Thought Picnic: Real humanity transcends religious belief

My humanity

I have found that the greatest quest I face is understanding my humanity better and knowing the vocation that allows me to give it the best expression.

There are weaknesses I have that I have accepted as part of who I am and there are strengths I am learning to use to become more than I have even imagined I could ever be.

As I thought about this, I realised that in accepting what might be termed unusual by others but has become the norm of my personality and honouring the beliefs that others find difficult but are the clearest expression of humanity of have seen of the incarnate that melds the spiritual with the natural with mental agency, I am perfectly imperfect and incompletely complete.

Driven to strive

I am driven to achieve and attain being very aware of the fact that I can only do so much and what I cannot do, the means arrives to fulfil that much that I am caught in awe and gratitude of influences that urge me on to success.

My body and my spirit has always been at war, I have won and lost many battles unsure of whether victor or vanquished are either spirit or body because they are both me and beyond the long truces we must find peace, calm, accommodation and acceptance down paths than do not represent the journeys the majority tread in their own lives.

Humanity is greater than religion

This morning as prepared to attend church with all the obstacles thrown my way by circumstances well beyond my control, I persevered because within that fellowship laid an assurance of sustenance for my famished soul.

I could find no greater or profound statement than then ordinariness of this thought that I shared. I now realise I do not want to be a better Christian; I just want to be a good Samaritan. That is the embodiment of humanity that appeals to me most.

Thought Picnic: No ruins in hope

Out without rout

Three weeks ago I embarked on a journey to a little village, Ewloe  [fascinating Wikipedia story] with castle ruins of its own on North Wales, just west of Chester, a more significant city just on the border of between England and Wales.

It was not the easiest to prepare for, the contracts were finally signed just before the weekend though, I had just about set up banking facilities in the UK, having eventually acquired documents that included that essential proof of address that UK residents require to open a bank account.

Nothing is impossible

Then, there was the matter of getting there and the means to live there, tough, it was, as despair wrestled with hope that as I walked down a road to see some friends, I calmed myself saying things will turn out right completely oblivious of how things could really turn with the risk that I would not be able to take up the appointment.

The miracle of life and hope does have a way of bringing providence to those who refuse to worry as one also learns the subtle difference between the humiliation of begging and the humility of asking.

That one will not beg is not haughty and it is not the loss of pride when one asks I appreciated what I needed and I asked those closest to me if they could help.

All is possible

Out of their generosity, I found much, the ticket, accommodation, something to spare and enough to get by. It meant I could concentrate on what had taken me from the city to the country and hope for the best.

I only had enough for a week and a bit, within that, there were nights when a fast was as good as supper but I believed it will all turn out right because that is just that way journeys are, long, arduous, testing, trying, difficult, adventurous, fun and satisfying – there is a destination to get to not forgetting the prospect of a story to tell.

In the end, it was three weeks before I returned home, by which time I had paid all the bills and planned for the next four weeks.

It is called life

In my wake, I have shared of my somewhat ordinary and mundane story, the vagaries of what we all call life, it happens to all of us in different ways for all sorts of reasons, some known and many unexplained, but for those who decide they are in this life to live it, they begin to write for themselves a tale that has a unique voice of expression and fulfilment that hopefully encourages others to live their lives to the full.

As I returned to London this weekend without much time to meet up with the many I love and cherish, I spoke to most of them and met up with a few of them. They give me joy, the company is like an elixir of life, the sound of their voices bring calm to the clamour of nature and the thoughts of them makes one realise that life has great purpose that we must never fail to lose sight of.

In all, there is something I noticed hugs can do that words cannot be found to express; it heals the heart, nourishes the soul and maybe even warms the body.

I have friends like lovers, dear and good – for me, life is worth every single day and that is what matters.

Thought Picnic: The other complements and compliments

The significant others

I have had two significant relationships amongst the many others altogether coming to just about 11 years. The first which was for love lasted 7 years, the second, some 6 years later was out of necessity for companionship.

