Author: sophiekemsley

Reflections | snoitcelfeR

| sophiekemsley

Roll back the clock two years and I remember an incredibly depressing point of my life in which – whilst all of the important things (family, friends, health) were thankfully intact, I was struggling to cope with being in a new town where I had no job, no friends and no money to do anything with.  Much of the Summer was spent at home, trawling through job websites trying to find something, anything to apply to.  Lack of employment meant I didn’t have the means to go back home to see my friends often, meaning that I seldom did anything social and over the Summer pretty much forgot how to orally communicate with people unless I’d known them for considerable time, due to the lack of opportunity to interact with people in person.

In that kind of situation, you are very limited with the things you can do to pass the time.  For me, it seemed as though every day would revolve around waking up at noon, eating some breakfast/lunch, going for a coffee in town – “table for one, please”, maybe reading a book, having dinner, listening to music and then watching The Simpsons in bed with an ice-cream…  I generally worry about things a lot more than I should, but seldom do I feel dispirited to the extent of tears, yet back then crying was something I did every day.   I always knew my problems weren’t the worst in the world and that one day far worse things will happen to me, but it was hard to get any joy from that all the whilst I felt as though I had no idea when things would change.  Canterbury is one of the most beautiful places in the UK yet for a while I really struggled to like it; at least back in Watford – the ugly duckling of English towns – I could find work, and had friends.

Yet there is one thing about that hard, sweltering Summer of 2011 which I will always be grateful for.  Indeed, as with any difficulty or problem that seems to stick around for much longer than you’d like, you eventually have no option but to try and find a solution – or if you can’t ‘find’, you ‘make’.  Not every problem will resolve itself in time; you have to take action.  My solution of choice was focused upon trying to understand myself a bit better; to be at peace with myself and be on my own team rather than repeatedly taunting myself with negative thoughts about how crap a person I must be for being unable to sustain a conversation with somebody I don’t know very well, or for failing to land that part-time job as a window-cleaner which had seemed like such a beacon of hope one desperate, grotty Friday morning at the Job Centre, or ‘Nob Centre’ as I preferred to refer to it.

Towards the end of this unhappy phase, after a small little journey of self-discovery, I had managed to re-discover a sense of positivity about everything and find pleasance in even the smallest or simplest of things.  The facts were that the people I cared about the most were all still alive, I had a roof over my head, there were some great people in my life albeit not around here, I’d learned that Chom Chom in town does the most amazing panang curry, and that the sun-setting over the North Downs Way is one of the most beautiful environments in which you can cycle: a thrill that is not only free, but natural.  I still had no job, and no friends in Canterbury, but finally I was looking at the larger picture as opposed to the smaller, day-to-day one.  It’s funny how you can attribute such varying levels of value to something depending on your personal circumstances at the time.  Once I felt as though I had embraced the initial difficulties, I began to find that the more time I had to myself, and the harder the difficulties I felt like I was going through, the more I was beginning to appreciate even the smallest of things around me.

Which is what leads me to the main point of this post, which is essentially to emphasize just how quickly we can begin to take things for granted the second we get tied up in the regular, day-to-day, rat-race life that is so prominent here within our society.

Two years on, my life is very different.  Contrary to the Summer of 2011, time to myself now feels like something of a rarity.  Indeed, the time which I do spend alone is normally spent thinking about the concerns going on immediately around me – this piece of work, that piece of work, arranging that outing, why did the man on the train look at me strange, setting my alarm clock for tomorrow, wondering what that message really meant, preparing my bag, what train do I need to catch to get to such-and-such place on time, I think I’ve pissed so-and-so off, I need to book a hair appointment, the money hasn’t reached my account yet, how much longer do I leave the potatoes in for, I can’t find my purse, I don’t enough have enough pairs of clean tights to last the week, I’ve run out of butter…

