Curtain call.

A friend of mine from a previous life called me out of the blue and started talking about how he'd missed me etc. I thought to myself,'what's going on here?' As it turned out, his best friend had died and it had turned his world upside down in every sense. His friend was young, successful and quite wealthy, I gather, yet was found dead away from friends and family. No warning... It just happened. It seemed this tragic event had forced my friend to re examine his life and reasons for living. I don't mean that he was contemplating suicide, but rather was doing some serious soul searching. He'd probably gotten as far as logic would take him and came to the conclusion that all that really matters in life is that you spend it with people you care about, doing what you'd most like to do, when you would like to do it rather than living in anticipation of the life you'd like to have.
You don't go to the movies to sleep and then wake up at the end to watch the credits, so why do so with your life?
I guess the beauty of life (and perhaps on the flip side, the horror too) is that it is like the theatre. You cannot rewind a scene or an act, just because it did not go according to script, and sometimes you are forced to improvise. You can step on and off stage as and when you like. You may choose to follow the rules strictly, or you may use your own style in which case you either become a star or a failure or worse, never get noticed.. You can be an actor, or a part of the audience and if you like you can even walk out! The funny thing is that regardless of your choice, the show must go on! Might as well be a part of it and enjoy it, because like it or not, every show has a curtain call.

Full of crap and everything else

Now, to you who do not believe. Take a moment to ponder on this.
You never really think about the fact that everything in our body; if put together would make one lethal combination. What do I mean? When you get a touch of food poisoning - what is called gastroenteritis- and you start throwing up and having the runs, does it ever occur to you how amazing it is that at any given moment, we are all walking around with poop in our bodies, yet we do not reek of it? Or the fact that in order for what we take for granted, our health, to exist in good order it is a delicate balance between chemicals and micro organisms, cells, membranes and indeed all that makes us whole. When you get a urinary tract infection, it is often because bacteria from your back passage have contaminated your 'water-works'. Is it not amazing that more people do not have urinary tract infections all that time, considering the proximity of one 'hole' to the next? Considering how many germs we have in our mouths, is it not amazing that our middle ears do not constantly get infected or our sinuses for that matter? Is it not interesting the fact that food goes in one end and faeces through the other end of the same pipe yet, the general movement of things is away from the mouth? Funny how if bacteria from the lower end of your gut enter your mouth you get sick. Such a huge contrast from one end of the pipe to the next! A lot of these things we don't even think about... a bit like the sun which is there; we never think about the possibility of it not rising... Surely, it is not by accident that these things occur in such equilibrium. the fact that our kidneys know what to filter out and what to reabsorb... the various parts of our gut that absorb different things... the fact that the womb and gut share the same space without cross contamination is another miracle... yes... a miracle... miracles are all around us; do not expect to see someone float on air. And speaking of air, is it not amazing that our bodies absorb the right amounts of oxygen or even that the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere is just what we need? chicken or the egg? This brings me onto something else. 
In spite of the point of view of the Darwinian folk, even they say that something caused the beginning of things.. I take the view of creationism... but it incorporates the darwin point of view... one cannot deny the existence of fossils and as a result, the creatures that left them behind. However, one cannot simply leave the wonder of creation into the hands of some chance happening and simple choices of organisms to evolve. In my opinion it makes sense that there is a connectedness from the most basic organism to the most complex if they are all created by/of the same source. I believe the real story of living things lies in a marriage between the darwinian school of thought and creationism. However, regardless of what you choose to believe, one cannot deny the amazing compartmentalization that exists in our bodies!!!