In chatting to a friend just over a week ago, I reviewed elements of mine in relation to his. In his case, a one-time quite fervent partnership suddenly took an unfortunate turn that in terms affected most of us that knew them, maybe not as much as the parties involved but nonetheless it was quite unsettling.

A love unmade

Then there was one other in-between those two that was intense in its spark but never ignited a fire, it was one where my head was never engaged in the affairs of the heart that it brought much hurt and heartache, we made plans we never saw through, we made promises we never kept and in the end we parted company too long that when I thought to rekindle it, the kindling had gone – death had whisked my love away.

Somehow, that break-up of a relationship that barely existed over a span of 6 years of somewhat unrequited love affected me the most, I had to get well before I had the time to grieve and that took the best part of a year before I made peace with myself and my loss, but for the memories that could have been if we did work at it.

The foibles we suffer

That last relationship was as unequal as they come in background, means and status but it brought with it amazing insight, exposure to things I never before considered important and adventure that brought a smile every time.

We parted company in the pique of unnecessary jealousy, I might have been a tad insensitive but everything I did to convey assurances where the offence was more of the other than myself just seemed to accentuate a sense of lower self-esteem in the other – there wasn’t much we could do.

I have striven to keep the friendship of all those I have met, but it is their prerogative to withdraw their friendship if they so wish, I will not hold it against them – life is just too short to live it in grudge.

Just like that

A year after that break-up, the friendship was rekindled, not for a relationship but just for that good company we once had and it came in very useful when in my greatest time of need, there was help, there was company and there was presence.

However, one evening without notice, the door slammed and it was 8 months before we saw each other again, people can only be what they want to be. I am not perfect and though I have lived a good deal of my life a single man, the much I have learnt about relationships, the need for them and the lack of need for them leaves me with the conviction that they are needed and needed so much.

Definitely maybe

There will be a time when the stories of each relationship will be told in the detail that each deserves from the fleeting to the involved, the ones that connected and the others that brought me to people I will rather not be in company of, all ensconced in my memory where every time we’ve said goodbye I have either died a little or lived a little more.

In the midst of learning much of what I do not want in the next relationship that the list has literally obliterated what I should need in a relationship, the bigger lesson of relationships and companionships that matters to all social beings and has been studied in primates that it got me even more concerned about my singleness is – all good companionships have a complementing and complimenting effect that you can never create for yourself out of singular means or access.

Therein comes my desire to cultivate something new, the reality is, it is not you might think, even I should be allowed an element of mystique whilst matchmakers can keep their matches in the matchbox, I know the kind of fires I want to light. Thank you.

Thought Picnic: Seeing like our spirit does

Wealth in knowing

Discovering the wealth we possess is sometimes the most difficult knowledge to come about in the lifelong quest of knowing oneself.

Even those who appear to be so self-assured and self-confident to the point of being self-conceited bordering of nauseating arrogance may just be wearing a mask of extraversion that is hardly emblematic of who they really are or should be portraying of themselves.

Wealth is not just money in the bank even though it matters, however it should matter because it allows one to stretch and reach rather than just hoard for some fear of poverty suddenly mowing down our ramparts and laying us bare. We are blessed to be a blessing for an open hand is a hand that is open to receive.

Driven to succeed

The greatest wealth however is insight, knowledge that fuels expectation, that undergirds hopes and fills you with the kind of purposeful resolve that where you are at is transient and the journey ahead, adventurous and fraught as it might be, leads to a destination that will make it all worthwhile.

It is what gives joy to living well and strengthens the will to latch on to the affirmative in the midst of the negative and the uncomfortable, it drives you through that valley of the shadow of death assured of the fact that you will not faint but arrive at the summit to bask in the light of being an overcomer.

The amazing spirit in us

Time and again, I see people draw strength from deep within to do things that look like the miraculous, all because they believed and believed themselves enough to dare.

Fighting adversity with a tenacity that tells a thrilling story that sometimes never gets told, the spirit of man is amazing to behold, it takes him to places his senses are yet to fathom or his mind is yet to fully comprehend, but like the engine of a vehicle; take the breaks off, put it in gear and depress the accelerator – and where you are becomes where you were as where you want to be gets to become where you’ll eventually be.

