How do you view the World?

How do you view your world?

Do you pay any attention to the extras in the movie of your life, or are you fixated on the main characters? In my day-to-day, I try to notice other people - even if I only acknowledge they're there. I will hold the door open for a stranger, offer someone my seat, help someone with their bags or let them out of a junction onto a busy road.
In return, I will get a smile, a thank you, a wave - and I have made a tiny connection with another human being that has a bit-part in my personal production.

It's all too easy to become so wrapped up in our own world that we forget everyone else out there is also going through the same day as us with their own burdens, fears, ills and worries - or, if they're lucky, their joys, good luck, celebrations and freedoms.

We share this world with 7 billion other people, all going about their business much the same as us. Growing, learning, grieving, fighting, cheering, loving, eating, sleeping, nurturing, cursing, struggling, living, dying. They are happy, sad, desperate, elated, afraid, confident, amazed, persecuted, ignored, cultured, ignorant, arrogant, humble, loved, despised, feared, cherished.

I try to notice the people in my constantly shifting frame of vision. I try to notice the sky, the fields as I drive to work, the other motorists, (I see people in their cars as they pass me, staring fixedly ahead on their way to their jobs, meetings or liaisons - and they're oblivious of my presence.)

Mad as it might seem - I say good morning to the magpies that always seem to be on the grass outside my home. I smile at people as they walk their dogs, and say hello to the dogs as well. I pick up litter in my street or off my neighbour's lawn.

I try to take some time to care about others, and I do so without thought of any reward. Being me is reward enough - and every day I give thanks to whatever I perceive God to be, for letting me have another day on this beautiful, wonderful, awesome world of ours.

no plus ones

Pain, Age and the Great Leveller

Intriguing title?  I hope so!
I want you to read on, but not just to satisfy my inner need to entertain, but also to pass on a simple truth.
What?  I hear you ask.  What do you want to teach me today?
Well...

The simple truth I want to pass on...

is...

I'm clumsy.
No.

Well, I am.  I mean, I really am clumsy - it's my middle name.  I wanted something cool, like Cool, or Awesome, but they were already taken.  So I ended up as Collywobs Clumsy Pearson.

The reason for this post, by the way, isn't just to introduce myself.  It's to explain how I got that name. 

I went climbing today.  Indoor climbing, huge walls, more challenge than my usual wall climbing experiences.  And I took my 11 year old daughter - not to impress her with my skills and prowess, because frankly I have none.  No, because I would like her to love climbing as much as I do.

So, we arrive at DartRock climbing centre, and I am faced with several wonderful walls of climbing heaven!

But, first we're lead to the Boulder Rooms - areas of low level free climbing to warm up.

I was no higher than my daughter, pictured above, when I miss my grip, fall off the wall, and slam my arm into the knobbly hand holds on the way down, and land badly on my wrist!  

Pain!  On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 feels like I have bones poking out of my forearm, I'm an 11,  No word of a lie, I think something is broken!  I'm lead away upstairs to ice packs and slight humiliation, while my instructor feels guilty and my daughter is just happy we won't be climbing after all!

Happy to report though, that several hours later, some strapping and as many pain meds as I'm allowed to take in one day, I am typing this with little discomfort.

As a 53 year old, overweight male though, I have to ask myself - what was I thinking?  I know I could climb some of those, but the session was 90 minutes, and I probably would have lasted 30.  I know I love climbing, but I think I'm forgetting I'm not 20 any more.  I'm not as lithe and supple as I was back then!  Am I deluding myself?  When I approach these walls, do I have a mental image of myself like...

When in truth it's...

Sad, but true!

I either need to get myself into shape, or give up the notion of being a rock god.  Luckily the only person I am trying to prove anything to, is myself!

Rock On!

Feeling Down (in the dumps)

I remembered something the other day that I had long forgotten, something I used to do to make me feel better whenever I felt down in the dumps, out-of-sorts, a bit fed up. 

You know those days when you get up and spend an hour thinking you should do something, but everything you think of isn’t what you want to do?  You open a book, and put it down again.  You pick up your journal, but the pen hovers above the page and no inspiration comes.  You switch on the TV and flick through a hundred channels – each one as unsatisfying as the last.

Those days you just can’t seem to buck up.

I remembered that on days like those, I’d clean and re-arrange my bedroom.

