Feeling lonely

How can I be lonely when I have so much going on in my head. 

Much of who we are is in our head and it's usually only the convivial chatter which we share with others.

Even to our partners we monitor what we say for fear of misunderstanding.

I admit, I miss the camaraderie of your hiking especially with friends. It's fantastic to be with a group of people who you get along with, in an area where you all are fascinated by the sights and sounds. 

To do this on your own needs a camera, note book or a tape recorder so you can bring it all back in the form of writing about it. Of course it's a poor second to actually communicating about it on the spot.

Actually whilst there are times that I feel lonely, it's more a reflective process which in itself is interesting. When you are on your own you learn a lot about yourself  as you interrogate the mood your in. In the noise of a relationship there is never a time to hear your own thoughts as you skip along trying to please others.

One of the things I use the blog for is to be "reflective" about a whole host of things and to share these reflections with whoever reads the blog. It's not so much a place to win an argument but simply to put down a proposition, my proposition and move on to something else. 

It is on the one hand cathartic and on the other it revealing. To reveal something of yourself  especially if you are overly sympathetic to a point of view, always has its dangers since ones own sensitivities can be bruised but it's a price worth paying if the reasoning, like a session with a shrink, drills a little deeper into the issue.

In life there are no solutions only knowledge gained.

Thinking too much of course one can subvert a good intention like taking a holiday. 

Why do we take holidays? Why do we go through so much disruption to get to a place we already know or is perhaps new, to do the things that are not all that dissimilar from what we do at home ?

We used to drive down to Margate. The ocean was a big attraction particularly with the children but the tacky shops and the funfair were their delight not mine. I played a role then but now I have run that script into the ground.

When I come over to SA for instance I seem to be retracing steps that had crumbled through time, nothing as pristine as it seemed. I am now a spectator. The environment which used to mean so much in my life was someone else's stage, not my own any-more.

I remember being severely discombobulated when I turned the car into Plantation Rd and realised I didn't live there any more. My memory bank, activated by habit and with the repetition of so many journeys home and I was momentarily schizophrenic, the warmth of being home fighting the reality of being a stranger had a deep physiological  impact and for a moment I felt truly lonely.

I remember being in Sun City in amongst the thousands, including members of my own family, in the casino and feeling almost manic as I realised I didn't belong. I suppose it was the mental conflict which my upbringing (my parents wouldn't countenance gambling) had instilled and the overriding reality of being amongst so many people who love to gamble. It was only a moment or two but I felt truly lonely.
So loneliness is a state of mind not a physiological state of being. You are lonely not because you are one, you can be lonely in a crowd,  you are lonely when your mind can't make sense of its surroundings.

So long as the mind continues to poke around for meaning within the chaos it is far too busy to be lonely.

Its more than an age gap.

As with all things the young and the old seem to be fired with different rocket fuel as their  trajectories go into different orbits. 
The vigour of youth fires them off in a straight line with little time to reflect on the view as they hurtle along. 
The oldies are in a different phase of their travel they have lost their Umph the rocket is beginning to splutter and Gravity is beginning to take over.
Simple things which to an oldie would mean a world of touch and see has been replaced with an algorithm and a set of virtual opportunities which act as a screen to filter the real world from us. No longer the "the reliance on past experience" rather the need to understand layers of computer driven segmentation which if you know the password all will be revealed.
The world of the oldie collides with frustration as his reflection of the path he trod yesterday to get to a specific destination, somehow has been altered by a 'bit' or a 'byte' and he is stymied. Call the technician !
Now the technician, usually young, he/she comes from the "other" camp they know it all, no need for the historical perspective, "its the future man"!!
The collision often leaves the older person bruised. His sense of maturity and the importance he has built into his natural self esteem is ruined, he has to grovel, not an easy thing to do when in many cultures, his age would ensure he is held in esteem.
The technician meanwhile knows his strength and although he hasn't felt the true corrosion which life can exact, he is confident that when the train hits the buffers, the oldies will be there to pick up the pieces !!!
The Oldie remembers the special place his parents and his grandparents had when he was growing up, in reality how "all" elderly members of society were cosseted as special.  He finds it a little galling to find he is now evaluated with the members of a kindergarten.