If we’re not careful, then the busier life becomes, the more we take for granted.  The bigger picture can quickly become warped into a sense of tunnel vision whereby we focus only on the most immediate things around us, simply because they appear to become the most urgent of our priorities.   We have more things to do and as our spare time consequently shrinks around us there is less opportunity to think about anything else, and it becomes much harder to find that fifteen or so minutes a day where you can sit back and take some deep breaths whilst breathing in the relaxing vapours of a joss stick named after some kind of magical entity from a faraway country whilst reflecting on the truly important stuff.  The daily grind swallows us whole and we have less time for the basics.  It becomes a big-wow moment if we can spend a few hours a week amongst nature, and we have to schedule in appointments with our friends months in advance.  Before we know it, it’s Christmas again and the start of another New Year in which we will make resolutions only to find that a couple of weeks later, it’s time to make them again.

It can become so easy to feel like a passenger in your own body; going through the motions without really thinking about why you’re doing what you’re doing.  Doing life rather than feeling it.  Why?  Simply because you have a billion other things to think about, too.

All this does is serve as a reminder as to why it’s so important to have that time out to ourselves occasionally, a time to re-connect with ourselves and our values and make sure that they’re not being lost within that grand melee of day to day activities that can so often fool us into thinking that there is ever anything more important than those root things without which we would truly struggle – our nearest and dearest, our key values, our dreams and desires and our passions.

Whilst I wouldn’t wish to experience the Summer of 2011 ever again, I am grateful in a sense for the opportunity to have had that ‘time-out’ to work things out and understand myself a bit better and realise what’s truly important in life.  If you can only whip that bigger picture out at intermittent points throughout the day, week or month, you’re still keeping check on what matters the most.  Just make sure you give yourself the time to do so…

Song of the Day:  The Grammar Club – Underbeard

This is a novelty U.S band singing a novelty song about unwelcome facial hair.  It has been stuck in my head for weeks.  Hopefully now it will be stuck in yours:



World Music, Real World Music!

| sophiekemsley

Question:  What kind of musical performance do you get when you mix together the Indonesian, the Pakistani, the Kuwaiti-Canadian, the Vietnamese, the Dutch, the Taiwanese and the British?
Answer:  This incredibly catchy albeit repetitive tune composed ad hoc three years ago in a friend’s uncle’s house near Bukittinggi, West Sumatra.

Simple song, simple melody, simple lyrics, unforgettable moment.

 

Something to Say About May

| sophiekemsley

Not a proper post from me this month as I’ve been using my spare time to swot up for my driving theory test (yes, the thing most people do when they’ve barely outgrown their Pampers Pull-ups, but what idiots like me need to do now because they failed their practical test enough times a decade ago to eventually invalidate the original theory pass).

Instead, I just wanted to share a damning if not slightly amusing observation I made earlier about today’s date and the range in fortunes it has seen over the past few years:

The 23rd of May 2010 – on a plane to Indonesia, looking out the window to this view, sat next to a somewhat dishy Australian surfer, with three months of awe-inspiring moments ahead…:

Indonesia 002

The 23rd of May 2013 – on a train to Ashford, looking out the window to this view, sat next to a loud, obnoxious chap in a suit, with an half-hour journey through commuter mundanity ahead…:

20130523_065052

…If there’s anything we can say about life for sure, it’s that it’s loaded with extremes.  I guess it’s that fact alone that can help us to facilitate the savouring of good moments as they occur, but keep on walking through the not-so-good moments.

So… bring on tomorrow and whatever surprises it may bring, because that’s what keeps things interesting 😉

Song of the Day:  Psapp – Monster Song

Psapp are a quirky little duo from London who are often credited as being the inventors of the toytronica genre – a musical style that incorporates the use of childrens’ toys amongst standard electronics.

I have nothing but respect for any artist responsible for that.

Something I Wish I’d Realised Earlier

| sophiekemsley

(When I decided to ‘draw’ a post, I forgot to factor in how terrible I am at Art, but at least it means I don’t have to worry about people stealing pictures from my site)

part11part22part33part44

part55part66

Knowing what to do and making decisions is often a far from simple process for anybody, particularly if there are important things at stake.

