Assorted Notes

SATURDAY, 23 APRIL 2005

What is love?

Love is a willingness and a free conscious choice to keep someone else’s needs, well-being and best interests at heart*. Romantic love is when this willingness combines with a strong desire* to be with this person, to share* your life with him or her, and to have this person share his or her life with you.

Asterisks:

to keep at heart = to consider something of great importance; to at least take co-responsibility for something

strong desire = a need which, if not met, may lead to emotional distress

to share = to not keep what makes you happy or what is important to you, or what makes you sad, or what causes you pain or discomfort to yourself

MONDAY, 25 APRIL 2005

14:17

I do not ALWAYS, IMMEDIATELY understand EVERYTHING …

18:34

There are incidents that come out of the blue, and unleash a reaction. Then there is the creeping variety, a greyness that comes from far away, that erodes resistance piece by piece until you are forced, on a Monday in April, to admit to yourself: I am not always so sure of things.

* * *

It is like this: You work and you work and you work, and then, one morning, an image appears from the fog. You see a man’s face, and you see him grin or smile about something. You shrug your shoulders and ask, “What?”

The man replies: “I see you are working your ass off. Have you ever considered the possibility that nothing will ever come of it? That all of this is for nothing?”

20:28

Shame and so on. Since when do I give myself over to such cheap mental tricks?

Plus, I know where it comes from: from the same brackish spring it flowed from last April.

Solution: WRITE.

TUESDAY, 26 APRIL 2005

18:03

“Life in the city is merely a wormlike biological existence where man lives and dies meaninglessly.” ~ Muammar Qaddafi

[The fact that he believed this probably made it easier for him to make it a reality for many people in Libyan cities.]

21:23

To be “Brand Smit” is my personal religion.

If someone converts to a religion, the event is usually accompanied by feelings of euphoria and an improved sense of personal well-being and security – place in the cosmos, identity, sin and salvation, “Eternal Life” and so on. The New Convert can however not simply convert one Friday evening at a gathering and – voila! – the wonderful euphoria and well-being and sense of security last forever. He or she must, starting on Day Two, regularly follow certain rituals to confirm his or her new identity and cosmic status.

THINGS MUST REGULARLY BE DONE TO CONFIRM IDENTITY AND COSMIC STATUS – YOUR PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE ULTIMATE REALITY!

I cannot just know I am “Brand Smit”. It is simply not good enough. The creeping greyness from the past three weeks has once again confirmed what I have also realised in the past: IF I DO NOT WRITE, I AM NOT WHO I SAY I AM.

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MONDAY, 18 APRIL 2005

An American aid worker (a woman named “Marla”) died last weekend in Iraq (roadside bomb). She was probably in many ways an ordinary woman – as ordinary a person as most of us. What was extraordinary about her was her value for a certain community of people who are trapped in a primitive struggle for survival. What was extraordinary about her was her willingness to lose her life for this struggle.

TUESDAY, 19 APRIL 2005

I am, believe it or not, developing sensitivity to the correlation between my efforts and reward in terms of the work I do at home. I mean, I’ve been working on certain projects for how long? That has brought in how much money? And exactly how many people have read what I write? And it does not help that any day now my bicycle is going to deconstruct into ten different parts on the way to the train station, or that my TV’s sound is still screwed up, or that my computer is getting slower by the day, or that I still haven’t been to the dentist … but you remain standing as long as you don’t fall, and the struggle is a daily one. And to complain about such nonsense is after all middle-class.

THURSDAY, 21 APRIL 2005

Walter Reuther (1907-1970), American labour leader: “There is no greater calling than to serve your fellow man. There is no greater contribution than to help the weak. There is no greater satisfaction than to have done it well.”

FRIDAY, 22 APRIL 2005

12:01

The question is not whether or not each one of us is a fool; the question is what we do with our lives in spite of the fact.

The question is also not whether or not each one of us is going to die …

14:16

For centuries philosophers have been contemplating the question of what reality is – what is real, and what is not.

To a large extent I accept the material world as it appears to me. If I see something I recognise from experience as a “table”, I accept the object before my eyes as indeed a table. I also accept the validity of the sounds related to that specific object.

My own interest lay more with the individual “self”. I accept that statements like, “I know who I am” and “I believe in myself,” and terms such as “self-confidence” only have relative value – that is, relative to the environment in which the person finds himself. Make a radical shift to another habitat, or radically change the environment, and suddenly the person may not “know” quite so clearly who he is; he might also not be so sure of himself, and his so-called “confidence” will probably shrink with his self-knowledge and associated self-belief.

What is true for the person regarding his own self, this is what keeps my attention, not so much whether a table or a telephone or a slice of toast is really real.

I know smarter people can argue that there is a connection – and I believe there is, philosophically speaking. However, because of limited time I choose to focus on what is real for the individual person, about him- or herself.

[The probability is strong that I misunderstand what philosophers have been searching for over the centuries.]

