Another Bucket List

Tonight I met with friends for dinner and one of them asked: What is it that you guys are still clinging to in life? Everybody was thinking hard, but nobody came up with something substantial, while my head was buzzing from ideas. And then something weird happened: Yours truly, the one who always is at the forefront with her blabbermouth, didn't feel like sharing.

I remembered that two years ago I had written a column about my bucket list, the film had just come out and it was a nice thought experiment. What I could not remember was the items on the list; I only knew that back then I was happy to put them out there, and that now I wanted to keep them secret, undiscussed and mine.

How lucky I am that I have put my life in blogs, the search engine is really good. In all my pamphlets I found the one, and here is the list from back then:

• I want to give a proper speech to a big audience
• I want to be on a stage
• I would like to be able to dance well
• I would like to be able to sing without being embarrassed
• I want to have my own fashion line
• I DO want to publish a book (the writing part is already done)
• I would like to win a prize or an award for something I have worked for
• I would like to have an exhibition with my own paintings and sculptures
• I want to own my own business and
• I want to be successful with it
• I want to walk in the footsteps of the great Jane Goodall and do field studies with primates

Turns out that I actually did quite a few of those things. I did go on stage, I did win a prize, I e-published a book, the dream to publish on paper remains, the business didn't happen yet, but I have founded a charity, and although I am not doing field studies I am travelling to Sumatra regularly to help build an English school. Not too bad actually, for just two years gone past. 

The new bucket list however is a different one, less about achievement than fun. It has things on it like learning how to ride a horse, I have lessons since two weeks...Well, and the other stuff I am not going to tell you either. This time I will get things done first and then I will report back. They are mundane things and more unreasonable. See, the above are things which if they work out are fine, like giving a speech, and nobody believes anyway that I ever would start my own fashion line. Hence the above list did not get questioned. Either it's harmless stuff or unthinkable anyway. But starting to climb a horse at age 51... She must be bonkers! Proper midlife crisis! Hope she doesn't get hurt from such a silly thing!

This is my last chance to doing silly things, and I want to have fun with them, and people telling me that it is silly, is taking the fun out of it. Of course my hard core readers would never judge me, but there might be others... so, bshhhhhht! lips sealed!

night night - sweet dreams about your bucket list!

Games

... No! Not the Olympic ones... well, maybe, even...

This morning I had one of those mind floating moments and wondered how - or if - playing games shapes our characters, lifestyles or relationships. Or changing perspective: If I see you play, do I see how you live?

According to Wikipedia games are 'attested as early as 2600 BC, games are a universal part of human experience and present in all cultures'.

So, gaming seems to be deeply embedded into our most inner self... why then do I hate it so much? We live in a world of the biggest variety of games and I just cannot be tempted to play any of those. I think I decided at age of 6 to never play again. Oh, I did the mother and child play, mud soup cooking and those sort of things, but board games were off limits.

I am losing my temper all to easily, I get drawn into my darkest of sides, in which I am running out of control of myself. As soon as competitiveness is spurred on by others doing the same as I do, I reach that moment when it's not funny anymore. At age 6 I threw the board including the stones into the room, parts never to be found again, we suspect the dog ate them... I was told off, was horribly embarrassed about the severity of my misbehaviour and decided to just not play again. The trade-off between excitement and fun and the effort to keep myself at bay always stayed on the side of effort.

I hate losing so much, that I don't like the winning either. At age 18 I was group-forced to join a card game. I won a few rounds and felt awful assuming that the others hate losing as much as I do; it was me causing this feeling, so why should I be happy about the win.

I always wondered why games portrait a world of black and white? One is either a winner or a loser! C'mon this Olympic stereotype that it is already an honour to take part is a bit of a farce, isn't it? We want to see gold medals, nobody ever talks about the silver winner again, or only in a very pitiful way when the loss was an unfortunate circumstance.

