The prescient December clues

When birth is due

December speaks of dreams and beauty, the surprise of my nativity which for me as a person was not earlier than I expected, especially when others tend to stay longer than necessary. I can remember the many times I have never needed to fulfil a quota; when what needs getting done is done.

To many, I was preterm. However, I was ready when I arrived, just after Michaelmas. That they brought in cavalry to sustain my arrival was a responsibility placed on those who cater for such things. I simply rode the wave because it was there for my pleasure.

If I had chosen January, I would have slipped into another year for which I could lament the inexplicable. The Hilary Term would never have suited me. I could hardly be considered a spring baby, yet, as provenance would have it, one was conceived in the Trinity Term.

Silent in the light

In the advent of the diamond jubilee, I have scarcely prepared much. I hope to mark it without much fanfare; I am exhausted in crowds and flailing in the company of many. It is something to celebrate without trumpeting, but I would scarcely be afforded that luxury.

It is a time for contemplation, reminiscence, thankfulness, and gratitude. The journeys, the companions, the supporters, and friends that have made it auspicious leave me astounded at the wonder and the gift of living.

Mastering the interest in interesting

Interestingly Misunderstood

I have always been fascinated by how the English are viewed by others. There are websites and social media pages devoted to the fact that we are frequently misunderstood: what we have said may not necessarily represent the truth of what we mean.

One such word comes to mind: “interesting”. It does not essentially mean I am interested; it could readily mean I am bored and disengaged.

Then, on the matter of interest, I have had people who have shown interest in me, but their interest in me does not automatically become mutual. Whilst I am entertaining your interest, I would rather you were also engaging and developing my interest in you too.

Interestingly Selfish

What irks me most about these kinds of interactions is that they ask all the questions and volunteer nothing about themselves. I notice this quite easily and urge them to engage in a form of information exchange, hoping that self-awareness would prompt and convict them of selfishness, so they relent without further persuasion.

My patience, however, begins to wear thin, because dialogue is always better than being the cynosure. At least I hope I am not so vain as to need the klieg lights focused on my façade and bearing.

Interestingly Boring

In one such encounter where their interest was overbearing, but after all the exchanges I had learnt nothing about them, I combined the polite with the direct and asked, “What really makes you interesting?” Their answer was, “I like you.”

That kind of flattery might work for most, but if my question were to be properly interpreted and translated to the understanding of the person who was very much an Englishman as I, what I meant was, “You are boring me; please make an attempt to make this conversation worthwhile before I make my excuses.”

Fortunately for me, they failed to grasp the import of my veiled impertinence. When I made my excuses, I also intimated that I had better things to do with my time. In resignation, they said, “Okay!” as I rescued myself from an untenably excruciating and forgettable encounter.

Interesting, you might say, but I was so uninterested I was driven to the arms of disinterest, and it could not have happened to a nicer interlocutor, as they find someone else to bore to death.

Twenty-Two years of blogging

Blogging the story within you

You may have read somewhere on this blog that it was started in a Berlin hotel room on 8th December 2003. After a few years, I began writing an anniversary blog, especially now that the whole art of personal blogging has fallen out of fashion in favour of trendier and more engaging podcasts and skits.

I'll be the first to suggest this medium suits me best, and I think writing will always have an enduring quality over all other means of expression. Even in the case of music, before we had recordings, it was putting all that creativity into musical notation that has given us the joy of listening to classical music today.

There is no need to write a long treatise about blogging beyond relating to the view expressed in this quotation: “If a story is in you, it has got to come out” (William Faulkner). I think we all have stories, and too many of us never let those stories get out. That is a shame.

This is a quiet celebration of 22 years of blogging, and I'll keep doing it for as long as I can. I am thankful for the readers, even the large language models that have been trained on it, my loyal audience, and the people who take the time to comment on my blogs. Here's to more words coming together in stories you'll enjoy.

How I do religion

Religion saves me

I was asked the other day whether I had taken religion. Because I do not wear it on my sleeve, people might wonder why some of my views carry religious undertones. I have always been religious or spiritual, even when things have lapsed.