I hate having to choose between things (and I’m not just talking about whether to go for number 38 – Sweet and Sour pork, or number 42 – Crispy Chilli Beef – although that dilemma is dismaying enough).  It’s especially daunting when the available options vary significantly in their potential outcomes or implications, and sometimes it’s easier just to turn our backs on the decision altogether, and continue on our merry way as we were before, rather than throw caution to the wind, go with our gut and get on with it.

Other times, it’s not even just the fear that prevents us from making a decision, but a genuine yearning for each of the choices – to go to the beach and swim or go to the park and picnic? To live in the town where there’s a lot going on, or to live in the countryside where the surroundings are so green and beautiful?  To travel the world or to settle down sooner with a house and family? To become a teacher or to become an astronaut?  To wear pyjamas or to wear a nightgown…. etc, etc.

The problem is that all the whilst you’re trying to choose between these things and contemplating about how good each one could be you’re not actually doing any of them.  You are being pulled in different directions and then like the stick-men in the rowing boat above, you remain motionless as a result – if the options you wish to pursue are polar-opposites it will be harder to make any visible progress with any of them.

Unless you make a plan.  One that includes everything you want it to include, in a way which can work with a bit of forward-thinking and perhaps a bit of compromise too.  It’s not impossible to pursue each option provided you manage to fit them around one another and if you think long and hard enough about it all you are bound to find a way in which you can do that.  Up until around two years ago, I couldn’t for the life of me choose between Career or Travel.  I didn’t want to commit to a career because I knew it would mean I couldn’t just swan off to Asia for three months again, and I didn’t want to commit to Travel because I knew it would delay me from getting my career on track.  I wanted both but the problem was that whilst I wasn’t earning from a career, I couldn’t exactly afford to travel either.  In essence I was doing sod-all; treading water in a small oasis in the middle of a desert.  I was unhappy and felt pointless because I wasn’t doing either of the things I really wanted to and, on top of all that, I was wasting valuable time.  I realised I needed to make a proper plan, so took a notepad into a coffee shop and started thinking.  It was only then that I realised I could be doing both: pursuing a career and then using the salary to travel during the holidays.*  It sounds so obvious now but for many months I felt I had to choose between the two, and it’s in that area of No Man’s Land in which you are most in danger of feeling pressured to pick one option over the other and completely forgetting all about the one you don’t pursue, when it could be something that really means a lot to you.

So, if you are really struggling to choose between things, particularly when it comes to working out what you want to do with your life, just remember to slow down and take the time to try and make each of the pieces of the puzzle fit together somehow.  Take each of the things that are important to you and allocate the times when you will focus on them so that they can all feature in your grand plan.  Wear your pyjamas in Winter and your nightgown in Summer; be an astronaut whilst you’re young and fit and a teacher when you’re older, wiser and able to tell your pupils amusing anecdotes about Space; go the beach now whilst the sun is shining and save the park for later on, when it’s cooler and you don’t plan on swimming.

There’s always a way to make things work, provided you take the time to find it.  You can do everything, provided you have patience and a plan.

* – This particular decision is a rarity, I’m still, for the most part, crap at making them – but now I at least realise it doesn’t always have to be about one or the other.

Song of the Day:  Dinosaur Feathers – Family Waves

I just can’t seem to get bored of listening to this song by New York indie-pop act Dinosaur Feathers.  These guys are criminally under-rated, but music sounds better when it’s like that.

Regrets of the Dying = A Lesson For The Living

| sophiekemsley

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse.

She has spent a number of years working in palliative care, supporting a variety of patients who are trying to come to grips with the fact that they have only days left to live.

You can imagine that the nature of this work has allowed her to spend a considerable amount of time engaging and speaking with people who, upon knowing that they are about to reach the end of their lives, have been able to look back and pick out and divulge the bits they loved, the bits they loathed… and the bits they wish they’d never allowed to happen.

Over the course of time, Ware began to notice several common themes which she collated into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, available to buy on Amazon.

