Assorted Notes

MONDAY, 13 DECEMBER 2004

11:26

The point is to live for something, so that when we die, we will know our lives were not in vain.

11:36

The question then is, what do you live for?

Many people will say, “We live for our children.”

I ask: What does that mean? You live for your children, they live for their children … at some or other point someone will have to live for something else, whether they have children of their own or not!

I think it’s ill-considered, even dangerous to say you live for your children. It feels right. You truly love your children, and you will literally take someone’s face off to save your children, so … it can only be right to declare: “I live for my children! And for my wife … (or my husband).” Isn’t that true?

No! It’s something that feels noble and right – and it looks noble and right on paper, but in actual fact one generation simply replaces the next with no proper understanding of the value or possible purpose of their lives, other than, “I need to have children.”

Does anybody else hear alarm bells going off?

THURSDAY, 16 DECEMBER 2004

A somewhat messy process

CONFRONT (yourself)

… Accept (what you cannot change)

… Change (what is within your abilities to change)

DEFINE (who you want to be)

BECOME (who you have defined you want to be)

Naturally the three steps do not neatly follow on each other. You are trying to BECOME something or someone. You realise it is not what or who you want to be. You CONFRONT yourself … although you already did that when you realised you did not want to become what or who you were BECOMING. You were also already subconsciously DEFINING yourself when you realised you did not want to be who you were in the process of BECOMING. You continue with DEFINING while you CONFRONT yourself. And because your life does not stand still for a second, you are busy BECOMING throughout this process of CONFRONTING and DEFINING.

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THURSDAY, 9 DECEMBER 2004

Travel packages for life, note I

1) Settle down or keep roaming?

2) What do you do before you settle down?

FRIDAY, 10 DECEMBER 2004

Travel packages for life, note II

In an earlier note I mentioned that people either settle down or they keep roaming; also that necessary preparations must be made before you can put roots down somewhere, if that is your choice.

I myself spent five years at university and obtained three qualifications – things that normally qualify as good preparation if you had wanted to settle down and establish yourself somewhere.

These preparations were however not enough for me. Of course I did not know ten years or even five years ago what I know now … even though I had this idea if I could only get this or that done I will be ready to settle down somewhat.

What I know now is that “The Personal Agenda of Brand Smit” weighs more in terms of preparation than five years’ worth of so-called professional qualifications did ten years ago.

What I am therefore saying is that I don’t want to keep roaming …

* * *

All I am saying is that a lot of things I had wanted to say, many questions I had wanted to at least formulate, that I had wanted to find answers to if possible, do not have to be said, or formulated, or answered again.

Many things are still being written and will be written in the future. Nothing, however, can take anything away from the fact that a lot has already been said …

Incidentally, the very students to whom I had said a minute ago, Excuse me please, I just want to quickly make a note, just told me in all seriousness that they never talk to themselves. Is this even possible? How can you have a proper Consciousness of Self if you don’t talk to yourself?

SUNDAY, 12 DECEMBER 2004

Travel packages for life, note III

Continue roaming or settle down, right? The image of the Wanderer is often of someone who doesn’t have access to significant financial resources, who does odd jobs here and there for a paltry, irregular income, and who then drifts off once again to look elsewhere for his salvation, or for new excitement.

Now imagine an affluent wanderer.

Also take into account that place, or rather a home, serves a purpose. Besides being where you feel safe, it is where you give aesthetic expression to your uniqueness and your particular experience of reality. What if you do not experience the latter need as intensely anymore? What advantages are there to a nomadic existence?

MONDAY, 13 DECEMBER 2004

Travel packages for life, note IV

Another word for “wanderer” is “drifter”. I don’t like the implications of that – someone going from point A to J to C to P to X to E, not knowing where he’s heading. A better word is “traveller”.

Travel packages for life, note V

17:06

Does a Traveller have a home? Sure. A Drifter does not have a home – it is implied, just as the word “drift” implies aimlessness and lack of direction.

17:20

A Traveller travels from place to place, but the understanding is that he is following a certain direction or that he at least has a final destination in mind – and also that he has a reason why he travels, that he may even have an agenda that he serves or wants to serve.

17:52

So, the question should be: are you are a Drifter/Wanderer/Nomad, a Traveller, or a Settler?

[Or perhaps all three at different times in your life? Circumstances also change. Maybe you start out as a Traveller. Then you decide to settle down. After twenty or thirty years you become a Traveller again, but you end up as nothing more than a Drifter.]

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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.

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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?

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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?]

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