Religion is foundational to my existence and wellbeing. I owe everything to the grace, mercy, and love of God, even as I usually stumble in the walk of faith, because the concepts of Christianity and the workings of it that I believe in are much deeper than I give expression to.

Whilst my devotion in terms of church-going is Anglican, my beliefs lie at the evangelical and Pentecostal end of things, where I find a personal trail of conservative liberalism: an entertaining of the human perspective of biblical experiences that inform the wonder we see in lives.

How I think

Like Abraham, who left Ur of the Chaldees with at least seven generations of ancestors still alive, he heard from God, and I am sure he had to convince many people of that fact before he could leave.

Also, why have all angels, with their observation of human beings, not learnt to knock on doors instead of just appearing and comforting those they encounter with "Fear not!"?

However, this is no place for an exegesis. I have experienced different perspectives of religion (good, bad, strange, and just baffling) all from around the age of three. I am always excited by Bible study; there is never just a single story in what is read. Thank you.

Thought Picnic: Sitting pretty and bringing calamity

Sounds for moving back

It was interesting to see a large vehicle reversing and, beyond the rear white lights, just in case another driver or a pedestrian did not notice the vehicle coming towards them, a safety feature had been added in the form of an announcement: “Attention! This vehicle is reversing.”

It made me wonder whether it is necessary to have a warning system before sitting down. For instance, I once mistakenly sat on a pair of glasses, but not to the point of totally damaging them, because I felt something that made me check what I might be sitting on.

Little Miss Muffet and the Case for Situational Awareness

Little Miss Muffet, the star of the nursery rhyme, could have faced the danger of sitting on a spider which might have stung her on the backside. That is, if the tuffet was a grassy mound, like a tuft. However, we must assume it was a small stool. So, when the spider abseiled down its thread of web and sat down beside her, it must have been a display of arachnid politeness that she mistook for danger.

My case for the tuffet being a small stool rather than a grassy mound rests on this: the spider would not have been as obvious in the grass as it would be on a stool. Depending on which version you have committed to memory, the spider either came down from above or walked along some surface, probably underneath the stool, to settle beside Miss Muffet.

The Perils of Sitting Without Looking

Then, as I accede to William Cobbett's aphorism to "sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think what you shall write," sitting down takes on the need for awareness of where one should set one's derrière. Obviously, far from where spiders and creepy crawlies can frighten you away, and definitely not on some fragile thing that is not part of the seat.

In light of that, I always consciously put my glasses on a table, with the remote controls close by, but usually on a raised cushion, and never place a laptop on any readily available furniture to sit on; the same goes for my mobile phone. Having these things in plain sight, on tables or shelves, would, for all intents and purposes, prevent avoidable grief.

What great mishaps have been wrought by backsides set on the wrong thing, wreaking havoc and becoming, for want of a better phrase, a weapon of arse destruction. Initiative schools before gravity pulls, and the backside fools you into breaking things left on stools. We all know when we’ve allowed our backsides to rock the boat violently.

It's A Wonderful Life

Help is coming

Sometimes, it is not clear what things people are going through: demands, pressures, trauma, psychological issues, unmet goals, unfulfilled dreams, or just the humdrum of daily life. In all this, one must continue to live and seek to thrive, because that is what living is all about.

I just finished watching an abridged version of the 1946 film, It's A Wonderful Life, on Amazon Prime Video, which would form the themes of our discussions in church during the Advent season that started last Sunday, but was deferred for the silver jubilee of our bishop's enthronement as a bishop in the Church of England.

There were times when I shed a tear while watching the film, which, on its release, barely broke even at the box office, but over the years, has become a Christmas staple of generosity and redemption against the odds. The need for a life partner, for prayer, and knowing you have a guardian angel can make all the difference to an existence bordering on despondency.

“Senior Angel: A man down on Earth needs our help.
Clarence: Splendid. Is he sick?
Senior Angel: No, worse. He's discouraged.” A conversation in heaven from the film.

Under the darkest clouds

The concept of being discouraged stems from various factors, including losing confidence or hope, feeling that one's efforts don't make a difference, or believing goals are out of reach. These issues meet us in different places and affect us to varying degrees.

