My life, my choice(s)

I like to think that I am a “high functioning sociopath”, as declared by the Sherlock Holmes played by the lovely Benedict Cumberbatch. Sadly, I am not. Very unfortunately, I have empathy. Mostly towards animals and plants. Sometimes (very reluctantly) towards human beings. But that simply means that I do not fit the definition of a “sociopath”, however much I pretend or imagine to be one.

Well, then I am the next best thing. A misanthrope. Having lived for as long as I have, I still cannot understand the human psyche. I abhor it. Everyone seems to tell lies, under the guise of it being “tactful”, although it is wrong. Honesty is regarded as being rude, and hence never rewarded. I don’t understand it. But even if I can rationalise it, the biggest question for me is, will I change my behaviour in order to “fit in” to society?

I did it for 10 years when I was in practice. I became someone I am inherently not. Hence, I left. Sometimes, when the hours are dark and I have nothing better to think, my mind wanders to the past and always wonders, what if I never left practice? Externally, I would be an equity partner by now, rich enough to buy landed property, a posh car, etc. But the perennial question: at what cost? If it is at the cost of losing my own identity (and it was for me, personally) then I still think it was the right decision to leave.

But is it the case of “out of the frying pan, into the fire?” Human nature after all, is the same everywhere, and across generations. Genes may evolve for better or for worse, but human nature remains the same. We are all ruled by the same motivations, from time immemorial – ambition, greed, envy, love, selfishness, revenge, etc. It takes a really strong will, and an exceptional mind, to overcome any of these.

I am not one of these. I am (unfortunately) a normal human being, therefore I am susceptible. The difference is, I am aware of my limitations. The vast majority is not.

I finally deleted my Facebook account. It’s been a long time coming. To be honest, I don’t even know why I joined in the first place, being the misanthrope that I am. False hopes, I guess. Being human, I had false hopes that there are some good people out there. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I posted a plea for help from a local animal welfare association seeking charitable donations in this difficult Covid environment. I had a grand total of zero likes. In contrast, a “friend” on Facebook posting the home cooked food for the day received 30 likes.

I knew what I had to do. I have no regrets.

The solution

 This Covid-19 nonsense is really getting out of hand. For starters, it’s been here for a year now. I remember this time last year, I was in Africa. What a happy time. In the most beautiful continent in the world, without a care in the world.

I came back to this Covid nightmare. It’s been one sort of lockdown nightmare after another, with no end in sight. I became so disillusioned and depressed I took to gardening. Gardening! Of all things. I now want to give up the hobby but my plants, of course, cannot know this. I am convinced they have feelings. The ones I talk to grow better than the ones I ignore. I talked to them because I was isolated and bored. And now I have no heart to “give up” because I don’t want them to wither and die. We have a bond, my plants and I.

The economy crashed. I blame the government. Not just our government, but the governments the world over. I think we left too much science to get in the way of things. Science is good. I am a believer in science. But just like you can’t leave wars to generals, you can’t leave pandemics to scientists. But that is just what the world did. And ordinary (non-scientist) humans suffer for it.

I accepted the only job available. I will be honest. It was a job I coveted since I graduated. But then, I joined the “real world” and saw “real money”. And now, to go back to this job I once coveted, with a much lesser pay than what I was used to, seemed contrary to all my skill and experience that I had gained for the past 20 years. And yet, it was the only job opportunity available. Because of Covid. Because the economy was bad. Because I was qualified for this particular job. Because I had nothing better. Because a part of me still coveted it. Because the part of me that wanted more pay, couldn’t find anything better. Because it was meant to be (?).

The move was bigger than I thought. Hitherto I had only been in the private sector. Now I am in the public sector. Hitherto I had been in the industry. Now I am in protective custody. I never knew until today what a huge gap that was. Today I had my first formal meeting in my new job. It was a disaster for me. They may as well be speaking Greek. Or Damara. Or Sanskrit. I didn’t understand 90% of what was said, including something about me. This is not good. Certainly not ideal.

Because I was more confused and stressed after the meeting than ever before, I did the only appropriate thing after the meeting. I opened a can of beer. 5 cans later, I have no idea what I was so confused and stressed about.