I would move anything small enough to move out of the room, and I would shift the rest into one side of the room while I cleaned, dusted and vacuumed the other.  Then I would move everything over and do the other half.  Then when the room was clean, I’d move my bed so it was facing a different way, in a different place.  The other furniture would be shifted to somewhere new, or differently aligned, and eventually, the room would be finished and my mood would be elevated.

The new alignment of the room always made me feel better when I went to sleep – excited, in a way – because it was new.  Sometimes I would imagine I was now on a strange ship, sailing into the unknown, or like Robinson Crusoe, in my desert island cave.  And when I woke in the morning I would feel fresher than the day before, more energised. Re-motivated.

Proponents of Feng Shui would say I’d stirred up the energy flow in the room, and I think they’re right.  The stagnation I felt before is gone.  The room feels different, and so do I. Invigorated. New.
My energy seems to flow differently too.

I extended the practice to other rooms in the house – mostly the living room – changing the position of the sofa, the TV, the book cases and so on, and it would work there too. 

So, when I woke the other day feeling listless and unmotivated, I found myself (without even knowing why) cleaning the kitchen sink and draining board.  This progressed to the work surfaces and the oven door.  I emptied the bin, which took me to the garage, where I saw much that could be tidied and rearranged.  And so passed two hours.  I returned to the house feeling much happier, with more energy and a brighter outlook on life.  I think we become so in-tune with our surroundings that we can stagnate in the sameness of an unchanged room, so my advice would be – when you feel listless, stagnant, down-in-the-dumps, discombobulated and out-of-sorts, change something!

Rearrange a room, sort out a closet or wardrobe, clean the bathroom from top to bottom, declutter the garage or shed.  Get the energy flowing again!  

Making a cheese sandwich.

I handed my daughter a cheese sandwich the other day, and as I did so, I wondered about how it was made.  I took two slices of bread, spread butter on one side of each, sliced some cheese and put it on one of the buttered sides, and placed the other piece of bread butter side down on top.

 Job done.

But that was just my part of creating that cheese sandwich.  I still had three unanswered questions. 
Where did the bread come from?  Where did the butter come from? And where did the cheese come from?  The bread came from the supermarket, but how did it get there? By lorry, driven by Arthur, taken off the lorry by Bert and stacked on the shelf by Carl.  

But who loaded it onto the lorry?  Where was it stored before then? How did it get there?  So, we have a logistics aspect to the bread – how it moves from A to B.

Where was the bread made?  What recipe was used?  Who supplied the yeast? The salt? The water?  So we also have a multitude of other ingredients to consider, as well as their various logistics.

But ignoring all those for now, let’s concentrate on the flour that was used – where was it milled? Who milled it?  Who made the packet it’s stored in?  Who grew the grain?  

So now we have two more fundamental occupations to consider. The miller and the farmer.  Both of these people play an essential role in our bread production.  

Focussing on the farmer – did he plow his field?  With a tractor?  Who made the tractor?  Who sold it to him?  Who maintains it?  So that gives us equipment.  

Who made the lorries, the fork-lift trucks, the components of each, the tyres, engine oil, glass. Who refined the fuel?  Who drilled for the oil and where?  Who built the oven?  Who supplied the gas and electricity?  How was the electricity produced?  

The incredibly complex structure of each piece of machinery is mind-boggling, without even considering how the individual components of each machine are also produced, supplied, shipped and so on, down to where the iron ore is mined for the steel, how is it smelted and so on.

Ignoring all that, let’s go back to the farmer.  Where did he buy the grain?  Who grew it? So now you are approaching the origin of the bread – but in actual fact, you’re just entering a loop.  Where did the grain come from that grew the wheat that made the grain?  It wouldn’t be an infinite regression, but it would look at first glance like one.

How many people, then, have been involved in making our two humble slices of bread?  How many machines have been involved?  How much fuel has been consumed in its production? How many miles between growing the wheat and the bread in the supermarket?

Two slices of bread!

Now, the butter…

My daughter took the sandwich, took a big bite and with mouth full of food, mumbled “thanks Dad!” before walking off to her room to watch TV, while I stood in the kitchen, my head spinning from the hundreds, thousands of interactions and associations that occurred before those two little words.

