Who I Are

Identity is an immensely powerful driver. Sometimes it's an overt force, sometimes it's subliminal, often it's both. Everyone and every thing has an innate sense of who and what it is, and what its purpose is. What must I do? Who should I be? What is behind all this? If we don't know these answers, even when they're not posed consciously, we're driven to find out. The entire Body Of Religion is based entirely around resolving this mystery. But is it really so mysterious?

Clarity is especially clear in Nature, where different animals are driven by curiosity, even if that means making them vulnerable to predators/pain. Porcupines have this effect on lions. The fact that it is such a curiosity almost counts more against the poor creature than its bristly countermeasures. Various creatures - plants and animals - use curiosity to lure other creatures into their clutches. So it is interesting that this powerful sense of 'who I am' and 'what are you' is about as powerful as the survival instinct. Why shouldn't it be. Instead of just living we can FLOURISH if we discover some of the hidden subtlties going on around us. The tree of life that we're a part of grows vigorously in different direction, and as Life moves into space, curiosity pulls it into the bright light of Living and Flourishing.

Human Beings suffer from a chronic sense of Lost Identity. Who are we? What are we supposed to do? The lazy, easy route is finding God, and giving 'God' the answer to all these questions. In fact this question - what is the meaning of life? - is far more complex than just, 'God's will for me'. It's an answer, but very unspecific. And to be realistic, it pretends to satisfy the original question, but really, it doesn't. It is still a private spiritual matter between you and the universe to find how you're supposed to fulfill a personal and collective destiny (yours and the universes).

You, as a human being, must find your answer to that. It may mean being a gift - a giver - to your community. It might mean being a discover, an artist or an explorer. It might mean following your passion, however idiosyncratic. It might mean working your way to an answer, going on a journey. It may mean finding out what it is to be a father or a mother.

This is why we are all so fascinated with celebrity: we’re trying to find answers to the question who are we? We are our choices, and the choices of others.

The ‘Whose-your-daddy’ Girls

The heartache behind women looking for father figures

A lot of girls find older guys attractive. Yvonne Scott says so, but movie zeitgeist - of late at least - seems to support this view.

The Wackness and Meeting Venus are contemporary examples of this phenomenon. But while Ms Scott is advocating guys up to the age of 25 as ‘suitable’ dates for high school (teenage) girls, these movies go to the extreme.

Eew!

The Wackness is about a dagga smoking therapist who becomes smitten with a teenage patient (played by Ben Kingsley and Kate Ohlson respectively). Although the kissing scene lasts a few seconds, no one knows yet why or how the teenager ends up kissing a man 3 times her age. But apparently they never see each other again (in the movie), and the kiss serves as a catalyst for the grandfather (I'll bet) propelling him towards some sort of happily ever after.

Girls From Venus

In Meeting Venus we see a similar theme: a very old man becoming obsessed, even falling in love with a young woman more than half a century younger.

For me Meeting Venus was an important lesson, even a reality check. After all, everyone will get old and lose their attractiveness, but is anyone ever too old to be attracted to youth and beauty? This to me is the central theme behind the whole parody of young girls hanging out with much older men. It’s not necessarily a theme unique to the male sex either.


Eina

Obsessions with youth are part of the archetypal story of how we go into the good night; how we face death. Some might argue that we don’t need to die before we breathe our last breath. Others will say: Accept the inevitable eina, and move on.




Middle Ground

Moving away from ‘extreme age differences’, it’s interesting to look at this closer to home; from a more Southern African perspective. The Mswati Reed Dance in Swaziland is a useful example.
Virgins younger than 22 years of age dance topless, and while it originally wasn't ostensibly a ceremony for the king (the ceremony was conceived for the Queen Mother), the king attends and uses the venue to choose a wife. Sometimes he takes a few extra days to make up his mind (and who can blame him for that?)
In 1999 the then 33 year old king picked a 17 year old schoolgirl to be his eighth lawfully wedded wife. This year the 39 year old king – who makes Hugh Hefner look like a Georgian Monk by comparison – had around 100 000 young maidens dancing for his pleasure.