"Sweet dreams (are made of this)"

About 20 years ago I had a friend. We were very close. When I look back on those days, I seem to only remember everything good, fun, warm, sunshine, rainbows and unicorns. Of course, I may have been way off course. I was young and therefore unfamiliar with the perils of life just yet. And also of course, it came to an abrupt end. I can’t for the life of me pin point any one incident that brought this camaraderie to a screeching halt, but halt it did. And then we went our own separate ways and travelled different roads all this time, so that we never met again. Out of sight and out of mind.

Recently, I had been having dreams about this friend. Totally unbidden, random, arbitrary. The dream was that I bumped into this former old friend of mine, and we just picked up where we left off, and I remember thinking how fragile our hearts are as we allow the tiniest trifle (tiny for me as I’d forgotten what it even was) to get in the way of what could’ve been decades of friendship.

The first 2 dreams I dismissed as unnecessary interference. After the third dream though, I convinced myself that there must be some sort of meaning to, or message in, this persistent reverie I keep returning to in my sleep. So I contacted a mutual friend and got this old former friend’s number.

After a tremendous amount of effort to suppress my ego and pride with the aid of copious amounts of alcohol, I finally messaged him. I said I remembered the good times we had together once and I was just wondering how he was doing now.

No reply. It’s been a week.

Now I feel like a fool.

But then, I don’t dream about him anymore so maybe it was necessary that I messaged him regardless of the consequences. And if in 20 years’ time I dream about him again, I will know what to do.

NOTHING.

There's something about God

 I think I had mentioned before that at the age of 16 I set out looking for God. I was prepared to face the truth, even it meant finding out that there is no God after all. Or worse, that there is a God but He was never on the side of humanity; never on my side.

In my quest I have poured over books covering various religions, philosophies, beliefs, theories from East to West including mysticism, Emile Durkheim’s ‘The Elementary Forms of Religious Life’ where he posits that all religion is man-made, the whole existentialist movement, meditation and mind consciousness, etc, etc. There are 2 things I want to say at this point. First, I am still unable to find the answers to all my questions. Second, I feel as if my journey is still incomplete in that there are still things out there for me to read, to understand, to learn, to apply.

I also think that there are largely 2 types of people out there. One type is those who find something that gives them meaning, and that becomes a means of justification for their actions and behaviour. Meaning, that everything they do is given meaning or justification by that thing they believe in. The second type is those who are what they are and are trying to make sense of what they are.

For the longest time I was in the first group of people. Of all that I have read, I found that I was most drawn to the teachings of the Buddha and tried to practice Buddhism. For the longest time I ignored, or perhaps I integrated (wrongly) the one glaring thing that was missing in Buddhism but that I believed in – God. I believe in God. Despite everything I see and hear, mostly to the contrary, I still believe in God. I cannot shake this belief no matter what. And over time I have come to realise that I cannot fit my set of beliefs into any given religion (I am using the word religion here to cover philosophies, theories, practices, beliefs, etc). Because if I choose a religion for myself, then I must accept all its teachings, even those that I do not agree to.

And that is not me. I have my own beliefs. Right or wrong I do not know but they are my own beliefs. And I guess I am trying to find the religion that will fit my beliefs, that will answer all my questions satisfactorily, that will make me content and happy with life, such as it is. I haven’t found it. Perhaps I never will in this lifetime. But that doesn’t mean I stop trying. As long as there are interesting things for me to know, to learn, to read out there, I will do so and even if I don’t find all the answers, at least I would have gained all this knowledge, which may be strong enough to be passed on to whoever I am born as next.

And I do believe that. I believe that our souls or consciousness or whatever it is that makes us awake or aware, is made up of energies which is a part of the universe, and when we die, these energies live on and may give life to another being. And I believe, just like how I am drawn to be a seeker of religion in this lifetime, perhaps some of the energy within me right now was also a seeker in my past life which is spurring me on to continue this quest for answers. And so, even if I do not find all the answers in this lifetime, maybe that part of the energy may pass on to a new being who will continue the search, until one day, all will be answered; all will be known. And how does God fit into all of this energy being re-born or recycled or reincarnated? Well, I believe that reincarnation and God are not mutually exclusive concepts.