The ‘Five Regrets’ have since featured on various sites across cyberspace, and so you may already be acquainted with them, but for me they serve as both an interesting and very valuable read which is worth sharing again.  I love a good old inspirational quote – and the likes of scholars, philosophers and successful entrepreneurs provide us with these in abundance, but the lessons we can learn from ordinary people, just like you and I, resonate much deeper within me.  Evidently, they had the same affect on Ware, who saw the potential that this information had to change the lives of those who still (*touch wood*) have the time left to act upon these lessons.

So here we go – the Five most frequently cited Regrets of the Dying, each followed by own personal take on them.

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

Maybe I’m completely wrong about my interpretation of this one, but here goes anyway…

There seems to be this uncodified yet uniform belief and expectation that by the time you reach the end of your life, your personal timeline will probably read something like this:

Birth -> Childhood -> School -> Work -> Marriage -> Own Home -> Children -> Retirement -> Death

I’m sure we’d all be happy with a timeline like this, but I think sometimes there’s far too much emphasis on this one particular trajectory, so much so that it almost comes across as an expectation that society has – an expectation that either you will actively seek to do the following or… be questioned, whether directly or indirectly, as to why not.

Expectations aren’t always bad things, sometimes they can act as marker points that help us move forward and progress.   But other times they can be somewhat dangerous, in that they can lead to inferiority complexes or anxieties.  People might worry that they can’t match up to a particular ‘expectation’, even if they’d like to.  Perhaps people will worry that they may never find somebody to marry, or maybe they’ll worry that just because they had an x, y or z kind of education, that their future is already written in the stars for them and that nothing they do now will change that.  But most frightening of all, is that people might worry that they are not good enough, and that their life choices aren’t respectable enough in the eyes of those around them, and this is perhaps the saddest part.

Ultimately, the quote says it all.  Trying to live up to any apparent expectations is a waste of time and a barrier to true happiness.

With anything you do, there’ll always be somebody somewhere who disagrees with it.  I don’t mean that in a negative way, but a positive one.  The reality is that there’s no point even trying to fit in with other peoples’ expectations, so save your time and stress and just follow your own.

The outside of the box can be a very scary place to be, you could end up anywhere and the possibilities aren’t always good.  By all means the inside is more secure, but it can also be at times claustrophobic and doesn’t always have as interesting a view. 

In the end, you have to do what is right for you.  It doesn’t matter if people ask questions about why you have or haven’t done particular things.  Live and let live, but for your own good, don’t let other peoples’ expectations dictate your life.  The truth is that there are a multitude of ways in which a life can be lived.  Do the things you truly want to do – be it getting married and having children or staying single and travelling around the world with your own business – and then, unlike a lot of the people featured in Bronnie Ware’s research, you’ll die without having the most common regret of the dying.  You will have lived a life true to yourself.

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

Ok.  Some facts:  Work is essential to survive.  Work gives us purpose.  Work challenges us. Work rewards us and, most importantly, Work prevents us from spending all of our days sitting on the sofa dunking digestive biscuits into a cup of tea whilst watching Jeremy Kyle.  We may often moan or worry about Work, but if we didn’t have it our lives would be far more complicated, fiscally much more stressful, and much more lacking in purpose.  You need only look at the various statistics denoting the link between unemployment and depression to know that this is more than just a personal opinion, it’s a reality.

But – let’s stop massaging Work’s ego and making it out to be some kind of heroic deity sent down from the Heavens to save us, because there are limits to the wonderful things that Work can do for us, and in actuality, we need more than just Work to survive and feel fulfilled.  There are some things that Work just can’t, or won’t, ever do for us.

Work won’t love us back.  Work can’t give us a hug.  Work might help us afford the ingredients but it won’t help us actually cook the dinner for our families, or tidy our houses.  Work can also dump us at any time without warning, if Work so needs.  Work won’t sit with us and share a cocktail whilst looking out over a sunset, and Work won’t sit and listen to you share your innermost thoughts and emotions in the way that family or friends can.  Ultimately, when you look back over your life and pick out the most memorable and happy moments, Work probably won’t (and nor should it!) feature as often as your loved ones will.