Metamorphosis

When people we think we know become people we hardly recognize, we often talk about how they've 'morphed' into something else. The confusion over what happened to them and at which point sets in, or we blame someone in their lives, or circumstances, or wealth or poverty... The point of my brief entry is to talk about the metamorphosis.
A caterpillar 'morphs' into a butterfly. These two creatures whose physiology, anatomy, means of survival, movement are as chalk and cheese... yet one changes into the other; in this case from 'ugly' to 'beautiful'! If one did not know that these two were so closely related, or in the case of one caterpillar changing into a butterfly, one and the same... actually in the embryological development of a human, at some stage one could not tell just by just looking what the organism is, yet this too becomes a fully formed human (in most cases)... All I'm getting at, is the fact that when we express horror, or pleasant surprise at someone changing into someone we don't recognize we need to realize the fact that there is always a blue print for any potential transformation! Is it that some people are more likely to undergo that kind of drastic metamorphosis than others? Yes, I believe that is the case, however the blue print for that kind of caterpillar- butterfly metamorphosis lies dormant in all of us! We all have it in us to be angels or demons! The fact that we don't is probably the same thing that prevent our fingers from staying fused or being webbed; or kidneys remaining as one etc. Yet, every now and then, some process goes wrong, some enzyme malfunctions and the uterus does not form properly, the 'hole' in the septum of the heart remains patent, the facial bones do not fuse... things do not work out as they are supposed to; forcing us to change if we cannot handle the pressure... even a diamond, as beautiful as it is a metamorphosis of something that was under great pressure for so long that it could no longer resist the change which ultimately occurred.
It is not too far from who we are, when we undergo these unbelievable transformations; It's all about heads or tails, really. to be continued

"where does time go after it passes you by?" (Einstein?)

I found this a really interesting statement. I saw this quote on a picture of the man Einstein sitting on a rock by the sea with girlie sandals on... I was quite tickled because Albert Einstein was quite a hit with the ladies in his day, I'm told! Anyway, I digress.

Time; the experience of it is so subjective, so relative.. Even as we accept that time has specific units of measurements and is more or less standard on our level, it moves faster or slower depending on your circumstances. I wonder if we could say that in the same way as finger prints are unique to the individual, so is time! For instance we could say at 16:50:30, the subjective experience of time for me, a particular event happened and time moved in Gray time, a subset of 'real' time.
You know how when you are having fun, time passes so quickly and when you are not it seems to drag on forever? The second hand on the clock is not necessarily moving slower, but time is moving more slowly.

Anyway, I took my daughter to church on Sunday because she asked me to and it really struck me how things seemed to have stalled and yet moved so far ahead. As I walked into the church building which I had attended a few times before in a previous life, before I had my children it really struck me how the experience of time changed when you entered the realm of parenthood. It felt like I had moved into a completely different lane as far as time was concerned. It actually felt as if I was in the fast lane on the autobahn. no kidding! The strangest thing about this realization is that it took a trip to a place I used to go to in the past, to make me realize how much my life had moved on.... As to which direction specifically my life is headed, well I cannot say for sure, but the one thing I know is that I'm experiencing the passage of time at a relatively faster pace. It seems an oxymoron to state that especially as time is supposed to be the thing that has a standard unit that allows us to measure things against it!!

One of my friends from school (I shall call her A), mentioned to another friend of mine (who I shall call B) how much I'd changed. I don't think she meant it in a very positive sense. B came to my defense, rather emotively proclaiming that this was untrue. I explained to B that she would not be able to appreciate the extent of change because we had both moved into the fast lane. In a manner of speaking this was a case of two trains on parallel tracks moving in the same direction at the same speed, and a third heading in a similar direction moving at a different speed. obviously as far as the two trains moving at the same speed, there is no change in speed... the only way to ascertain their relative motion is to compare their movement to some other 'factor' besides each other!! Having put it that way, my friend,B, got the point! In her usual subjective/judgmental manner, she had forgotten that she was subject to the same 'rules' of change; she had forgotten the fact that maybe, just maybe, she had changed too. So, should we apologize for the fact that we've changed lanes and some of our friends are still in the old lanes, or have moved into different lanes too? Must they judge us because we have exercised our freewill and 'moved on'; evolved or not? We do and they do, although neither is required.