18:15

Time spent in any place is worth the proverbial effort if you have used the time to achieve positive results. The idea that you could also have achieved similar results in a different place is of passing interest and maybe not even worth noting. What is important is the process, the goal, the end result. The place is either conducive, or not conducive, and should be judged according to this measure.

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THURSDAY, 14 APRIL 2005

I reckon I can justify being in a bad mood. I look at the amount of work, the labour from months and weeks and days and hours sown during the past four years on the field of projects with financial gain as primary goal.

I also look at my current financial capabilities.

Finally, I look at how I would like to improve my quality of life and trips I would like to take, and then at how I talk about these two issues; also the fact that I am still caught up in the “process”, with fruit of my labour and final results still only in theory on the horizon, and always just a few days’ journey away.

I am not saying I’m discouraged; I am simply saying I think it is okay if I have a little grumble about it …

FRIDAY, 15 APRIL 2005

17:59

Be kind to animals, and to ignorant and unenlightened human beings. (Says some or another hermit with a long beard. If I say it, it comes across as arrogant – for whatever that matters.)

20:14

I can say what I like about the boredom of an English class (one taught by yours truly), but there are a few things that I should bear in mind: English teaching in Taiwan have paid my bills for the past more than six years; it has provided me with a roof over my head, food in my stomach and clothes on my back; it has also enabled me to keep my student loans under control; it has kept my water and electricity going, and my computer and printer in working condition. In short, English teaching in Taiwan has kept the organism which is me alive for the past 75 months.

______________________

FRIDAY, 8 APRIL 2005

What do you need?

You need a partner, someone who understands you, who understands where you come from and what your idea of a future looks like, who accepts your flaws and limitations and who respects your strengths and your view of yourself; someone who recognises your potential and your talents; someone who confirms your positive view of who and what you are. You also need a place – a home, somewhere you can let go of your measures, where you can relax, where you can thrive, where you can grow into who you want to be.

You need honest and genuine love.

TUESDAY, 12 APRIL 2005

Over the past few hours I have (again) become aware of a few things:

* life is always a struggle – at first (or continuously) for survival, and then to either maintain a good life, or for something better – an extraordinary life, according to your own standards;

* there are so many things to fear it is almost a miracle that we are not so fearful all the time that it impedes our functioning;

* considering the previous point, it can be said that confidence is the hallmark of a fool – but, as an excellent illustration of the contradictions of life, you will accomplish nothing if you do not have confidence;

* I find myself quite absurd in the classroom – at home I apply my self-awareness and my abilities to productive and most interesting work, then suddenly I appear in an environment with rules and regulations and conventions, in a shirt that was chosen to go well with my trousers, with my poor Chinese pronunciation and my fabricated “professional” English accent.

Also became aware of what I want to do that I do not currently do; things I still want to know that I do not currently know; skills I want to master which I have not yet mastered; questions I have that I do not know the answers to – for example, what the difference is between an archbishop and a cardinal (train arrives, 21:30).

WEDNESDAY, 13 APRIL 2005

One must believe it is POSSIBLE
for YOU
to be FINANCIALLY INDEPENDENT

that it is furthermore POSSIBLE
for YOU
to be HAPPY

and that it is POSSIBLE
for YOU
to make a POSITIVE CONTRIBUTION

Too many people believe in only one thing: that what has been “given” to them, including socio-economic status and accompanying role, function, and relative value to the community, is the best they can and will ever get out of life; that it may even be vain and arrogant to nurture ambitions beyond that range. These beliefs will in my opinion be to a large extent responsible for that remaining their reality.

______________________

SATURDAY, 2 APRIL 2005

Last night I had a dream. Images of a staged battle from the Roman period flashed through my mind. There was also an oversized two-storey building with small apartments.

A woman discreetly entered one apartment to eat modern food. After this woman had left, I sneaked in, grabbed some raisins and nuts from the kitchen and stuffed it all in my pocket. Then, in the living room, I discovered a hard-boiled egg and took that as well – after I almost emptied a salt shaker on it. (The salt shaker was standing on a coffee table, with a lot of spilled salt around it.)

I walked down the vast, over-sized hallway where two women confronted me with the insinuation that I am not always the same person. They peppered me with questions like, “How is this name pronounced in that language?”

By the time we got to the ground floor, my initially polite answers to their questions had transformed into a more heated response. “I, myself was given a very ethnic-specific name,” I said, “but sometimes you need to express yourself in other ways than those you were given. And sometimes you choose to go beyond what you’ve been given, in order to transform yourself! And maybe you do so for no reason other than as a first step towards, and for the sake of, transforming … the community … in which you live.”

By the last sentence, the two women had become so terrified that one was hiding behind the other one. When I turned around and started walking away, the woman who had been hiding followed me, scratching my back with both hands – in a feline sort of self-defensive action.

Then I remembered the egg which I had taken from the apartment. I put my hand in my trouser pocket, crushed the egg, then turned slightly, reached over my shoulder and shoved the broken pieces into her face.

The last sentence of my short speech was measured. Up until that point I had been speaking in a loud, urgent tone, but then I softened my tone to emphasise the words – especially since they might have expected me to say, transforming the world.

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