Making Eyes?

A British newspaper, the Telegraph, pointed out in its article ‘Swaziland King has eyes for 14th wife’ that “many of them [were] hoping to catch his eye.”

Yvonne Scott mentioned exactly what the attraction was in these circumstances.
"[Older men] are mature, over the trying-hard-to-impress-age; they have cars, and are allowed to grow their hair to a hot length."
She adds:
“Of course another very appealing aspect of dating an older guy is the prestige that goes with it.”


What is more prestigious than being chosen by a king? It must be something like a beauty contest for all these girls, with the rewards being crowned princess, and the title becomes a lifelong commitment.

Drawing The Line

Of course Scott astutely placed a cap for herself and her peers on how old the older man ought to be. She said 25 years for high school girls; Mswati is 39. I wonder what the proportion of the 100 000 under-22 maidens have mixed feelings about Mswati’s age. A poll would be interesting.

Sugar Daddy

While it is perfectly normal for teenage girls to prefer older boys, there is a dark side to the more extreme Sugar Daddy Syndrome. It has its roots in childhood, and is based on a desperate yearning of a young girl for a father figure.

Perhaps the father figure was entirely or partially absent, or perhaps the child was adored as the ‘apple of her father’s eye’. Then divorce or death caused a permanent separation, bringing the warm cocoon of safety and attention in the young girl's life to an abrupt end.
Girls seeking partners or husbands who are able to provide this ‘Daddy Safety’ do so without knowing it. Can absent fathers ever be replaced?

Impossible Task

It is easy for men to wrongly assume that their partner’s strong desire for personal security is a normal one, or that the extreme and insatiable fantasy of being ‘Daddy’s Little Princess’ again is a conventional one.

Men who lavish their girlfriends with gifts, taking them out constantly to restaurants and on luxurious weekend trips may unwittingly find themselves eventually adding the role of father to being a husband or boyfriend. This is often more responsibility and pressure than a man can bear.

Unhealthy


I’ve seen this scenario unfold, and it ends very unhappily ever after. A friend of mine who idolized his wife and lavished her with caring attention finally got divorced. His beautiful wife is now engaged to an almost 60-year old man (about twice her age). In retrospect my friend – who is my age – must realize that he had an impossible task in store for him when he got married. Did his wife even know she was looking for a husband who could heal and answer her painful need for a gentle and doting father-figure?
Martian Perspective


From the male perspective, there is always the incredible power and beauty of youth. With so much pedophilia doing the rounds, it is not appropriate or politically correct for older men to openly admit that they find teenage girls or twenty somethings attractive. But women at this stage are at their most attractive.
The power and beauty of youth has a bitter edge to it though. It is said that ‘youth’ is wasted on the young. At a certain age people may find themselves ‘over the hill’, and may wish they had enjoyed their lives more and hesitated less.

In Meeting Venus we see this heartbreaking reality poignantly represented when the old man waits desperately on the pier to meet his young friend. He waits even long after it is obvious that she is not going to arrive.

The beauty of youth abandons us all in the end. When we see beauty enfolding in others around us, we watch with awe and some sadness. Their time, and not ours, has come. Put the past away, and let them have their turn.

The Long Weekend Send Off (Video)

Humor-funny Compilation - Click here for more home videos
Put yourself in the right frame of mind before you leave for the long weekend. This is upbeat, fun and funny. Enjoy your extra time off. I know I will. ;-)

Livin' la Vida Loca*

*translates as "living the crazy life" in English.
NVDL: Beautiful buildings - architecturally speaking - are about as difficult to spot in urban centres as supermodels in the mall. Sure, there are a few candy stripes that tickle, but most structures out there have been designed under pain of death by lifeterm prisoners. Haven't they? And have these same PRISONERS returned the favour by designing jails for us, and burial chambers for our chariots?