Actually, the recognition of what we see as the passage of time is based on the premise that change occurs. If nothing ever changed, would time cease to exist? It is actually difficult to conceptualize circumstances surrounding time, inexistent. As long as there is change (one form of energy to another, motion from one place to another, life/death etc), there is time. So could we even dare to say that time, in it's own unique way, is ALIVE?

Well, when time passes by, does it leave behind a signature? Does some of it stay behind and is the rest is yet to come? Is there new time and old time, like you have old shoes and new shoes? Does time that's passed by have an old smell like old books in the library? Does it have the 'appearance' of faded ink on ancient manuscripts? Time, is just another component of the equations that we as mortals use to explain events in our rather limited way. Does that make it any more real or otherwise as the air which we breathe or the beating of our hearts? That will just send me on another trip of questions and I might end up on something that has nothing to do with time, so I shall just end it by asking that wonderful thought-provoking question again... Where does time go when it passes (us) by?

stockholm syndrome and the abused wife

Today, my friend admitted to me that her husband used to hit her when they were married. I was not too surprised at the fact that he did... I suppose what took me off guard was the fact that she'd been reticent about it. She is a highly accomplished professional, with a wide range of experiences, great deal of exposure, a fair understanding of situations involving these dynamics... What I'm trying to put across is the fact that she is not just some dumb girl who ended up in an abusive relationship... as a matter of fact, there seems to be an inverse relationship between the extent of the reticence and the status (social/academic) of the woman. The more highly qualified the woman is, the less likely she is to admit to the existence of an abusive relationship, ironically. I suppose in part this is because the woman probably can't believe that she has actually ended up in such a predicament. My friend had fallen into the same trap/spiral as every other abused woman before her (and she won't be the last)! She was feeding his abuse by isolating herself; she kept trying to modify her behaviour to accomodate his all in a bid to avoid getting hit...she lost her self confidence and was always second guessing herself... she would put herself down and lift him up and we never understood why.... we all knew he was a loser, yet she always tried to make him bigger and better than he was. In retrospect, the signs were there. I just never thought that it could happen to her. It is actually heartbreaking that she suffered in silence. She literally suck with it. The only reason she found the strength to move was when she felt her children were in harm's way. To put it in her own words, she only walked away when she was ready to. And unfortunately that is the case with spousal abuse. You cannot achieve very much in terms of breaking the cycle until the person is truly ready to break the cycle and walk away. Well, all I can say is lucky for her, she had children to bail her out. Did it mean she had fallen in love with her abuser as it were? I don't know, but she almost felt guilty for being all she was. It was almost as though she had finally come to the conclusion that if she could only be less of herself, he would cease to be so abusive. The more she did that, the more empowered he became... like a said, a vicious cycle. Anyway, the Stockholm syndrome describes a psychological response of  a hostage to their captor. In brief, it is when the hostage become sympathetic to the captor and this is born out of a form of psychological torture in which the hostage is isolated and threatened with death and then shown little acts of kindness as well. It does not take very long for this to take hold. In my friend's case, I don't think she was threatened with death, but she was certainly pushed far enough. The isolation was borne out of everyone else's dislike for her spouse. She walked away. Will she be able to avoid such a situation again? Will she be able spot the flags from a distance and avoid getting into such a situation? I'd hope so. Me? I'll keep watching this space...

Mother kills her children...evil or delusional compassion

The first time I heard about a mother who had killed her own children and then committed suicide, I was really baffled. How could a mother do such a thing? I believe that her action, as abominable as it was, in her mind was an act of compassion. In her mind, she did not want to abandon her children. She felt that if she could not be there for them, she did not want to risk anyone maltreating them... or having them thrown into foster care. It seems a very unnatural act, but if you can remove any ethical/moral/emotional bias from your judgment, in using cold hard logic (as warped as it may be), you can see how in her own mind (delusional or not) she could do such a thing to her own children. After all, what gives her the right to take away the life of another even if she gave birth to him/her?