he has punished himself. He has to live with what he did.”

It truly is a fine line between love and death. Circumstances as they were, perhaps the man's actions were justifiable but it could never have been easy.

Thankfully the majority of us will never have to be put to the test.

It's a useless mechanical existence sometimes...

I found this video clip on youtube that serves as a metaphor for some of my life experiences.

It's version two of the world's most useless machine. This version works to be one better (or worse) than the previous version, because not only does it do the incredibly inane by simply switching itself off every time you switch it on, but, do it too many times, it demonstrates its outrage and runs amok.

It reminds me of many people I have seen who hold the most ridiculous of jobs, surrounding themselves with all pomposity and self-importance, only to lose all that aura of decorum and superiority when their role is questioned once too often.

Reminds me of some of my school teachers... and certain political leaders. Click if you want a laugh!

It's never too late to touch dreams

It IS never too late to fulfil your dreams.

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A California couple made news last March for marrying after dating exclusively for 30 years. It might be strange in California to date exclusively for such long periods, but that is not why their union made the news. What was newsworthy was the the groom is 100 and the bride a fair 90.

It's an interesting story really. The couple met at a senior centre dance in the 1980s and “danced the night away and became an exclusive couple almost immediately.”

Both the bride and groom were married before and lost their respective spouses to death. The bride confessed that she had no intention of re-marrying, and her mind had not changed when she received the proposal.

Sweet woman that she was, she let him down lightly promising to marry him on his 100th birthday. Who'd have thought?

She remembered her promise as his 100th birthday approached. The site director of the Age Well Senior Centre in Dana Point, California spent almost an entire year organising the mid-March nuptials.

She even took his name.

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We all have unfulfilled dreams in our lives. Stories such as the one above should remind us that if some of our dreams are truly worth having, there probably is no real barrier to achieving them other than our own commitment to it.

Whether it's learning to play a musical instrument, getting on with a gym routine or even writing a book – if it's really that important to us we WILL have to find a way.

Personally I've had many 'could have' 'should have' moments that I look back at now and ponder how those lost opportunities could have altered my life. Honestly not all the lost opportunities might have made my life any better; granted it might have been very different but how can one assume it would be better – when 'better' is a relative concept.

Life is not worth living with regrets and pondering on 'could have's and 'should have's. We must either make a consolidated effort to do something towards attaining a dream, or resign that some dreams are simply not worth regrets over.

A Talatism would be that dreams are only depressants unless you work to meet them – so meet them so simply bid them farewell. Final equation is letting go – either of inhibitions or of regrets.

After all life is all too short to nurture regrets that we'll do nothing to address.

One step at a time to complete the journey

There is a Confucius saying that “the journey of a 1000 miles starts with the first step.” I think it was Confucius. Either way it was by anyhow someone who had a deep understanding of the fundamentals of the 'big picture' and a master in the art of dissecting the biggest of problems.

I have seen people so overwhelmed by the task at hand that they simply can't find the motivation to start. The latent fear that they might not have the energy to finish is so overpowering that it saps up the very belief that the job can be done at all.

A lot of people expend valuable energy (to say nothing of time) analysing the extent of the friction before they even begin to push. Problem is, that more often than not, the job at hand never really goes away. To to make matters worse, if we put a task off long enough we may find, much to our chagrin, that it has a tendency to grow in direct proportion to our diminishing energy reserves at the prospect. Often times a project fails to reach a successful conclusion not because the job cannot be done but simply because of failure to start.

In my experience, any such exercise is actually much like pushing a wheel on the slightest incline. While a lot of energy is initially required to overcome the friction between the wheel and the surface it is on, however, once the initial resistance is broken the wheel begins to take on a life and a momentum of its own and simply rolls to the next logical resting place.