It's easy to recognise a well designed building. It represents a combination of subtlety and elegance, and the result isn't a tickle, but a thrill. You feel excited. Often the walls are nuanced with layers of ivy. Lush forest and lawns wrap their way in and in between the building, creating a connectivity between inside and outside. If the architect is particularly charismatic, he will have designed an openness, a spartan simplicity which also allows people to connect. He designs space, he gives you cosy corners and sunken, intimate chambers sunk into the floors.

Connecting

Beyond the internal and features of a single abode is the incredibly challenging question of how to build homes into a village system; yes how to connect home to the community and vice versa. Lounges should be free of multimedia. Libraries or entertainment rooms (soundproofed) should separate the zombies from the rest of humanity. Streams should be encouraged through gardens if possible. Houses should help forests to take root. And the entire setting should be walkable. It's possible to bring about if we only take the time to imagine, to conceive, to try.

Example

This may be a self-indulgent example, but here it is anyway. My father built the second ever townhouse complex in a city, and chose to differentiate each complex, and took time and effort to allow old tall trees to flourish on the property. The road snakes luxuriously through the foilable instead of making a beeline to one cardboard cutout front door after another. Today it remains one of the most sought after townhouse complexes in the city? Why? Because it resembles more a garden - with various houses scattered about in it - than a neat piles of bricks for human beings to fit their lives into.

Yet there is very little effort to develop like this. Eyesores outnumber pleasant and beautiful places to live. To see just how hideous and crazy architecture can be, click here. New Urbanism addresses this cancer of human idealism. Click here to find out about New Urbanism.

From nytimes.com:
Location, Location, Location: A Key to Good Health, Too


ROLL out of bed and swallow your customized vitamins, then decide: the gym, the Olympic-size pool or the track?

Workout left you sore? The personal trainer can stop by later with the massage therapist, and the nutritionist can help fine-tune your diet.

What’s that suspicious mole on your arm? Walk to the clinic and have the dermatologist take a look. Don’t worry about cooking dinner; the healthy food service will drop off broiled salmon.

That, anyway, is the vision of Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper, the cardiovascular fitness expert whose 1968 best seller, “Aerobics,” put the word into the wellness lexicon.

Over the course of almost 40 years, Dr. Cooper, 76, one of President Bush’s personal physicians, has become something of a chief spokesman for preventive medicine, inspiring legislation for mandatory physical education for Texas schoolchildren, crusading to ban trans fats from prepared foods, and running his flagship clinic in Dallas, the Cooper Aerobics Center, which has published 600 papers.

So you could say he made his bed. Now he wants you to sleep in it.

To that end, Dr. Cooper is developing a $2 billion residential wellness community here called Cooper Life at Craig Ranch that is going up on the first 51 of an eventual 151 acres on the Texas plains, north of Dallas.

Taking the concept of spa real estate into the medical realm, Dr. Cooper’s community promises home buyers a life that sounds equal parts Norman Rockwell and Olympic village: a small town where doctors will make house calls and where every resident has a bevy of experts close at hand for keeping in tiptop shape.

It appears to be the first of its kind. “There’s nothing out there like Cooper Life,” said Susie Ellis, president of Spa Finder Inc., a media marketing company that tracks the spa industry.

The Porn Myth

NVDL: Someone once said to me: "Life is a porn movie." Porn is about the feel-good-factor, it's the most INSTANT of instant gratifications out there, Porn is seeing-is-beliving (even though we should know it's a con), and at heart (although it really doesn't have one), porn is mean and shallow and dumb. The article below is thankfully written by a woman, and is incredibly astute. You've been warned.

In the end, porn doesn’t whet men’s appetites—it turns them off the real thing.
By Naomi Wolf

At a benefit the other night, I saw Andrea Dworkin, the anti-porn activist most famous in the eighties for her conviction that opening the floodgates of pornography would lead men to see real women in sexually debased ways. If we did not limit pornography, she argued—before Internet technology made that prospect a technical impossibility—most men would come to objectify women as they objectified porn stars, and treat them accordingly. In a kind of domino theory, she predicted, rape and other kinds of sexual mayhem would surely follow.

