Assorted Notes

WEDNESDAY, 3 MARCH 2010

11:58

Two (possibly) unrelated thoughts:

1. My blue electric guitar that I bought in 2000 in a manic period when I thought I was going to become a rock star or something has finally revealed its true purpose and value: to be sold after ten years for food money that might last for as long as two weeks.

2. In case I missed it, the point is education, and more specifically, me facilitating other people’s education. I think the topic is obvious: financial independence. (How does it work if I am struggling to keep my own head above water? We learn from each other’s mistakes, and from what we gather on the way to our destination.)

20:39

It is better to be psychotic and/or to live in a delusion than it is to give up. “One can never be radical enough; that is, one must always try to be as radical as reality itself,” Lenin apparently once said.

FRIDAY, 5 MARCH 2010

Three images:

– The successful person – family and friends regard him as successful, so do colleagues and acquaintances, but above all, he regards himself as successful

– The one who has given up – draws life-energy from anyone who’s still trying; shoots down all ideas; sours hope; criticises everything; bitter demeanour

– The one who keeps trying – even if it comes to a point where his friends and family start thinking he will never “make” it, even if he fails to achieve his objectives in the reasonable time he had set for himself, he will continue working on them, and he will probably continue until the day he withers away and disappears into the nothingness

SUNDAY, 21 MARCH 2010

Nothing accentuates your shame and embarrassment quite as much as having absolutely no cash, and not enough money in the bank to withdraw what you do have from an ATM.

FRIDAY, 26 MARCH 2010

For years, I have had this tendency to be uncomfortable about the possibility of excessive happiness.

Says a voice in my head: You are doing about 25 or 30% on the happiness scale at the moment. Many people can go to about 80% before they start feeling giddy. You can personally go to about 60 or 65% before your head will explode – which means at least for the foreseeable future you don’t have anything to worry about.

MONDAY, 29 MARCH 2010

Protect the spirit – that is your main responsibility. When the spirit goes, everything goes.

______________________

FRIDAY, 5 MARCH 2010

“Am I on the right track?” I hear a voice ask. “Are we doing the right things now?”

Imagine you are planning a trip, let’s say Pretoria to Cape Town. You booked your train ticket; you pack your bag the day before leaving; you go to bed early; you get up on time. More than an hour before departure time you’re already at Pretoria station. You check in, find your compartment, load your luggage and wait patiently at the seat next to the window for the train to depart. Promptly at the right minute, the train starts moving, and you’re on your way to your planned destination.

Me asking myself why “we” are still broke even though “we” are apparently doing the right things is like me asking in my train travel story when the train is drawing closer to Kimberley, “Why are we still not in Cape Town? Something isn’t right. You say we’re on the right train, apparently heading to Cape Town, but I don’t even see the outline of Table Mountain yet! What’s going on here?”

My advice to the “traveller”: Calm down. You will arrive when the train has made stops at all the right places, and you patiently continued the journey and resisted the temptation to get off at Three Sisters or De Aar because you could swear another train will get you to Cape Town faster. You are on the right train. Just stay calm.

______________________

THURSDAY, 18 FEBRUARY 2010

The more other people have an interest in your success, the higher the probability that you will be successful.

Also, the more other people will be affected by your failure, the more they will do to try and help avoid it.

WEDNESDAY, 24 FEBRUARY 2010

I know of a guy who owns an after-school language centre in the city – like the centres where we teach English. All indications are that he doesn’t have a clue about marketing. Still, he makes good money with his business.

Why? Because the system on which his business operates was developed by other people, and he is basically running it according to their formula.

This means he can remove himself to an extent from the business and still make money.

This means you can make money despite your weaknesses if you have a good system in place and you are disciplined enough to follow the system. Even more so if this system involves skilled people – who each do their part in exchange for fair compensation.

SATURDAY, 27 FEBRUARY 2010

If your parents did not make available to you a piece of land where you can grow vegetables and perhaps keep a few chickens, you need capital which you can exchange for what you need to stay alive.

There are two ways to legally obtain capital (except as part of an inheritance): you either sell something, or you speculate on the value of something.

If you sell, it is imperative that what you sell has value for at least one person.

If you speculate on value, you must have the ability to determine actual value – an ability good enough to get back on the long run what you have risked plus a few percent profit.

If you do not master at least one of the two ways to legally obtain capital, you will have nothing to exchange for what you need to survive. (If you resort to criminal activities to get what you need, the authorities will be compelled to arrest you and deprive you of your liberty and possibly even your life.)

If another person or institution takes pity on you, you can still survive; if not, you will die.

______________________

MONDAY, 22 FEBRUARY 2010

18:37

The conversation with myself started as a contemplation on my bicycle on the way to my usual dinner place. I thought about how I constantly second-guess myself these days: Was I supposed to say that? Should I have acted differently? Should I respond differently because I’m almost forty?