In difficulty, we once again find the simplicity to completely understand things so easily.

Thought Picnic: In difficulty find simplicity

Stranger in strange places

Hostile environments are not places where he feels comfortable especially when  more the stranger dependent on the friendliness of others around you.

Though it might not appear as if they are being hostile, the subtlety between willingness and unwillingness, responsiveness and indifference, needing but hardly giving or even hearing but not listening makes him think he is an interloper upsetting some equilibrium or norm.

Now, he should not take these things to heart, his natural disposition is still to be calm, gentle, considerate, understanding and engaging, it is necessary that this helps keep perspective.

Dialling back the scales

The first few weeks can be difficult, finding his feet along with the privations of company, comfort and the essential nutrition that he should by means pay attention to, it is unsafe to do without, yet he beds most nights without supper where that critically helps the medicine go down but the means are scarce as other priorities matter.

He did seek help, some came but not really enough that the stealth of worry is just about to become a rather itchy pillowcase, no antihistamines for a bed so uncomfortable – beware of the baggage of lack.

It is a matter of days, he comforts himself things will soon turn and if he does not fret, it might well be good for the figure; an unspoken resolution has used the conspiracy of circumstance to deliver a trimmer Adonis – many hunger for that, out of hunger or in hunger.

In every difficulty, he tries to find some simplicity.

Thought Picnic: The many umbilical cords to cut

Cutting the cord means survival

The first umbilical cord by nature and for the preservation of life needs to be cut at birth; it is the time when the newly born baby has to begin a life of reflexive independence to breathe on its own and to take in food usually in form of milk to thrive.

However, that umbilical cord is the easiest to cut, there are many more that bind us to our parents or guardians, our communities, our societies, our beliefs and much else which should when the fullness of time is come be cut or the birthed will suffer a form of death – a death of freedom, a death of expression, a death of happiness, a death of ambition, a death of hope – too many deaths whilst still alive and it might breed resentment, despair, rebellion or depression – it mimics the cycle of life.

The point in time

At the point when a baby stops being a foetus, that umbilical cord is cut; just as when a child stops being a baby, when an adolescent stops being a child or when an adult stops being an adolescent – that is would be the ideal path of growing up but it is rarely the case.

The responsibility relationship between guardian and ward is dynamic, between them the cutting of the umbilical cord is a function of age, individuality, expression, responsibility and sometimes success which could determine the leeway one will give the other to be better at what they are on the way to becoming.

The last cut

The most difficult umbilical cord to cut is that where the guardian has to accept that their ward has come of age, where the parent appreciates their child has become an adult and should be given the opportunity to learn their own lessons, live their own lives and chart their own courses.

Obviously, guidance and advice is useful but instruction and diktat is unhelpful; the atmosphere in which the child has been schooled in the home will however become the foundation of the confidence, the self-esteem, the determination and the drive that child has like it did when it ventured its first breath at birth and performed the first suckling reflex to take in food.

Taking places

At a point in time, the parent or guardian will have to be put in their place, not so much to be put down but to be respectfully made to understand that certain decisions are now out of their hands and their influence is at best advisory and nothing more.

Along the line, between agreement and conflict whilst growing up we also encounter the more difficult elements of gaining our individuality. Expectations are high, criticisms are rife and praise is rare, punishment is severe sometimes to the point of brutalisation and power is wielded with deathly omnipotence that it feels easier to walk through prison walls than extricate oneself from parental overreach.

Parents do overreach and in the process attempt to blackmail their children thinking their parental responsibility required of them by society to provide the basics of protection, food, shelter, clothing, education and good example is the fullest expression of love without accounting for the deeper emotional needs of the child which will never be met with things.

Tough love facts

We did not ask to be born, but we have been born and there should be more times in our lives that we are grateful to have been born, to have the parents we have had and to have had the care and affection that they have showered on us from when we were hopefully bundles of joy at birth through when they patiently tolerated with exasperation their inability to control the child who is still under their roofs.