The feminist warrior looked gentle and almost frail. The world she had, Cassandra-like, warned us about so passionately was truly here: Porn is, as David Amsden says, the “wallpaper” of our lives now. So was she right or wrong?

More on this topic:

Not Tonight, Honey. I'm Logging On.: Internet porn is everywhere; even "nice" guys are hooked. So where does that leave their girlfriends? By David Amsden (October 20, 2003)
The New Position on Casual Sex: The rise of Internet dating has brought a sexual openness (not to mention one-night stands) to the younger generation not seen since the seventies heyday of Maxwell's Plum. But can there be too much of a good thing? By Vanessa Grigoriadis (January 13, 2003)

She was right about the warning, wrong about the outcome. As she foretold, pornography did breach the dike that separated a marginal, adult, private pursuit from the mainstream public arena. The whole world, post-Internet, did become pornographized. Young men and women are indeed being taught what sex is, how it looks, what its etiquette and expectations are, by pornographic training—and this is having a huge effect on how they interact.
But the effect is not making men into raving beasts. On the contrary: The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as “porn-worthy.” Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention.

Here is what young women tell me on college campuses when the subject comes up: They can’t compete, and they know it. For how can a real woman—with pores and her own breasts and even sexual needs of her own (let alone with speech that goes beyond “More, more, you big stud!”)—possibly compete with a cybervision of perfection, downloadable and extinguishable at will, who comes, so to speak, utterly submissive and tailored to the consumer’s least specification?

For most of human history, erotic images have been reflections of, or celebrations of, or substitutes for, real naked women. For the first time in human history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked women are just bad porn.

For two decades, I have watched young women experience the continual “mission creep” of how pornography—and now Internet pornography—has lowered their sense of their own sexual value and their actual sexual value. When I came of age in the seventies, it was still pretty cool to be able to offer a young man the actual presence of a naked, willing young woman. There were more young men who wanted to be with naked women than there were naked women on the market.

No Show

If there was nothing actively alarming about you, you could get a pretty enthusiastic response by just showing up. Your boyfriend may have seen Playboy, but hey, you could move, you were warm, you were real. Thirty years ago, simple lovemaking was considered erotic in the pornography that entered mainstream consciousness: When Behind the Green Door first opened, clumsy, earnest, missionary-position intercourse was still considered to be a huge turn-on.

Well, I am 40, and mine is the last female generation to experience that sense of sexual confidence and security in what we had to offer. Our younger sisters had to compete with video porn in the eighties and nineties, when intercourse was not hot enough. Now you have to offer—or flirtatiously suggest—the lesbian scene, the ejaculate-in-the-face scene.

What's Enough?

Being naked is not enough; you have to be buff, be tan with no tan lines, have the surgically hoisted breasts and the Brazilian bikini wax—just like porn stars. (In my gym, the 40-year-old women have adult pubic hair; the twentysomethings have all been trimmed and styled.) Pornography is addictive; the baseline gets ratcheted up. By the new millennium, a vagina—which, by the way, used to have a pretty high “exchange value,” as Marxist economists would say—wasn’t enough; it barely registered on the thrill scale. All mainstream porn—and certainly the Internet—made routine use of all available female orifices.

For page 2 visit nymag.com

Oh Carolina!

Dingy Beauty Queen - Click here for more home videos

"Recent polls say a third of Americans can't locate America on a world map. Why do you think this is?"

Errr...Do you remember what the question was?

Cycling: Best Training & Racing Mantras

You snooze you lose

Each morning you lie in you miss out on life my man. It's another day of laziness and underachieving. You think it's worth it? And when race day comes, another mediocre performance. So when that alarm goes off, don't think, don't negotiate, JUST GET UP AND GO. Once you're on the road you'll be happy to be where you are.

Real life after all is about the wind moving over your skin, being in the company of other guys (on or off their bikes), moving through the world, watching the sun come up. What we do at work tends to be hamster-on-a-treadmill stuff. So make sure you get the all important real life fixes - like face to face conversation and exercise.