All in all, Work is somebody you need to keep close, but not too close – a friend who has the capacity to be a bit of a bitch at times.  And so the solution comes in finding the optimum work-life balance, and that can be hard, but it is most certainly a necessity.  Work at work.  Be free in your free-time.  And do whatever it takes to enable it to be that way.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

I’ll be short and sweet about this one.

If somebody cannot respect your feelings, regardless of whether or not they agree, get them out of your life.  Immediately.

The more respectful the people around you are, the less courage you’ll feel you need to be able to express your feelings without fear of any reprisals.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

Of the Five regrets, I think this is probably the more easier to sustain – thanks in large to the likes of social networking and other forms of technology that put our friends as far away only as the palms of our hands.  Such technology was probably not available or as prominently used by the generation which was the focus of Ware’s research.

Indeed, this hasn’t always been the case – you need only go back a few decades and the only form of communication accessible to all, aside from face to face interaction, were handwritten letters sent in the post. Before these, there was barely anything.  If you weren’t in close proximity to somebody then that was it,  good luck finding out how they were without relying on the likes of carrier-pigeons or paper cups adjoined by long pieces of string.

But despite how much easier it is now, I still see that this is an important value to adhere to.

I’m the sort of person who can go weeks, sometimes months, without getting in touch with some of my friends.  It doesn’t mean the love is lost, it’s just a natural by-product of everybody being so damn busy these days, and the weeks speeding by so much faster because of this.  Regardless, the people who are the most important to you should be in your heart and mind all the time, no matter how frequent or infrequent the literal contact.

Just remember to check-in once in a while, at least.

 

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

I wasn’t completely sure what was meant by this one so I read further into Ware’s article:

“Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again”

I understand what Ware means, but I also think that a general sense of ‘always wanting more’ is another thing which can lead to people not being as happy as they ought to be.

There is always going to be another step up you can take in life, always something more you can obtain – a new relationship, a better paid job, a new phone – but there seems to only ever be a certain period of time before things begin to plateau and you’re already thinking about the next step up – marriage, an even BETTER paid job, a phone which doubles up as a treasure trove of everything you’ve ever needed (and everything you didn’t.)

Maybe what people sometimes regard as an ambition is one of the biggest contributors to people not being as happy as they could be, or not, as the Regret implies, allowing themselves to be as happy as they could be.  Seldom do people ever think or accept that they’ve reached a peak.  All too often, there’s this ‘one thing that’s missing’.

The solution?

Stop thinking about that extra step so much.  Enjoy the plateau for a little bit longer sometimes.  It’s not always about the heights you’re reaching but the fun you’re having whilst you’re experiencing all of it.  If you like where you’re at then stay there until you feel any different.

*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************

And that’s it, the five most common regrets which Ware noticed were expressed by her patients.

I think the conclusion is pretty clear – stay true to yourself, live in the moment and keep a hold of what’s really important.  Apparently, that’s all we need do to avoid having any regrets later down the line…

And I can believe that.

Song of the Day:  Mint Royale – Show Me

Not entirely sure what the fan-made video is about, but this is a tune-and-a-half. “Jabulani siyashada namhla”.  Indeed.

A Bit of This, A Bit of That

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Around the World in 80+ Pages

In recent months, I have developed a new addiction – travel writing books.  My logic is that if my circumstances are such that I cannot actively be travelling right now then I may as well be doing the next best thing – reading about it.

Since my addiction began, towards the tale end of Autumn, I have visited the 7 most polluted places in the world with Andrew Blackwell, cycled from Mongolia to Vietnam with Erika Warmbrunn, driven around China with Peter Hessler, lived in a Javanese village with Andrew Beatty, and am currently whizzing around Jamaica with Ian Thomson.  Up next – Barbara Demick will be covertly burrowing me through to North Korea before I then head off to the Amazon with John Gimlette.  I am enjoying every moment of my trip.