However, we return to the matter of umbilical cords or in other parlance apron strings. Children are not clones they are unique personalities moulded by the environments in which they grow, interact, find safety, experience abuse, feel love, witness hate, find acceptance and know rejection – we are moulds of situation and circumstance that are subject to the casts provided by those whose responsibilities we were in our formative years.

The path to acceptance

The healthiest relationships between parent and child will only find fulfilment when they all channel the Kübler-Ross model, which first studied the five stages of grief.

Denial comes with the guardian not believing that the child has come of age, there is anger that the child is not conforming to expected norms, there is bargaining as to how to regain the best control and influence over the child, then depression coming with unfulfilled promise or sadness that a situation might have become a lost cause and then finally, acceptance – accepting who the child has become; an adult with their lives, their goals, their purpose and their own decisions.

The point of acceptance is when the parent begins to respect that child and honour that child with guidance and advice rather than instruction, coercion and blackmail – the healthiest relationships will bring better communication, deeper interaction, more happiness and a glad heart for that parent as they approach their waning years.

It’s you or them

If the parent will not wise up to that necessity, then the child will at a certain point in time have to be respectfully forthright, frank, direct, honest and true – they will eventually have to find words to say, “I want to be able to live my live as a person, unique, independent, fulfilled and appreciative of you out of recognition of who you have been in my life.”

Acceptance or frank expression on the side of the either the guardian or the ward is that umbilical cord cut for the relationship to thrive. If you have not cut it yet, consider how better things can be if that realisation first dawns on you and then you make them see the light.

Thought Picnic: The molds of bureaucracy

A mold

Bureaucracies are a strange life form, a system of well laid out processes that never seem to engage clockwork efficiency of alacrity or urgency.

Like mold, it takes away fervency or freshness leaving a footprint of lethargy, inertia and boredom as time ticks away as if it has no function of measurement than an abyss of nothingness clawing in darkness.

Those who people it

Yet, agents and agencies desire the omnipresence of bureaucracy to ensure that those who depend on it are introduced to the fact that they are powerful, they have responsibilities and they move on a whim except when coerced from above to do what could have been done long before without fuss.

Yet, we wait, almost helpless, almost hopeless and almost listless that a time will come when bureaucracy moving as it might be at a speed that makes drying paint look instantaneous, bureaucracy will finally respond to why it was put in place to fulfil all righteousness and to give the needlessly engaged a sense of purpose.

Complicate the simple with ease

You have to ask why what is seemingly easy to do is made unnecessarily complicated, inscrutable and impossible to action immediately, if not for each little person in the bureaucratic workflow to engage in the power-play of self-importance to the detriment of the organisation at large.

Nowhere was it self-evident than when I visited two banks to open accounts. In the first, I had to book an appointment for the next day, go through tens of questions, sign forms to the point that my fingers bled ink into the cuneiform of my signature and yet will wait days to be able to access the account for business.

The second just required a walk-in on a Saturday afternoon, I was seeing an advisor in 10 minutes and within 30 minutes, I had a bank card and my account was live for transactions, just like that.

It goes without saying that there is probably a century of history between the first and the second bank which is nimble, modern and streamlined to eliminate the encumbrance of bureaucratic time-wasting pretending to back-office operations.

Times change but not for that

What seems well-oiled to whoever set up that system does not really fit into the generally instantaneous gratification that we all have acquired through the shortness of attention spans that has become our way of life by reason of competition for our skill and subservience to some greater or lesser cause.

There might be use for mold as there is use for bureaucracy if you are part of it rather than depending on it.

One learns patience before aggravation, calm before disquiet and acquiescence before complaint when faced with immotile bureaucracy, we are forced to find the kind of inducement that will set a bureaucracy off like an avalanche towards the solution – by which time, a lesson is learnt, no improvements are made and the next person down the line succumbs to the throes of that wonderfully tortuous wringer called bureaucracy – it is just the way we have always done things, you are told.