Viewpoints

Apparently I am an ignorant cow! The last time I have been called names was at the playground, but then: I haven't been really stubborn since then either. 

It was during the run-up to Christmas, the festival of love, and it was at a car park. Car parks and good mood rarely go well together, I however was quite happily minding my own business. This business being to find a got spot. See, I am not good in parking my big trunk. I am fully capable to do all this reversing into a slot thing, but that doesn't mean that I like doing it. Hubby is different. For him it is a sport to be the smoothest, swift reverse parker that was ever seen. I am not like that; my aim is to find a slot to drive through, and as usually slots are aligned in double rows, I needed one where two nice wide slots behind each other were free. 

And there it was, the perfect slot! Unfortunately on the wrong side, typical. The angle much to tight to get in. The plan was hatched to go round and to tackle it from the other side, hoping that no competitor with hubby-like skills would swoop in buttocks first. 

Lucky, I was! Gently and carefully I manoeuvred the snout into the first of the slots, another car in front of me went past, I straightened the car and was half way in the second slot when I saw the rear of a car entering.

Stand-off!

This is where the stubbornness came in. Blood pressure rising I decided to defend my slot. I could have easily reversed into the first, perfectly fine slot, but then I would have had the hassle of reversing out of it later. And... I was as good as in already. So I just sat. Admittedly I would have felt better giving up, being the bigger person; ...I wouldn't be sitting here writing about it... This lady however seemed to be perfectly capable to reverse into any other slot, and there were plenty of them. There was only one that suited me. 

She charged backwards a bit, I could hear the motor howling. Rika sitting stubbornly. She tried it again... the poor thing! By then every sentiment for the festival of love must have gone up in smoke. She dashed out, parked two slots down the row... she is good, she was faster in hers than I was in mine... well, maybe I am just really bad... However, by the time I left the car a really red face shouted across the car park, insisting repeatedly that I belonged to the species of milk producing creatures, that I stole her parking slot and that I swooped in from behind.

Well, she doesn't know me; as depicted before: When I drive there is no swooping, at least not in car parks. I however give her that: She could not have seen me. When she drove past, all she would have seen was a car in the first slot. Usually we do not notice if somebody is in the car. Car in slot means: parked! Thus to her it must have felt like somebody swooping in. 

Each person's story represents the truth from their point of view, hence we were both right, and both wrong. There is no clear answer of who should have owned that slot. I used my stronger position to win - I was not blocking the street while waiting for her to give up - but that doesn't make it right from her point of view. There is one thing though that puts her entirely into the wrong: If we were to swap roles in this story, I may have closed my door a bit harder, I may have mumbled some swear words into my scarf, but I would not have called her names. 

And next time I will give up. I now know that I can defend what I think is right, but sometimes it is just not worth it!

The aftermath of Christmas presents...

We don't do Christmas presents! Not anymore.  We actually don't do Christmas anymore. We are an old couple without kids. There is no good reason to clean the house to then mess it up with a tree, the hassle of shopping and cooking and ... and then one has a lot of time around ones hands and decides to go... shopping. Isn't there this lovely new mall where the Olympics will take place? Stratford! Yes, that's it! Let's go!

And then we buy gadgets. Important ones. I actually wanted flat shoes for Lindy Hop lessons. Yes, that's right... FLAT shoes... for me! Unfortunately the trainer insists in flats which I don't really have. I then however, couldn't get myself to buying ugly shoes, so I turned my attention to a wrist watch. Not having worn one in ages I had lost track of the market situation, though.They are either pretty yet impractical, or partly practical but the most ugly, huge monsters imaginable. So I gave up and we entered hubby's temple - the  Apple Store.

For some weird reason items of a certain value have to find an allocation to some sort of event, and hence we each got a little something as Christmas pressie. Ha... we are not doing Christmas, my ar..!!

Now: Each present worth its money has to show its value instantly and my Nano touch which works as a wrist watch  - who needs Swatch & Co if there are iGadgets - is outshone by hubby's little black box, the 'apple TV'. It's not bigger than a sardine can, but shinier and it hooks up with all sorts of other iDevices to play their content on the telly; additionally it offers a lot of other stuff directly via iTunes... don't ask me details, all I know is that there are a lot of colourful buttons to press and then nice things happen on the screen, some of which cost money. I don't think hubby entirely trusts me in this, he enabled the kid protection allowing shopping access only via password. Hmmm...

So now we watch TED talks on the telly. You should really try that with the one where they bring a real human brain on stage with the spinal cord still attached... gives a whole new dimension to Christmas morning.