When I put it down in words, it sounds like some supernatural-science fiction, but this is what I believe. How else can I explain this need to find religion? Where did it come from? My parents and most of my friends are followers of what was already taught to them. They never question anything. And to be honest, I envy them. There is a lot of comfort in attending church every Sunday or going to the mosque or temple every Friday or meditating every day or confessing one’s sins every week. I envy those who genuinely find peace and solace in these things. I wish I was more like them.

But I am not. Me, I question everything. I also absorb everything. And then I decide what works for me and what doesn’t. Because I also believe that being born as a human, I am blessed (or cursed) with a brain and I should use it, for better or for worse. Which means, finding out as much as I can and choosing what works for me. And if it turns out that I’ve thought everything wrong, that I’ve done everything wrong, that I’ve chosen everything wrong, then either I will have to answer to God, or my energy is dispersed into a lesser being.

In the end, whether I am searching for myself or searching for God, I think in this instance it is really the journey that counts, not the destination.

Books read in 2020

 It was a roller coaster year. As a result, I didn't read as much as I should have 😒

1.                   The War in South Africa - Arthur Conan Doyle

2.                   Psychology, A Complete Introduction - Sandi Mann

3.                   A Banquet of Consequences - Elizabeth George

4.                   The Suspect - Fiona Barton

5.                   The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (re-read)

6.                   The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum

7.                   The Astronomy Book - DK Penguin Random House (publishers)

8.                   Morality for Beautiful Girls - Alexander McCall Smith

9.                   The Best of African Folklore - collected by Phyllis Savory

10.               The Perfume of the Lady in Black - Gaston Leroux

11.               Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

12.               The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

13.               On Liberty - John Stuart Mill

14.               The Next to Die - Sophie Hannah

15.               The Full Cupboard of Life - Alexander McCall Smith

16.               Secrets She Left Behind - Diane Chamberlain

17.               The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins (re-read)

18.               The Hunchback of Notre-Dame - Victor Hugo

19.               Either/Or - Soren Kierkegaard

20.               The Bible, the Quran and Science - Dr. Maurice Bucaille

21.               The Sentence is Death - Anthony Horowitz

22.               What Buddhists Believe - K. Sri Dhammananda

23.               At Home - Bill Bryson

24.               The Ice Child - Camilla Lackberg

25.               Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (re-read after 22 years!)

26.               The Private Patient - P.D. James

Oh, life...

It’s that time again. The time when I reflect on my life, on what might have been and what is, and how both scenarios are stark opposites to the extent that I ask myself, where the hell did I go wrong. 

I thought I made all the right decisions. But the thing is this. We can only make decisions based on the information that we have at the time we make the decision. That is why I guess most happy people say, if they had to do it all over again, they would not change a thing. Because to change even a small thing would mean that they would not be where they are today. So if the decisions or choices that they made turned out to be good for them and they are happy, that’s what they would say. And if those choices or decisions turned out to be bad, then what?

But here’s the thing. Everyone gets a shot at life. Whatever one’s nature and nurture, the moment one is independent, one gets a shot at life. What one does with that shot is up to one. But here’s the catch. One does not see how it will end. One only has past experience and knowledge as guidance, and one has the present to help one make a choice or decision. On hindsight, whether that was the right choice or the right decision is beyond one’s control. 

So in that sense, we never really get to choose how it’s going to look. None of this is on our own terms. It’s life on life’s terms or not at all. And even that we don’t get to choose. Life. We don’t get to choose life. It’s thrust upon us whether we like it or not, and then we are forced to make choices and decisions based on the information we have at that frozen moment in time, without knowing what the consequences of that decision or choice may be. 

And if we’re lucky, we get what we dreamed of or expected out of life. And if we’re unlucky, we will forever be questioning where it all went wrong, what if I did this, what if I didn’t do that, etc. And if we’re really unlucky, we will spend our whole lives searching for this elusive thing called happiness which is always within our sight, but always beyond our reach.

In the end, it doesn’t even matter what decision or choice we make. It’s really the luck of the draw. It’s life on life’s terms, whether you like it or not. 😔

She is gone

 I read a quote today which said:

“Someday, you will meet the happiest version of you.

And it will be worth it.”

But what if I already met that version, and she has since left?