If you go, we go

While it doesn't take a drammatic 'BACKDRAFT' moment to make this sort of commitment, this is a useful mantra to get yourself training. But in the end you shouldn't be out there just to keep your mates happy. The locus should be an internal sense of: I want this because it's good for me. It is.

Now once you're strong and racing (from all those early morning commitments) and you're in a bunch with someone who is doing random breaks, pull up alongside and issue this stern warning:

If you go, we go.

You can also use it with teammates. Just make sure when you use it you'll be able to follow through.

With preparation comes confidence

Enough said.

Drunk Ambassador

Drunk Ambassador - Click here for more free videos

Creatures that swarm

and multiply...

Madeleine DNA 'Match' To Parents' Car

From Sky.com
Updated: 08:52, Tuesday September 11, 2007

Files containing "damning" evidence against the parents of Madeleine McCann will be given to the public prosecutor later, according to Sky sources.

The sources say that scientists have found a full DNA match to Madeleine in the boot of a car hired by Kate and Gerry McCann after their daughter went missing.

Mr and Mrs McCann are at home in Rothley, Leicestershire, after police named them as suspects in their daughter's disappearance on May 3 in the Algarve.

"Police say it is the most damning evidence that has been returned by the tests," Sky's Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt said.

Calling The Bluff*

I've decided to call a few bluffs. Let's face it, I am still in contact, almost daily, with someone special since coming to Johannesburg. I've only been here a month so I am not sure where to from here (emotionally, relationshipwise etc). And I really haven't had time to think or know what I feel about that.

Does that mean I don't want to meet new people? No. Does it mean I want to be in another relationship ASAP? No. After the MM disaster, I've given this subject a wee bit of thought and come up with the following doctrine:

Most youngish women are just like Leslie, too terrified to say 'No' or find themselves in a position of being FORCED to say 'No'. They tend to want to avoid any kind of communication or build up of communication (since they have already decided/prejudged the situation and reckoned at the end of the day the answer will be: 'No'.) and so they don't want to feel that they have to (continue to) pretend to (be nice and) like you when really, they're pretty sure they don't.

So maybe you're a guy like me and you're looking for some company now and then (since your buddy is married and sometimes obligated to do all the chores that go along with that) and now that you're in the new city some new companions might be a nice change: preferably female but not necessarily (going with a guy to a movie though is so gay, ditto restaurants etc), to have someone to take to coffee, or lunch, or visit the mall, or watch a movie - I suppose to share in those ordinary day to day things that people do ...

- Like this weekend, visit the Soweto Wine Festival - except by the simple act of speaking to a person that is female you have GASP declared a possible interest (which might lead to a question whose answer might be: NO!)...

Now while in my mind I'd be thinking: gee, all these great opportunities going by when one could be going out and having fun with another person, except the female of the species is thinking: Oh my God, I can't believe that guy I hardly know spoke to me. He called yesterday. If he calls me again today I am going to freak out. Thus you prove yourself to be a real, quality, genuine guy by making sure you NEVER communicate sooner, rather later, and preferably NEVER.

And then girls complain: why didn't he call? Because when we do, and they're confused by the interest in them, it's labelled: freaky or eerie. Who wants that?

Of course it's all upside down when they meet someone they really like and then feel: I hope he calls. Huh? Why should he? How is a guy supposed to differentiate between pretend 'nice' and real 'nice'? Through an incredibly developed sense of smell perhaps?

So in my case, I called...what's her name...Charlene...who was very friendly etc etc and to her credit, made good on her promise to invite me somewhere. Unfortunately it was fairly last minute and I didn't know where the club was and I was tired so I made my excuses. When I called to politely ask how the evening was - how it was in my absence - this was interpreted (I imagine) as violating the unwritten code of "Never Communicate with a women who is scared-because-she-doesn't-know-you." I'm not really sure because the single call (I left a message) and then follow up sms (just one) received no response. After the required week and a half of zero communication, she emailed me on a Friday to say that her and her friend wanted to get together for drinks.

I called her bluff, and simply said: "That would be nice," without suggesting any arrangements. I especially didn't mention doing anything over the weekend (as would have been reasonable to do, having been contacted on Friday). Now another week or so can slip by as I reinforce my status as: too busy to think about you much, thus a balanced male individual.