I had seen Jill Bolte Taylor's talk about a 'stroke of insigth' before on the computer, but I have to say that it is quite different on the big screen. It now becomes a family experience and being able to talk about it afterwards brings new aspects to the talk. For this particular one this means, that I want to know more about the matter. If I could understand better how these two sides of the brain work together and if indeed my suspicion would be right that hormones are causing havoc there, that might explain why sometimes I feel so bloody unfocused. This is a Christmas pressie that hasn't been invented yet: The iFocus!

Merry Christmas, Dears!
Love

Life is a Biscuit

This is a cookie to my American friends. A cookie however, is a typical American species, rather big and sturdy; teeth breaking at times. A biscuit is the more fragile relative from the European continent, rather delicate and pretty. I guess if life were a cookie it might be easier to live, but maybe more boring as well.

So imagine at the beginning of your life, sitting bang in the middle of your perfectly shaped biscuit, nice and round, all smooth, and drifting through space. Soon you will get up to explore and you will find that it wobbles. Quickly drawing back to the middle you will learn where the centre of gravity lies - it is you! As you keep exploring your biscuit you will find that inviting people onto this platform will help to keep the balance. If you all move in perfect harmony, you all have the freedom to explore and to enjoy this life together. You might even discover that attaching other people’s biscuits to yours will make it sturdier.

Biscuits are not easily navigated, though. Harmony might come natural at times, but usually negotiations are asked for. Some people manage perfectly fine for all their lives and live happily ever after, but most of us will find that there are always people, with whom the balancing game does not work. They either move to fast, too slow or into the wrong direction, while others might not want to fix their biscuits too tightly or not tightly enough. Usually this does not happen out of deliberation. We just live at different speeds, were raised in different cultures and use language in different ways. Whatever the reason, all of a sudden the balancing act involves you doing the splits, a lot of running around and continuously being alert.

From all this commotion the first cracks appear in your biscuit... see, told you: Life would be better if it were a cookie, but 'No!' whoever was in charge decided to choose a biscuit.

... and it is getting worse. People will move away from the cracks and will reach the edge. There they will see interesting things: loads of other biscuits, interesting, pretty, cool or idyllic. The ones who daringly peer through the cracks see the same wonderful picture, and some of them may be tempted to risk the jump off the margins or through the crevice.

Drastic action is required, a wall needs to be built around the biscuit, cracks have to be fixed, and maybe it is a good idea to tie some people down.

... and out we get the pegs and the ties, and we hammer them into the ground, and often too late we realise that now it is us who is breaking the biscuit. But what can be done? We keep fixing and fixing. Some cracks we are able to mend lovingly, for others there is just no time and we paint over them.

... and so it goes for a while: short periods of relative happiness when we think that we nailed it are taking turns with frantic repair work, until one day we are exhausted and unhappy and wondering: What the heck am I doing? Life cannot be about building walls and fixing cracks.

 ... and more questions are whizzing through the brain: What happened to my lovely, pristine biscuit? Who is to blame? Could it have been avoided? What to do now?

The answers lie in the beginning: The centre of gravity is YOU! You and you alone will have to be the person to win back stability.

Oh, how often did I try to find the ones to blame? I had to learn that it was Me. I voluntarily did the fixing and building and running, nobody asked me to. People joined my life and without asking them or myself whether or not they were good for my biscuit, I accommodated their needs. I did not make clear the rules that apply for docking to my biscuit. I didn’t even know the rules, so how can I blame others.

The way forward is the simplest and the most difficult task at the same time.

The past needs to be the past. None of what is gone will come back, and hence assessing what is left is the first step to healing. The aim is the truth; no sugar coating, no excuses.

... and then comes the big thought experiment. The right questions have to be asked: Why did I do all the fixing? What am I scared of? As a matter of fact ‘What is the worst case scenario?’ What if I would let go? My biscuit might break – ‘Would I really mind?’, people might leave or fall off – ‘Would I feel guilt, or loss?’ ‘Do I want to desperately cling to people who don’t want to be with me? ... sitting on my fragment of biscuit drifting through space, ... time to think,... time for honesty, ... this fragment would be MY fragment, my responsibility and my freedom. How bad would the worst case scenario actually be? However painful the process: the answer to this question holds all the building blocks for honest negotiations.

... and then the work begins.  Ever so carefully yet confidently a set of rules will have to be established. Balance can only be achieved by negotiation, either through talking and listening, or testing and observing, and although bits of the biscuit might break off as some people decide to leave, one might find that biscuits with edges are actually quite nice to be on. They show style, and experience; they are reliable and easy to dock to. One might even find that more people than expected would like to make an edgy biscuit their home.

My new motto: The first step to avoiding the worst of cases is to face it and to accept it as fate!