I would seriously recommend this pastime to anybody else who misses the thrill of being surrounded by the unfamiliar but for whatever reason, can’t be doing it right now.  It’s comparatively inexpensive, you don’t need any vaccinations nor to worry about having enough deet in your repellant, and you won’t be in any danger whatsoever.

Whilst it doesn’t quite equate to the real thing, it’s still comforting to know that you can get off the beaten track and learn about the world without getting out of bed, and that’s precisely what I plan on doing with the remainder of my afternoon.
The Point When It All Makes Sense

Hitting the UK headlines this week was a rather shocking insinuation – politicians are capable of telling lies.  Who would have thought so?  But it’s true, former cabinet minister Chris Huhne was telling porky-pies about his ex-wife driving his car when it was caught speeding a decade ago.

Generally, anything to do with politics tends to go over my head somewhat (mainly because I have a hard time believing anything I read on the matter), but there were two things about this particular story which were of interest to me.

The first was that Huhne’s cowardice fits in perfectly well with the fact that his name, in German, roughly translates as ‘chicken’.  Ja, genau!

The second is the feeling that I’ve seen his ex-wife, Vicky Pryce, somewhere before.  No – it wasn’t when she was ramping up points whilst zipping along the M11 in 2003, it was somewhere else I’m sure…

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N’ah yes, that’s it.  As I recall, she was desperate for points then, too.

Interestingly, when Chris Huhne resigned from the cabinet over the allegations (which were initially made last year), backing came from the somewhat surprising source of none other than Fabio Capello:

“I spoke to the Prime Minister and said that in my opinion someone should not be punished until it is official that he has deliberately conspired with his ex-wife to knowingly deceive the authorities.”  –  Well, you’re the expert on the situation afterall, insider info and all that jazz.

It’s all conspiracy I tell thee!

To Give Up Something, or to Give Up on Trying to Decide What That Something Is?

Last year was the first time I had given something up for the entire duration of Lent.  For 40 days and 40 nights, my stomach was a crisp, chocolate and cider-free zone, and I did feel a lot better for it.  The weighing scales were grateful too, and calculating my weight was a slightly less painful experience for them than usual.

Lent begins again on Wednesday and I am still wondering what I’d like to give up this year.  To repeat the abstinence of the 3C’s mentioned above feels slightly lacking in imagination, and I’m not so sure that crisps are thaaaaaaat fattening, and cider is something I rarely drink anymore anyway.

But what other guilty pleasures do I enjoy yet over-consume?  Wine is one option, but I do believe that a glass of wine every now and then can actually be quite beneficial.  So my resolution is to give up on buying any item of food or drink that isn’t necessary (to the new Sainsburys Local by the cricket ground – you have a lot of fat to answer for, buddy!).  And finally, I’m going to give up on being lazy when it comes to physical exercise.  A brisk 30-minute power-walk each and every day.  Watch this space.

Bring it on Lent, I’m ready and waiting for ya!

Song of the Day:  Ice Choir – Teletrips

I liked this artist the moment I read the name.  ‘Ice Choir‘.  Sounds like exactly the sort of music you want to listen to on a Sunday afternoon in February, when it’s raining and snowing outside, the sky is white, and the windows are spattered with rain and snowflakes.  This song lives up to the image evoked by the name – chilled, soothing and mysterious.  Enjoy.

An Interactive Memory of Indonesia

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I was delighted to find my Indonesia videos tucked away somewhere in My Documents recently.  I had forgotten all about them because I didn’t think they worked on my computer… but watching them brought everything back – the sights, the sounds, the scents…the reasons why I fell in love with that country…

I’m a big advocate of living in the present moment as opposed to the past, but the truth is, two and a half years on, I still cling on to those memories so tightly because that trip taught me things I can’t imagine my life without.  And I will never let go of those.