Gary Player

Watching and listening to Garry Player being interviewed at The Open a couple of days ago I was struck by the abundance of confidence he carries around. His prowess at golf is legendary but his confidence in his religious belief and his life style is equally prodigious.
I would think he is not an easy man to live with. His generosity is on his own terms, you have to earn it by doing 160 press ups before breakfast. His intensity and focus in what he believes in is clear to see and like all fanatics he has divine surety on his side, brooking little or no dissent.
Given a "purpose" in life through his religiosity everything is black and white and you can see him waiting to categorise you, to which side of the fence you sit, you are either for us or against us and I would think in Garry's book there is no crossover.
His description of his fitness regime is an example of his machismo. He delights in watching the reaction to stories of leg pressing 400 pounds 100 times and doing a 1000 sit-ups to start off his day. His eyes twinkle as they assess your incredulity but it is a measure of the man that he has set himself these goals and with almost messianic determination has achieved a whole set of records both personal and athletic.
He is one of the best golfers, his record speaks for itself. His association with Arnold Palmer, and Jack Nicklaus, and the tremendous golfing contests they had throughout the years 1957 - 1986 becoming great friends they somehow didn't let the contest get in the way of the deep respect they must have for each other.
The ebullient Palmer, the polite, reticent Nicklaus and the ferocious self belief of Player would seem strange bed fellows but somehow the acknowledgement that they were each, very special on the golf course sifted out their phycological differences and made them life long friends.
I would think given Garry Players almost pathological desire to push himself he would have acquaintances rather than friends (perhaps his iconic status brings with it a cult of something akin to worship) since to be a friend, he would be a hard task-master.
His conceited is never far below the surface and this must make him very tiring but like his fitness regime which has produced a honed 50 year-old in a 80 year-old body, his passionate positivity and religious surety has sharpened his mind to admit no errors, as he sees it a set of truisms to which you would contest at your peril.

The jewels are not for sale.

Principles, ethics, democracy all describe a part of the human condition tied into our quest for becoming civilised.
But then there is another level of human endeavour which describes a more base attribute, intolerance, parochialism, greed and avarice
The fear in our unfettered political system is that when a political party wins an election , its ideology is relatively unassailable for the five year term. There are no checks and balances other than the vote of its members.
The man, John Whittingdale who the Prime Minister put in charge of challenging and changing the BBC has on record his opposition to certain fundamentals as to the way the BBC is run and funded.
The BBC is seen by the Conservatives as having a left wing bias (in other words in opposition to them) when it comes to politics, much like the Murdoch Empire has a right wing bias. One of the over riding reasons why there is supposed to be a guide in limiting the ownership of the press and television media is that without it, it puts too much power in the hands of one person who could sway the public with too much biased information.
Of course in a democracy you cannot prescribe to a privately owned company what it should and shouldn't do, so long as it within the law. A public company such as the BBC is not under such limitation and the government of the day can, not withstanding the Charter Agreements set up to protect the integrity of the BBC, interfere specifically through the funding arrangements of the licence fee.
A committee has been formed to examine the workings of this highly valued institution, highly valued not only in this country but world wide.
I say highly valued but of course there are many different types of people who make up a community and one is jolted out of ones presumption when people are interviewed. To many the wide ranging high quality program content is of no value since their needs are met by Sky Sport and its American produced entertainment format.
The cost of the Licence Fee which works out at a ridiculously low,10p a day and which also covers but is not acknowledged in the discussion, the radio output both national and local radio.
Competing and offsetting the Licence Fee is the income generated by the subscription package (Sky, Virgin, BT) to obtain the programs (substantially more than that of the Licence Fee) but added to the subscription package cost is that the program content is broken up by "advertising" which I once evaluated as being 40% of the viewing time per hour.
Are we mad to assume that we are equating a licence fee with a subscription when the program content is diminished by 40%.
There is also I would argue the damage perpetrated on an individual's mind with the highly targeted sales pitch repeated time and time again, often disingenuous but in a format designed to 'sublimate' the mind in what I would argue is an unethical practice. The "committee" is formed of the very people who have either an axe to grind or have a financial objective, that of eventually privatising the Beeb. There are no defenders of the Institution on the committee and clearly it's job is to demolish, in stages the values of this truly creative media organisation.
The Tories sense blood and with their election win they are out to radically change the landscape of what the British society has evolved into and stands for, its liberal values and humanitarian precepts mark us out in a world of diminishing values.
We must do all in our power to counter the Tory assault on the BBC.
We must bombard our parliamentarians with our views on this and on the other services such as the NHS which we hold dear in this country. It is the only force at our disposal (other than the barricades) but a political party can only survive on the vote and if we make our voice felt,  as repeatedly as the advertising media do to sell their product, we will have a similar success.

Wearing your heart on your sleeve.

"Wearing your heart on your sleeve" was a symbol of praise or ridicule depending where you were born.
The North has always been seen to be a grass root constituency meaning that the people were on the whole poorer and therefore the effects of a poor economy and the implementation of political decisions are much more likely to be felt by the poor than by the middle class.
The further north you go the more likely the population is susceptible to the vagrancies of decisions made in the corridors of power.