The same 'Bluff' setup has arisen with the Standard Bank girl I met in Sandton City on Saturday. She gave me her business card after a fairly random though apparently serenditpitous meeting (see that movie?) I emailed her on Monday to basically say: "Hi." Despite her rooftop friendliness, she is definitely in the zone of: Oh my God, that guy I spoke to has emailed me now. What now???????

Calling the Bluff is basically recognising girls and women for the way they are: irrational. They spend a lot of time dressing and making themselves up to attract attention, and yet once they've succeeded, they become paralysed. On first meeting/encountering they'll be friendly but just too insecure (too much like pushovers) to say no when you ask for their number, or suggest doing something. When it comes down to it, the bluff is exposed. What to do then? Bluff back.

Ignore their communications after the fews weeks of 'Safety Time' has passed since your last communication to them (which suggests you do have a life and other interests besides obsessing about them). Of course, chances are, by the time they find the balls to say, "Oh, with regards to your email: hi." You will have moved on.

Keep moving guys, and never look back. If a girl has confidence - and there aren't many who do - this charade, this pretence, this exercise in futility won't be necessary. And when you hear her say: "Why didn't you call?" just laugh. and turn up the rugby.

*bluff :

(blf)
v. bluffed, bluff·ing, bluffs
v.tr.
1. To mislead or deceive.
2. To impress, deter, or intimidate by a false display of confidence.
3. Games To try to mislead (opponents) in a card game by heavy betting on a poor hand or by little or no betting on a good one.
v.intr.
To engage in a false display of strength or confidence.
n.
1. The act or practice of bluffing.
2. One that bluffs.

Remember Who You Are

Everyone should set aside time for taking a trip down memory lane

We live in a fast paced world where we are told there isn’t time enough remain in the same place treading water; it is a race and we must run as fast as we can lest we be overtaken, and left behind. Everything is fast compared to what it was in the past. Food, travel, relationships, shopping, sports, business and communication – it’s all on the go, consumed at pace. And now, even today’s children grow up faster than ever before.

What happens to yesterday’s children today? During the blur that is our lives, what do we remember, what can we hold onto? In a world where it’s normal to go running on a treadmill, or cycling (spinning) in a classroom filled with stationery bicycles, where we rush to work and find ourselves stuck in traffic, where we have only a few days spare for a precious annual holiday, in such a world, do we not wake up sometimes with an inkling that something valuable has been left behind? That perhaps we are forgetting something?

One of the sad consequences of modern lifestyles is the collapse of the Nuclear Family. It appears that the modern era is designed for the individual, and many of the conveniences run counter to the societal unit that the family once was. Current lifestyles encourage appetite above the discipline and inner vitality that comes from family relationships. Our encounters with one another become increasingly virtual, so that even when we are in vital face to face encounters with other human beings, it’s no longer real. In fact, if you spend enough time facing a LCD screen, it becomes harder to focus on the finer details in the real world, and you notice it when the blank balloon in front of you turns out to be a persons face, and their eyes are focusing on you, and realizing you are not with them in the moment, but somehow, disconnected.

It seems to be that in our rabid consumption, we are caught up in the habit of collecting things, not celebrating what we have. We may daydream about the past, but we are discouraged from going there, as though it were a dungeon filled with monsters and slimy crevasses. In the same way that one can take an afternoon off and go through one’s entire music collection, for once really enjoy music collected over the years, each person should be encouraged to go through a process of remembering who you are.

Blogs that are updated regularly with personal details and photographs can provide pinpoint projections, for example ‘a year from today’. Probably though, even the best bloggers can’t look more than 5 years back in time. Diaries are also useful, if you’ve ever bothered to keep them. Photo albums, not necessarily your own, those kept by your parents or a diligent sibling, can awaken you to a context you had forgotten. Because our realities are set in the moment, everything from food to movies to the delivery of what we want is increasingly set in the Right Now.