Like…learning the traditional Minangkabau dance and performing it at the Donation Day event in Universitas Andalas.  It took so many rehearsals in the hot, humid heat.  That song that would be oscillating round in my head each and every day…ding ding ba ding ding….and even each night as I tried to sleep….ding ding ba ding ding…

I remember the frequent rehearsal breaks to go and eat kentang goreng barbecue (barbecue chips) in the restaurant next door, and how thirsty the practice had made us, and how concerned we were over whether or not we’d be able to do a good performance at the event.

And how itchy the fabric of the traditional Minangkabau dress felt against my skin.

And how much I felt like a confused bowl of jelly up on stage.

But how much I loved that experience.

I see this video again for the first time in years and it brings it all back.

I miss that time so much.

I miss travelling so much.

Facts, Opinions and Drawings of Cocktails

| sophiekemsley

He’s often credited as one of the most intelligent people that ever lived, but this is all Socrates had to say about knowledge:

“And in knowing that you know nothing, that makes you the smartest of all.” ~ Socrates

A few decades earlier, fellow philosopher Confucius was expressing a similar sentiment in the far east:  “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance. “

I guess they were speaking at a time (circa 450 b.c) when there fewer ways to learn about their surroundings – no history books, no world-maps, no photographs, no Wikipedia… but even now, when we do have all of these things, I am still doubtful that – certainly when it comes to the intangible – any of us really know anything.

A calculator can tell us that 14278 divided by 9 is 1586.4 recurring.  Google Translate can tell us that the Swahili word for ‘shoe’ is kiatu.  A friend can tell us that a box of Mr Kipling mince pies cost £1.79 in Sainsburys.  These are things we can ‘know’, these are measurable and definitive facts.

But when it comes to a lot of other things, our understanding is based only on how we have interpreted these things.  Opinions.  Feelings.  Ideas.  Not facts.

Here’s what I mean…

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A twist on the age-old cliche – is this terribly-drawn picture of a glass of Blue Hawaiian half-empty or half-full?  We might assume that a pessimist would respond with “half-empty” and the optimist with “half-full”.  The mathematician may press his ruler against the glass to see whether there is any disparity between the number of blue and transparent millimetres against it.  The alcoholic might argue, “Damn the glass! Where’s the pitcher?!”
They’ll each be sure of their answer, but they’re all looking at the same thing.  Who’s correct? What’s the right answer?  Is there even one at all?

drawing 2

And what about this drawing?  What is it?  A pair of ear-muffs that have been squashed? A piece of male genitalia? A rocket? Somebody’s long nose, bushy eyebrows and moustache? A toilet plunger?
Actually, it’s a  sketch of the Washington Memorial set against a backdrop of the parkland shrubbery which encircles it.  And I only know this because I drew it, but if I wasn’t here to say so then the answer could be anything.

There are 7 billion people on the planet, and each of them are unique.  We may share our skin colour, hometowns, appearances, faith, tastes in music or preference of shampoo with millions of others, but our eyes – those useful things we see through – are the one thing which will distinguish us from absolutely everybody else.  When you think about it, that’s a hell of a lot of different ways by which the things around us can be seen and interpreted.

There is a lot of positive sentiment expressed these days for being ‘strong-minded’ – having beliefs and opinions, and standing by them at all costs.  With any flexibility to this can come the slightly more derogatory term ‘weak-minded’.  I think that it’s important to be both – to have opinions, but to accept that they are not the same as truth, and to welcome any opposing suggestions.  This may be sounding obvious, but it surprises me just how often I see or hear opinions being projected as facts.  We all do it:  the cashier who short-changes us in the cafe is stupid, the cab driver who drove us into town on Saturday night was a perve, Thanet is a shithole.  But none of this is true.  It is only what we think.  It’s only how our eyes have interpreted things.

There is a very fine line between being strong-minded, and being stubborn.  Insisting that the sky is a cyan blue has no credence unless you have listened to and absorbed the words of somebody saying why they think it is more azure in colour.  How can we call the cashier stupid when for all we know she might be able to play Earth Song on a pan-pipe, how can we call the cab driver a pervert when he may just have a lazy eye.  Perhaps Thanet is nicer on a sunny day.