There may be the kind of resilience that helps one see beyond the present, or sometimes one can get overwhelmed to the point of seeking an outlet. Either way, this represents the fragility of our humanity, which is difficult to explain to people who see us as stalwarts and leaders, in thought and deed.

In the last few months, even as I seem to have powered through a lot of things in health, at work, and in general relationships, I am drawn to the realisation that I might be exhausted. Feeling a lot better after cancer treatment, whilst grateful for the developments and progress, does not make it less impactful. It was a daunting situation, with support coming from just a handful of people.

The safety of withdrawing

Apart from the two weeks' break I had in August and September, I have worked since the first working day of the year, returning from sick leave and hardly structuring the return to work. In terms of family, most just thought it was another headache; only two of my siblings kept engaged from when I was diagnosed through my treatment.

I began to cut down on my social interactions and withdrew into my shell, my engagements mainly limited to my partner, my best friend, my church community, the work environment, and a few friends. I need the time to myself without shouldering responsibilities or fielding issues. I have done enough for the purposes of legacy, if that matters at all.

Even at the emotional low points, I must encourage myself. I see possibility within the flux and the fog, knowing the dark clouds have to shift for the sunshine to give light, warmth, and life.

Most of all, I am truly fortunate, exceedingly grateful, and amazingly blessed. “No man is a failure who has friends.” I am thankful for the friends I have; they pray for me, support me, encourage me, give me hope, and restore my faith, showing me such undeserved, unconditional love. It is indeed a wonderful life, after all.

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Writing Well: Craft and Wellspring

Well, it’s tough

“Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.” This quote is attributed to both John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby (1647–1721) and André Breton (1896–1966); however, I do not intend to make any issue of the results of my internet search.

Writing well can be viewed as both a wellspring and a craft. At least, this became my reading of the quote, not as a sign of wisdom, but as a recognition that the willingness to express oneself and the choice of expression have won changes in areas that seem intractable.

Over the last few weeks, the teams in which I work have found themselves subject to management's pressing inclination to seek statistical successes with little consideration of the effort involved that does not show up in the figures. It has been nigh on impossible to communicate the difficulties in our battles to tackle the problems we have encountered.

Well, Bad Faith

At one point, in what was clearly a breach of trust and confidence, we were both threatened and bullied. It was a particularly low exercise of managerial control, oblivious of everything but meeting some arbitrary target. It rankled so much that I even found my voice fading in agitation, anger, and angst whilst challenging the various ungallant uses of office.

Much as I appreciate that people in authority might be caught up in the illusions of power and demands, they cannot defy the reality of the practical elements necessary for achieving what they want. It is against this backdrop that I entered the fray of another push for targets without a sense of effort.

My goal, expressed a few days before, was for management to reward those putting in the most to achieve the target, even if the seemingly impossible target could not be met and the goalposts shifted in the meagre rewards they were offering. A difficult exchange ensued that first challenged the premise, then conditioned the situation, before adjusting the focus.

Well, Write Well

Fetching from the writing well of wisdom, gauging the time to interject and pressing the case, I first exposed the numbers malady before setting the perspective. This was presented in an inadvertent comment from a manager; my response was a case of writing well for effect.

It put the purpose on the defensive and led to a reassessment of the goal, but I held back from responding further. The ordered use of words is a skill demanding the scalpel blade of teasing rather than the machete of chopping. What ensued included receiving a slight rebuke, but the bruises of battle are part of being in a fight, though it rarely feels like one when the other party needs to exert authority.

The initiative eventually came without my suggesting it directly. Whether the target is met or not, the best-performing member of the team will be adequately rewarded. This should have been done the week before, beyond empty platitudes. Is it any wonder morale is so low?

Well, Just Write

The writing well is a resource from which I have dug deep to fetch the fresh water of writing well in the art of persuasion. The wounds matter less given the many victories won through time. I don't even bother to celebrate the wins, except in appreciation of the gift of writing well.

I suppose this is why this blog exists. Of all the mediums of expression available to engage us, writing has the potential to exist long after interest has been lost in hearing and watching people perform.