The most valuable tool for a journey back in time is home video. In most cases the family movies are shot on analog systems that are completely obsolete for today’s use. But it is possible to convert analog to digital. One unsophisticated method is to project or screen the footage using appropriate equipment (camera shops can be contacted for those rare individuals who have this outdated equipment), and then recording the footage using specially setup digital cameras (thus digitizing the material). And from there it can be imported onto a computer and burned onto a DVD.

It is an incredible experience seeing one’s parents for example, talking, waterskiing perhaps, swimming, walking on a beach, full of vitality in a time before you were a twinkle in their eyes. It is amazing to see one’s parents at a stage when they were younger than their children watching them. The power and beauty is astonishing, and one’s cynicism quickly dissipates when seeing oneself as a helpless infant, being held by one’s parents.

The importance of this exposure is to remind oneself not only where we come from, but who we are. We were born and raised into this world, and loved by young people who can become strangers to us, even if they were charmed and delighted by our arrival into the world, a world that is complex and not easily understood. Even if we may struggle to understand the underlying mysticism of the universe, and our world in particular, we are always free to investigate the simple path those close to us took. The chances are, most of us have forgotten most of what happened not so long ago. Remembering rekindles in us a common humanity, and more than that, our connections to one another, which is perhaps our most valuable gift to give, to have and to share during the length of our lifetimes.

How To Be Unhappy

Make little things bother you. Don't just let them, MAKE them.

Lose your perspective on things and keep it lost:don't put first things first.

Get yourself a good worry, one about which youcannot do anything.

Be a perfectionist, which means not that you work hard to do your best, but that you condemn yourself and others for not achieving perfection.

Be right. Be always right. Be the only one who is always right, and be rigid in your rightness.

Don't trust or believe people, or accept them at anything but their worst and weakest.

Be suspicious. Insist that others always have hidden motives.

Always compare yourself unfavorably to others. This guarantees instant misery.

Take personally everything that happens to you.

Don't give yourself whole-heartily to anyone or anything.

Above image courtesy topleftpixel.com

Where were you when Diana died?

And does it really matter?

On a Sunday morning in 1997, I was in Eton. It was still early in the morning when we triathletes were all called together, shortly before the start of a short course race. The event organizer, describing the course, asked us to be careful, and not quite matter of factly, added that Diana had been killed only hours ago in a car accident in Paris. It seemed incongruous news for the setting, or an incongruous setting for the news. I remember going back to Maidenhead after the race, hungry for news, and somehow, for company, and comfort.

That whole day we watched television, and all the major channels were dedicated to Diana. I remember feeling very resistant to the news, just as everyone else did. It wasn’t denial, but it wasn’t acceptance either. It just didn’t seem right, or feel right. How was this possible? Diana, who had been just like one of us (or that’s how I felt), got married to a prince, something I remember watching in the library of my school in central South Africa, with classmates and teachers watching the screen, for as long as the ceremony lasted.

Back in England, in Maidenhead Berkshire (which is very close to Eton) I remember watching on TV, when Diana’s coffin emerged on the tarmac of some airstrip, the announcer described awkwardly what was happening. “Her coffin is being carried over the airstrip. They’re moving it slowly forward. They’re still moving the coffin, and from here it will be loaded and taken to…”
And yet, many of us were huddled in a lounge, watching on television: the airplane lands, and a coffin is carried slowly towards a waiting vehicle.

Of course, plenty had happened before that. The Queen and the Royal family were in Balmoral, lying low, or hiding out, but apparently doing everything (including hunting) and seemingly pretending that their daughter in law had never been their daughter. Tony Blair understood the ethos, but it didn’t seem enough. Prince Charles had gone to Paris, but only after some hesitation (at first the Royal jet was not going to be provided) which presented the first of a can of worms the Royal Family were unknowingly presenting to the press.

Angry crowds wanted to know where the queen was. They wanted some token, some gesture of sympathy. None was given for a number of days. At a church service the same day Diana had died, as per instructions of the Queen, Diana was not even mentioned.