Only a few times I was happy playing. At age 25 my father-in-law gave me a beautiful wooden box to test. A colleague of his was researching co-operative games and this one was just beautiful. One would play with a partner to finish the board. It was about strategies each player had to pursue individually, but if one would be too greedy the board would not finish and no one would win. This was my heaven. I knew such a game already; it is called 'Patience'. Quite often it is referred to as 'Solitaire' as it can be played by a single player as well. But I prefer the two player version in which co-operation is key to neatly put the cards onto their piles. I used to play this game with my grandma every Tuesday during a school break. I was about 14 and she had to gently nudge me into playing. Now those are my fondest memories with her.

I am wondering if this kind of play always was in my character, or if she played a role in forming me into this person. We all have our individual ways of tackling challenging situations, sometimes boisterously barging through, sometimes running away, and sometimes co-operating to get the best out of it for everybody. Sometimes one has to give up a little to gain a lot. Giving up is ever so often perceived as losing - I don't care! Giving up without knowing if there will be a win is risky, but it is a risk I am willing to take, anytime! The prize to be won is just too valuable!

Perspectives

Such a long time I haven't been writing and so many things on my mind. Thoughts about things that I have seen and moments that I have lived seemed to be connected, but the puzzle just wouldn't fall into place, and now I got an idea and I will have to see where it will lead me.

The question hanging there is: Why is life so difficult at times?

Well, there is illness and death, the quite inevitable things, but there are so many other occasions in which life is so darn hard and I was wondering if it has to be like that.

We are educated the way our culture requests it, there are individual aberrations but generally in the Western world sex is preferably to happen within the marriage, but before is kind of ok-ish, after marriage only if you are young enough, basically meaning able to reproduce; in other cultures the rule set might be tighter or more lose. We have dogs, cats and rabbits as pets yet we eat rabbits. The Chinese put dogs on their dinner plates, yet we find that disgusting. We have rules about what to eat, what to learn, how to learn it, for how long to work, haw fast to drive and how to raise our children, rules which we are taught from early on to be able to fit in. 

Some of the rules make sense, or at least made sense historically, some made their way into law, but most of them are in people's heads, being passed down the generations. Rules pretend to be a moral framework promising safety to the ones who stick with it.

It is hard to do so, though. Things don't always pan out, do they? Married partners might find each other boring or even unbearable to live with, but no.... you took the decision to live with that person as a youngster some quarter of a century back and now you have to pay for it: Social convention will brand mark you should you dare leave. Oh yes, we are allowed to divorce by law, yet the label 'devorce' will stick and even if you re-marry this will not change. I got a speeding ticket recently; yep, went 57 miles in a 50 mile zone. At 56 miles nothing would have happened. It was an empty two lane road, at night. I consider myself a relaxed driver, I don't have road rage, I flow with the traffic, and yes, if the conditions are right I like to go fast. This 50 miles sign makes sense during day time, then this is a very dangerous road with heavy traffic. The technology to install adaptable signage exists, but is expensive, so for the policing of rules it is easier to just convict. If an enraged person would have tried to push me off the road at less than 50 miles, the rules would not have caught him.

Don't get me wrong: Societies need rules! But how we apply those rules can make life very difficult.

One might think that rules which made it into law are the most difficult to change, I however believe that the ones in people's heads are the most difficult to eradicate. I find myself ever so often judging others for something that is not my business. Why is her skirt so short? Shouldn't she be better at school at that time of the day? Funny that his car is rarely parked in front of the house! Looking like that he shouldn't eat that burger!

I measure myself against others to determine my own place within the social framework. If there are others who are worse than me, than I must be on the good side. And at the same time it scares the shit out of me that something might happen that makes me 'them'. That there might be others who judge me the same way.

The culprit that makes life so difficult is 'social convention'. It makes everybody offended so easily. People snogging in the street, boobs on magazine covers, celebrating your religious beliefs in the open while being in the wrong culture, breast feeding in a restaurant... the list of potentially offencive things is endless. We are trained from the first day of our existence to not offend others.We learn how to second guess when somebody might be offended, as a matter of fact I feel that I have been second guessing my entire life. The framework of social convention which is supposed to give me safety in rules actually only ever provided me with a pool of uncertainty. 

I am wondering: Wouldn't it be much easier if we would change perspective and just take less offence?

And thus I am taking a new motto: Be generous to those around you!

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