I reckoned that I had always thought one outgrows these insecurities.

“Maybe it makes a difference if you have children,” I thought to myself. “You have more important things to worry about, so you have little time or inclination for ridiculous age-related insecurities.”

“Imagine,” came the response from the other voice in my head, “I suddenly say I want to have children.”

“That’s the problem,” I immediately retorted. “If pregnancy is the natural consequence of the being-together of a man and a woman, then so be it. I’ve been saying this for a long time. But if you plan pregnancy … it’s too selfish. I want a child – no matter what suffering the child would have to endure in this world.”

“Are you saying planned pregnancy is a bad idea?”

“No, I’m just saying that personally I have a problem with a planned pregnancy. This means I would have to look my child in the eyes when he or she is going through pain and suffering, and I would have to say I’m sorry, I needed to become a father, so you’re just going to have to suffer the consequences. If my wife should become pregnant, then we can say, okay, it was the natural consequence of a natural act between two people who love each other, a normal phenomenon in a healthy relationship: Sperm fertilised an egg; the fertilised egg grew into an embryo, then a foetus; and nine months later a child was born. Okay, let’s do our best. Let’s make sure this child has everything he or she needs and that he or she gets a good education. We’ll give him or her all the love and support we can. We’ll create opportunities. We’ll teach him or her how to seize opportunities. We’ll protect him or her as much as we can against the onslaughts of this world. In this case, the child is the natural consequence of a man and a woman being together.”

“But the woman can still choose to terminate the pregnancy. Not to end the pregnancy is also a choice. In that case, you still say: We want to have a child.”

“Fair enough, but it will be an unnatural interference.”

“What you’re saying is that if the child results from a natural process, that’s okay. If a person says, I want to have a child, or I want to be a mum or a dad, it’s no longer natural. Then you are forcing the process. If a woman becomes pregnant, and she gets an abortion, she is once again interfering with the process. Once again, it is unnatural.”

“Right. If it is natural, if the birth is the result of a natural process – relationship, togetherness, sperm and egg, nine months, child – you’re covered, so to speak. Then you would never have to look your child in the eyes and say, I am sorry for the suffering that you, my child, must go through, but I really wanted to have a child. You can say – even though you’re still deeply distressed to see your child suffer – that the child’s existence is the result of a natural process.”

“What if the man or the woman uses contraceptives? Isn’t that also interfering with the natural process?”

Silence.

Post-conversation thoughts:

What is the difference between the unnatural interference to create a child and the unnatural interference to arrest the process that would otherwise lead to the birth of a child?

Hormone treatment, sperm count, test tubes, abortion, too many children to care for, incompetent parents, contraception, adult men and women’s emotional needs. Can the ball of wool still be untangled?

21:50

It is not a matter of RIGHT or WRONG, it is a question of where on the spectrum.

There is the extreme of unplanned pregnancy: an addict who exchanges sex for drugs and gives birth to a child who is addicted to drugs from the very start of his or her existence and who has almost no hope and no future.

Then there is the extreme of planned pregnancy: the bored adult who figures they are in the mood for a new role, or who thinks a child will give him or her something to do, or fill a void that cannot (currently) be filled with anything else. Dissatisfaction with the Current Self, and the belief: “I need a child.”

______________________

THURSDAY, 21 JANUARY 2010

This morning I saw a large wooden table on a sidewalk, tipped over on its side, legs pointing stiffly forward, like a cow that had suddenly dropped dead.

What a waste, I thought.

Earlier I passed a Cadillac parked by the side of the road – covered with dust, a few scratches, tyres a little flat, “For sale!” sign in its windshield like all the other abandoned cars on that stretch of road.

What a waste, I also thought.

This morning on the way to my apartment I thought about how much I have learned the past few years. I am good at research, following clues, collecting material, sorting material, weighing opinions, formulating opinions – but when it comes to implementation, I can’t stick to one thing for long enough to make a success of it.

So, with this issue, too, I cannot help but think, what a bloody waste.

TUESDAY, 26 JANUARY 2010

Who is this 20-foot bully before whom I kneel in submission, before whom I prostrate myself in the dust? Tell me the name of the monster whose servant I am, and probably will stay all my life. Tell me in whose name I suffer. In whose name do I still wear the same clothes as five years ago? In whose name am I broke? In whose name do I borrow and beg and worry about money? Tell me – what is the name of this monster?

THURSDAY, 28 JANUARY 2010

Why, starting in May 2006, haven’t I tried harder to get more teaching jobs to make more money? Why haven’t I tried harder to work with other people?

The answer to both questions reminds me of the old saying: “Be careful what you wish for.” And it confirms what I have read someone said about the subconscious: that it is like a powerful genie, yet at the same time like a 3-year-old child.

One of my earliest desires was to be left alone, to stand on the side observing the world from a distance.

It seems that the fulfilment of a desire has impeded the realisation of a dream.

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