Take any task piecemeal and it solves itself. Basically there are four logical resting places for any formidable job, and motivation required (phase 1 requires the highest level and then its relatively easier) only to get the ball rolling to the next immediate point: 1) the start, 2) the momentum build up, 3) the conclusion, and 4) the completion. Once sufficient momentum is built up by phase 2, any project almost concludes and completes itself, save for various incidental course corrections.

The trick is to look at each step as an end in itself; then each successful conclusion of a step can be treated as a subsequent foothold towards the final destination.

Even though what I have described seems elementary, I am always surprised how many people succumb to missing the forest for the tress. Progress measured against time is the motor – the trick is to pace the two for best affect.

Too much progress against too little time and the project might roll away from us and the point altogether missed, but too little progress against too much time and the project becomes a chore and the point never gotten. In either of the cases little is ever learnt and nothing is ever really accomplished.

'Speed' is important to keep the motivation high, but 'time' is important to ensure a good job, but most important of all, a 'start' is essential to get the job done.

A lot can be taken out of the statement above or the statement by Confucius, if one really looks into it and just reads the words for the simple proposition they make – the most obvious of which is that only way to see the end of a task is to start first.

Waiting for patience is hard to do

Patience is a virtue they say, especially in an age when the virtue is becoming more and more a rarity. Most people would be more than happy to demonstrate some patience if they just did not have to wait.

In an world with instant coffee, instant milk, instant entertainment (in the form of television), etc we have become accustomed to instant light (and by the same measure, perhaps even expect instant enlightenment) at a flick of a switch.

Anything worth having must first be earned. This is no epiphany, but a tired truth that is very difficult to swallow at times. Frankly working for something seems like such a bore and an inconsideration when the world is changing so fast.

Yet, sometimes the truth is hard as a brick wall or insurmountable as a mountain – but then, brick walls have been broken through and mountains have been cut down to size. However, the ingredients to overcome these obstacles have always been 'talent' coupled with, wait for it... time.

I once read that the person who opens his mouth before his turn is forever reminded of the value of keeping silent. Ditto for people who want to acquire possessions before its time – get the wife, kids, house, car, big screen TV (even if not necessarily in that order) before its due time and there are suddenly mortgages and loans to pay. Pretty soon you're not living the life you can afford and you're competing with the neighbours against the prime interest rate.

Growing up I never felt is necessary to keep up with the people around me when it came to possessions – I would like to believe that I lived my life according to my own rules of engagement. I figured out early enough that fewer possessions meant lesser hassles and that one should never allow 'possessions' to define oneself.

That simple rule has a lot to say about how I have been able to preserve my sanity.

Whether or not I had a BMX bike for example (the craze during my formative years) did not define my sense of 'cool.'It just wasn't important enough. Besides it came to pass that more people would want to borrow my friend's BMXs to ride than my non-entity of a two-wheeler, so that was a good thing too.

This truth translates well to even things later in life, be it wives, cars or houses - the too pretty ones are never worth the upkeep or the headache. Particularly in these times of instant gratification when so many people don't want to work to earn the rewards but just want to possess it in the false vanity that those possessions will define who they are.

Which in my estimation simply means living for the approval and the admiration of other people, i.e. subjecting my life choices (and the heartaches I endure as a result) to the materialistic fancies of people who don't really matter.

For example, I am certain that none of my friends are my friends because I happen to own a Ferrari. I am doubly certain of this fact because I DON'T own (nor ever owned) a Ferrari, and they are still around. Most certainly my neighbours would admire me more had I a Ferrari in the driveway – but the question then is, why do I need his admiration to validate myself?

Really why does anyone need people they don't know to validate them and make them feel good?

I believe with a passion that all good things come to those who wait – and in my life I have diligently waited (rather impatiently at times, I'm sure) and delightfully discovered that if I maintain to do my part of the work all the things I ever wanted do, in fact, materialise on its own. The key is not just patience but also a good attitude while waiting.

Bottomline - while people probably wouldn't really mind having the patience, it's really the waiting for the rewards that's such a bother.