People gathered in front of an empty Buckingham Palace for several days, and Tony Blair pleaded that the Queen cut short their trip and return to London as soon as possible. But she did not return. Soon people pointed to the bare flagpole at Buckingham Palace. Why no flag at half mast? In fact, Royal tradition decreed that flags demonstrated whether the Royals were in residence or not. The people didn’t care. They wanted a flag at half mast. After some considerable delay, the Royals yielded to intense public pressure, and incredible tabloid scrutiny.

At times one did sense hysteria. It reminded me of religious fanaticism. But it is nevertheless real, and based on a feeling or a belief. It was at times strange to see vivid displays of grief, other times consoling, to see huge crowds of people, mostly silent, looking sadly, almost hopefully at piles of flowers, at the tall gates guarding palaces. One evening I also went. I also wanted to just show some token of what I was feeling. I went at dusk, and bought some flowers on my way to Kensington Palace. There was something humble about the gesture. People were demonstrating their humanity to a fellow human being that we all identified with, and as a result, we also showed and shared our common humanity. I remember walking to Kensington Palace, and seeing the candles, and seeing messages left by children and grandmothers. People, families, couples, bent down to look at the messages. I remember the trees that almost seemed to have their arms around us in the candlelight. But most of all, when I left, a breeze lifted and suddenly the thin, deep, purply scent of thousands of roses pushed deep into my nose. That evening I celebrated a calm, but probably the most elegant and dignified, expression of grief with hundreds of others, for a life lost. And that is very special.

I don’t remember if I wrote in the books that were placed for people to sign. I remember initially thinking it was absurd, for me, since I had never met her. I can’t remember if I did write something. If I did, perhaps it was: “We’ll miss you Diana.”

What made the Royal family’s response, or lack of, so particularly poignant and even troubling, was that people suspected that not only did they not care about Diana, but they were wrong to not care, and even worse, wrong to dislike her. In the movie The Queen this is not acknowledged directly. The Queen makes the excuse in the movie that she was following protocol. But I doubt whether in the privacy of her bathroom, or alone in a Scottish field, she had any genuine sense of regretting Diana’s death. I think Diana was resented to the point of being loathed by the Royals, and this was exposed.

Prince Charles came across fairly positively. So did Tony Blair. But in the end, it was Diana’s brother who said what everyone was feeling. He expressed his unhappiness with the press, he conveyed Diana’s own struggles to find love and happiness. And he became a little choked up towards the end in Westminster Abbey. Following his speech, there was a worldwide sigh of relief. Not relief in the convention sense, but a sort of relieving of tension, the tension of grief and feelings having been somewhat resolved. People outside, masses of them who were watching on specially mounted screens, applauded. So did celebrities present that included Spielberg and Tom Cruise. The Royals of course, did not applaud, but probably felt worse afterward for not at least seeming to care what with the entire world apparently doing so.

I had a dream once, while Diana was still alive. I woke up and was stunned that I had had a dream, such a familiar dream, about someone I had obviously never met. In the dream I was at a social event and I merely commented on something, and Diana turned slightly, looked at me, responded, and there was a brief, probably quite ordinary exchange. But in the moment, in the dream, there was an incredible sense of connection. With her, yes, but also, somehow, with the whole human condition. That’s what I think we all felt she represented, and that’s why her life (and death) mattered so much. Diana seemed to demonstrate every level of the human being. The celebrity, the princess, the excluded, the cornered, the victim, the fighter, the broken, and somehow, once again, the princess.

Elton John’s song, Candle in the wind, still evokes Diana like nothing else. What I experienced in England during those few days, and weeks, was something of what I think it feels like when a person somehow becomes more than a person. People wanted to erect statues and monuments. Some of us felt it was absurd, and yet we felt compelled to pay tribute somehow to her. It’s when individuals have had this sort of profound impact on people in the past that they struggled to convey this magic, and so they wrote stories. They become almost mythical. Jeanne d’Arc was probably similar, and we will probably see the same thing with Nelson Mandela. What we need to remember is to celebrate and care for these people just as much, and each other, while we’re still alive.