Author: Brand Smit

SATURDAY, 11 DECEMBER 2004

To possess the right math and science

Many people like to say that life is not just math and science. I believe it is – we just don’t have all the formulas yet.

Two thousand years ago all matter also consisted of atoms – most people just did not know it yet. A thousand years ago people also had the intellectual capacity to design a rocket and put someone on the moon – they simply had not yet mastered the necessary math and science.

SUNDAY, 12 DECEMBER 2004

When the questions start

We know what we need to know in order to function more or less successfully at least half of the time. As soon as our needs change, or as soon as we become aware of a problem in how we function, we start asking questions, and we start looking in other places for better answers than what we had been reciting up until that point in our lives as our own, or that we had reckoned over the years up until that moment to be our particular versions of the answers that had been given to us.

______________________

THURSDAY, 9 DECEMBER 2004

Many people are familiar with the phenomenon of discomfort with themselves. One of the things they do to alleviate this discomfort is to make sure they spend as much of their waking hours as possible with people who like them, and who are comfortable with them.

“What on earth is wrong with this?” many will certainly cry out.

And I will feel tempted to say, nothing. I am just making an innocent remark.

But plenty of fish have swum through many an ocean on this planet since a question had started piquing my interest: What does it give the individual to be with other people?

A further question is what would be the result if the need that is being met with interaction with other people is reduced? Certainly the individual will not yearn for the fellowship of other people as often as before, and for such extended periods – an idea that will surely exasperate anyone who believes in the universal value of spending time with other human beings.

A third and final question: say a person can indeed reduce his or her need for companionship, would it not enable the person to be less dependent on the dictates of others on how they should appear to the community, about how they should function, and about what they ought to say and do, when, and in what ways?

Side thought: Some people may want to point out that human beings are not mechanical creatures waiting for instructions to be punched in before they can utter a word or raise a limb. Naturally very few people wait for someone else to punch out a command on their foreheads before they start taking action. The prescriptions and rules I refer to are sometimes subtle and other times they cannot possibly be more explicit, at times common sense and sometimes so obfuscated that if you would point it out to some people, they will immediately strike their armour and run for their war ponies in order to force you to retract your words.

What effect, to summarise, would it have on the psyche of an individual when he or she is freed from the prescriptions of others on how they should appear, how they should behave, and what they ought to do and what not? And may it be that in the case of certain individuals this freedom could be an essential part of the process that would enable them to bring about a positive result of their existence on this planet?

______________________

THURSDAY, 9 DECEMBER 2004

To impress others in their social and/or professional circles is a daily ambition for many people. What is supposed to create a good impression ranges from property acquired to actions taken, from projects successfully completed to promotion at work, from new people with whom contact has been made to most recent sexual conquests.

There are several reasons why people want to impress others. There is the common, “If they’re impressed with me, they’ll like me, and then I can feel good about myself!” There is also the more cynical ambition of a specific end result to be achieved, and when people are impressed with whatever is dished up, the one who had wanted to create the impression could walk away with new reason to sniff the air. A last example that can be mentioned is sexual needs fulfilment. A target is identified with a cursory exploration of the environment, sentences are conceived and polished by mint-flavoured tongues long before they exit the oral cavity, and general body language and behaviour are modified according to the latest ideas and fashions so that the one in need can appear much stronger, smarter, cooler, and more interesting than can ever be the case in bright daylight.

What impresses the modest writer of these paragraphs? Immune he is not to the shine of a new bicycle a friend has recently acquired. Projects undertaken for personal fulfilment and brought to successful conclusion are also something on which he always likes to voice his opinion – regardless of his knowledge or level of expertise on the subject. Promotions at work that befall people from time to time may occasionally lead to as many as sixty seconds of interesting conversation, and possibly more if the new position requires some creativity, or actions that will be undertaken that will have some real value beyond the financial compensation it will bring to the newly promoted person. Sexual conquests for the sake of employing it the next day to improve self-esteem and to create a more impressive appearance are, in my humble opinion – and I know I run the risk of being accused of simple envy – in bad taste.

[Your turn: With what do you try to impress other people, and what do you want to achieve with that? And what impresses you, and why?]

______________________

MONDAY, 6 DECEMBER 2004

Value and meaning, and the insight of children

Sometimes a quarter of an hour will pass, or a whole hour … maybe a few hours or an entire day when you just react without having any significant experiences or thinking any thoughts that you would consider worth writing down, if you were in the habit of doing so.

What value do these times have? Do they simply ensure continuity in a life that hopefully includes more meaningful moments?

Another question: What does it say about your existence if more significant moments are so irregular that you want to burst into tears when they do occur?

* * *

Judy, a six year-old student in my one class, got up from her desk, walked up to me where I was sitting behind my desk in the front of the classroom and said, “I saw you talking to someone, but I couldn’t see who. Now I see you’re talking to the eraser.”

[And it wasn’t even my eraser …]

TUESDAY, 7 DECEMBER 2004

To move on from place to …

For years I kept saying, “Place, place, place!” Only later did I figure out place is conducive to something – definition of identity. Identity in turn is conducive to something else, namely successful functioning. The latter is, however, not the alpha and omega of human existence. I believe 99 out of every hundred people stop at identity and successful functioning. Very few move beyond that …

______________________

THURSDAY, 2 DECEMBER 2004

If you are overly burdened with instructions on what you may say and what not, where certain things may be said and where not, how you should say things and how you’d better not, if you are under prescript of what vocabulary you may utter and what not, then your speech – the primary way in which most people express their experience of reality – is not free. If you are not freely able to express your experience of reality, or do so only in ways that are prescribed to you, you are not free. And seeing that how you appear to the world is determined to a large extent by the way you express your experience of reality, it ultimately becomes part of WHO YOU ARE. Who you are, is then to a significant degree the result of unfree self-expression. Who you are, is then a result approved by the dictates of a particular time and place.

FRIDAY, 3 DECEMBER 2004

“You’re catching me in anonymity. Now I have to become someone again!” says “Brand” to his friend [O] after the latter confronts him out of the blue where he is standing outside a 7-Eleven, smoking a cigarette.

______________________