One of the main driving forces of the Scotish revolution was their feeling of a disconnect between Westminster and the needs of Scotland. The binding force of Nationality meant that whilst the North of England felt equally left out they didn't see themselves as a unit, a common voice to speak for the man in the street.

Listening to the SNP is refreshing. Turning up en bloc to take their seats in Parliament they are generally hostile and very vocal in their opposition to the Government. The Labour Party are a shadow of what you would expect The Opposition to be having spent so much time sifting the policies of the Conservatives to oppose only what the Middle Class wouldn't find distasteful, they have lost the ideological base for being in true opposition to the Conservative Party.
"Southerners" have a different philosophy. The counties surrounding London feed from the economic Dynamo which the capital city generates and the population on the whole benefits economically. There is less of a tribal affinity other than the Cockney to the East of the City and this sense of individuality leads them to believe that they cope as an individual, irrespective of what the Establishment decrees. You often find, in discussion, a lack of compassion towards others less well off than themselves. The philosophy "if I can do it so can they" is well entrenched and little cognisance is taken of the circumstances that can throw a curved ball to anyone.
To wear your heart is to acknowledge you have one but of course I speak of the emotional, empathetic, heart not the muscle !!!

Avoid being average

They say that civilisation is skin deep. The inference from that is that deep within us we are truer more real than the persona which we reveal to others.
It's a sad thought that we feel the need to present this false picture, perhaps its based on feeling insecure, constantly searching for a way to project ourselves as we assume others would wish to see us.
This constant ongoing project to please others is not only soul destroying, sapping so much of our energy and real creativity, it suggests an ambivalence in our lives which is unnecessary and damaging.
One of the "issues" that accompany any sort of "combined"relationship is the assumption that all parties are on the same page.
Men when they get together leave much of their prejudice at home and engage in a loose non binding association which succeed by having an interest in the "difference' between us". We learn to assimilate the interests and the hobbies in the spirit of genuine camaraderie and affiliate our friendship through an ongoing discovery of the other person.
Closer to home the wrestling match that is a marriage excludes for many this appreciation of our difference, but makes these differences, a the focus of disharmony. It's as if the difference was a manifestation of a "lack of loyalty" to an ill defined cause.   It's the concept of a "matrimonial cause" which seen from the others perspective is at the root of our unhappiness.
As we try to be a person "acceptable to all", we loose that vital spark of who we really are. 
as individuals. We are more suited to the blokish "see you tomorrow" , without being enveloped in the minutiae or the interrogation of your every move which becomes a pain.
Single or married we should rejoice in our individuality since its this individuality which distinguishes us from the next person and is often the initial thing which attracts one person to another. To be attracted and then to try to choke it off is plain silly !
Viva la difference should be on everyone's lips as they seek out interesting people and interesting relationships.

 Conformity is an acceptance that 'average' is cool. You owe it to yourself not to be average !

Will the real criminal please stand up

The dust hasn't settled yet as Alexis Tsipras has to persuade his parliament to accept a dreadful financial situation forced on the Greek people.
The troika were unrelenting in their pursuit of Greece who were seen as profligate. They practised the tactics of State interrogator threatening to leave the meeting in staged frustration, playing the good cop (France) bad cop (Germany) routine so that eventually after 17 hours of non stop negotiation they bullied the loan appellant Tsipras into signing away the State silver.
For a 68 billion euros loan he handed them the crown jewels which, given the leverage he was under, understated their true value by multiples of the value of the loan. Typical of the capital markets as the suitor for a loan you take what you can get and try not to estimate what, on the open market your assets will fetch. There will be financiers today waiting in the wings to cream enormous profits from the deal.
It also has to be remembered that politics like high finance is a dirty game.
Greece has had financial mismanagement at the route of its governance for decades. This was well known by the political leaders and the EU bureaucracy prior to Greece being joining.
Goldman Sacs were brought in to work their magic and massage the figures to get over the hurdles of due diligence.
Most importantly the financial arrangement was between the "banks" and "Greece". The banks extended them the credit and were the creditors with all the responsibility that lending money brings to the lender.
Somewhere along the line the banks were relieved of this debt, they were allowed to walk away with the European taxpayer now footing the bill.
Like a replay of the 2008 financial crash the banks were bailed out by the taxpayer even though the taxpayer had not been privy to any of the dealings.
Listening to Mrs Merkel and her finance chief, Wolfgang Schauble rage against the Greeks in Vienna would could be forgiven for thinking that they were the innocent party but it was Merkel and Schauble who convinced the ECB to take on the debt to save the German banks.
They were the ones to saddle the taxpayer, they were the ones to let the banks off the hook, the same banks who were guilty of basic financial diligence (examining the books).
Blaming Alexis Tsipras, or the Greeks in general is fraudulent given the history of the Greek saga and particularly Germany's hand in Greece's entry into Monetary Union.

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