We may judge occasionally, but we will never be judges.  We can share our opinions, but we have absolutely no right to try and sell them as facts, and we cannot simply presume that people will understand things in exactly the same way that we do.

A middle-aged nurse and mother of two killed herself this week because she was left so abashed after falling for a cruel joke carried out by two radio DJs on the other side of the world.  What was to them and many listeners a ‘funny’ prank was to her a catalyst of unbearable shame.  This is a tragic example of how individual interpretations can manage to shape  exactly the same thing into such a variety of ways.  This is exactly why we each need to take much more care to try and understand each other’s perspectives a little better; to be far more aware of the fact that not everybody feels the way we do about everything, and to listen and learn rather than to scuttle away with our assumptions and opinions.

And so perhaps this is what Socrates and Confucius meant when they spoke of the limitations to knowledge.  So much of what we think isn’t based on fact or truth, merely on interpretations seen through unique pairs of eyes belonging to people who have led unique lives.

Let’s remember that before we allow our opinions to transcend into facts, and let’s see if there are other ways to view the things around us.

Perhaps we might surprise ourselves.

Song of the Day:  Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr – Vocal Chords

Detroit-based indie-pop band named after a racing driver.  This is a great song   My opinion of this song is that it’s great.

To See The Sea

| sophiekemsley

I never really used to understand the big deal about the sea.

Metropolitan town born and bred, I never felt particularly enthusiastic when my parents would express their desire to one day live by the coast.  “But why?  The sea dun’t do anything”, I would debate.  I spent several Saturdays of my teenage years in the beach-hut at Tankerton we once had (before repeat vandalism meant we needed to sadly sell) and with the exception of those really hot, bright Summer days in which we could get the dinghy out I would normally just sit inside the hut shivering and cursing the cruel, cold air, just waiting to go home, to Watford, so that I could go to Wetherspoons with my mates and share a pitcher of Blue Lagoon.

And then I grew up, and started to pay a lot more attention to our landscape and the environment around us.  Moving down to East Kent – with all it’s cobbled streets, historic buildings, coarse beaches, deep forests, and valleys adorned with bright scarlet poppies or neon yellow canola – slotted in perfectly with this.  I began to realise how much I really appreciated the great outdoors, and just how beautiful it can be, and how even its imperfections can be a source of stimulation.

There’s something about this particular time of year which doesn’t fill me with too much inspiration.  It’s that awkward, gloomy little period between the fresh heated glow of Autumn and the festive warmth of the run up to Christmas, with it’s illuminating snowy skies.  Sandwiched in between those two somewhat cheerier bookends, we have November.  November, where daylight is a fleeting moment and the rain bounces monotonously off slippery pavements that shimmer orange underneath the street-lamps.  On a working day, it’s that image which seems to be my only experience of the outdoors.  Oh yeah – and if that’s not bad enough, it’s freezing cold too.

That’s why over the weekend it was nice to visit Seasalter, even if only for 5 minutes.  5 minutes just to pause and look out to an open sea, a sea which spans 70% of the Earth’s surface.  A sea which throughout thousands of years has remained resiliently lapping up to the shoreline – ebbing and flowing, but always there, always going.  This movement is profoundly peaceful to look at, and sitting there on the sea wall, breathing in the fresh salty air, I remembered how important it was to take that time every now and then just to relax and reflect – to just observe the world as it is, as it’s always been, and as it’s meant to be.  In those 5 minutes – everything else was irrelevant.

Song of the Day:  Destroyer – English Music

Destroyer is the musical alias of Canadian singer-songwriter Dan Bejar, fellow frontman of indie-supergroup The New Pornographers.  Predominantly indie-rock, Destroyer’s music draws upon influences from a variety of decades and genres, mixes it all up, and puts its own unique stamp on it.  This is Winter Music.