Male VS Female Cheating

I don't know if this piece of wisdom is of any relevance, but after years of observation I can reveal: Men and women are cheating differently. Yep, they do!

The early stages of a cheat appear to be pretty similar, but...

See, there are only few scenarios out of which a cheat arises. There are the cheating characters, who just can't help it; it's their nature. They come in male and female and I didn't take those into account. As for the others, they usually live in long wearing relationships which either have become boring because none of the partners has evolved, or they have become imbalanced because only one of the partner evolved, or they have become speechless because both partners evolved but in different directions. I guess there are only very few people who make it through by either not getting boring, or by developing into the same direction.

For the cheat to happen it then is important that opportunities arise. This is when first indicators appear that there are differences in the cheating behavior of the sexes. There are the opportunity seeking characters, and there are the ones who just jump when the opportunity is there. We will find both types in male and female, I am however claiming, that females are quite good in creating opportunities in very subtle ways. It will look as if the opportunity was just arising but in reality a meticulously planned strategy was in place to make it happen. A strategy, that is well suited for the cheating male, who usually rather gormlessly stumbles into it.

The differences between the sexes become prominent when they get discovered and it is time to pick up the pieces.

The female cheater will be aiming for one of three outcomes:

• Leave me all alone, I'd rather be without man (more often than one might think),
• staying with the old relation,
• staying with the new relation.

And although she might appear rather emotionally torn, she will consider her options very carefully. Opposed to common wisdom she rarely will go for what her heart, so full of love, will tell her. A change down the social ladder might only be considered when she herself has a quite good income.  Although women are hoping to have found the prince of their dreams, they may have a hunch that this furnace of love will fade and that there is a high possibility that some time in the future they will be stuck in the same boredom or speechlessness again. Should it happen, one will want to be in a good position.

The aim however is always a clean cut. I have never heard a woman say: Oh, I love you all, can't I just pop in whenever my schedule allows?

This seems to be the male attitude in solving the cheating situation. History and other cultures ooze from stories about men with several women, and whenever the conversation turns to this subject the male eye starts to sparkle and a certain jealousy becomes obvious from their choice of words used in said conversation.

The male cheater aims for only one thing: Filling the gaps!

While the woman is holding on to the dream of the perfect partner (... and if she doesn't find it then rather 'no partner') the male has a lazier approach of just collecting women who complement each other.

There is a quote, no idea where it comes from, and it reads: 'A woman should be a lady when in the parlor, a cook when in the kitchen and a harlot when in the bedroom.' The fact alone that this quote exists, shows that women are seen in specific roles and it gives an indication that men quite like the idea of choosing three women if the one is not doing the job properly.

Men however are ... men. A female would not write a job description: 'Be a Casanova in bed, handsome and presentable on social occasions and useful to the household.' Although this is a fine description of her prince, she is quite realistic in her expectations. A woman usually is already quite happy to get 'one' out of the 'three', while doing her best to display the full set of roles expected from her, to satisfy this imperfect specimen she agreed to marry.

What we can learn from that? 'Cheat more', 'Cheat less', 'Don't marry', 'Do marry', 'Have more orgies'... I don't know!

Why don't you tell me?

Just Thinkin'...

Not having been thinking a lot recently, hence my silence on the blogs, but this one crops up again and again:

What's a luxury?

I've been shopping a lot lately... yes, I know: a confession video is long overdue... and yes, a lot of the stuff I don't really need, so I can happily admit to the luxury crime.

But take my cleaner! For some reason I myself still think I shouldn't have one. I am a healthy woman fully capable of removing my own dirt, and potentially I would even have the time for it - but I don't want to!

I want to spend my time differently. I want to explore things, I want to write, I want to meet people and get inspired to explore even more things, and I want to meet people to inspire them - and I am really good at that. A cleaner gives me all these things. So why the heck do I have to feel guilty?

My cleaner is a star, she wasn't as blessed with an education enabling her to do something else. Well, she actually worked in health care but can't do that anymore because it broke her back. Cleaning houses allows her to work at her own pace and she likes to be in the service sector. 

So she is happy and I am happy and at the same time we both do our business.

Could it be that luxury is a term coined out of  envy? Is anything that makes me happy or makes my life easier a luxury, just because I have the money to pay for it?

I call driving a Merc or having a yacht a luxury; not cooking but going out for food I find luxurious... but only because these things are not for me: I wouldn't want to do it and because for me it's not worth the money. 

Now my luxury lifestyle has enabled me to find a new aim in life. All the explorations and networking eventually is going to pay off in proper currency: I enrolled in a course to become 'Personal Trainer'. I have a new career prospect while my dear cleaner earned herself the money to pay for the visa and the trip from the Philippines for her daughter.

Long live luxury!