The Damp Squib

A few months ago I decided to venture into a massive online presence, the purpose of which was to build a greater awareness for this blog.  Why?  Because (like millions of other people out there) I thought I had something worth listening to, something worth reading.

Was I jealous of teenage girl blogs that seem to have 10,000 followers?  Maybe.  Unlikely though.

I asked myself the other day - who am I writing for?  And the answer is - anyone willing to read it.  I'd love to be able to influence the world - change opinions, make it a better place by writing about the destructive nature of bullying, how we should all recycle, and how my one wish would be for an end to hatred and intolerance.

I decided then that pouring time and effort and money into promoting my words is a waste of time.
Why?  Well, my website (designed specifically to draw people into and around my social sites) has had 8 visitors in total.  Eight!  So links added to blog posts asking for visitors have achieved nothing.

My subscription to Blogarama promoted the site well, and my posts went from 10 or 12 views, to thousands - but despite getting almost 3,000 views, my last post got one +1 and no comments.
To me, it's never been about getting views or building a following - it has always been about interaction - building relationships, commenting on something, feeding back to someone, touching another life somewhere on the planet.

My expanded online presence has not worked.
Oh well, back to the drawing board!

Are We Lost?

I asked myself this question during the drive to work today.
No, I didn’t mean lost as in geographically, I mean spiritually and mentally.

I was thinking about how our ancestors lived.  Their lives seemed more structured than ours.  They rose at a certain time, ate breakfast – probably the same thing every day, and left for their work – a factory maybe, or clerking in a bank or solicitors, or on a ship, or in a warehouse, or a shop.

They would work their long day with only a little break for something to eat, and take they pay home in a small brown envelope at the end of the week.  The money would be divided up into tins – rent, food, whatever.  Once home, they would prepare a meal, discuss something – local politics, the church, school, work.  They would read a book, or sew.  They would go to bed early.

Their lives had a structure to them, and were not complicated.  It seems they knew their purpose in life.  They knew the career they were going to follow because their fathers and mothers followed that path.  They would apprentice and learn a skill, and they would employ that skill. 

If they needed to know something outside of their close circle of experience they would go to a library to research it, and questions would be asked – “why are you interested in that?  To what purpose?”  To seek more knowledge than was necessary in your day-to-day was considered a waste of time, because your time was so structured.  Your life had a clearly defined purpose.  It was what your parents did, and their parents, and those before.

Today I see us as being disparate, scattered and lost.  We no longer seem to have structure or purpose.  I get up at different times of the day, depending on what hours I’m working, or where I will be working from today.  I can eat a different breakfast every day for a week or a month, and never repeat the same meal twice.

I travel to work (or work from home), but can take time off if I feel like it.  I can stay home sick without fear of losing my job.  I can watch TV – hundreds of different channels.  I do not have tins to keep my money in.  My money is invisible – digital.  Bills paid electronically.  I no longer need to save for something – I can just buy whatever I want because my invisible money is no longer constrained by what I earn.

I no longer need a reason to find out something new.  I don’t need to go to the library.  I have a small device in my pocket that can tell me anything I want to know.  I can book a flight to almost anywhere in the world, travel there, find my way to a location via GPS or SatNav and communicate with people that do not speak my language using my smartphone.

I no longer need my mother or grandmother to teach me to cook or sew or iron – because YouTube can show me.  I no longer need to apprentice to learn a skill.  Higher education – which was once the domain of the wealthy or titled, is now open to all – and a degree, once the epitome of excellence, is now the norm.

We have expanded out of that tiny close-knit world of our ancestors so far, we no longer bear any resemblance to it.  Their values, ethics and morals have been stretched thin in our rapid expansion.  We do not respect our elders because they have nothing to teach us or give us – we no longer need their advice when Google has all the answers. 

I think we have lost our way, and I am greatly saddened by it.  I have taught my daughter to cook and sew (as my mother taught me), and I talk to her of the old ways, of the values we shun in favour of mass-produced homogeny. The ethics we’ve lost in an age of do-what-you-will, and the friendship-bonds stretched thin by Facebook and Instagram, because it takes no effort to poke or click like or share.

We are too thin – we lack any real depth.  We have become selfish in our desire for everything now!
Our pursuit of bigger, better, faster and newer now crowds out our desire for sympathy, empathy and understanding of others.  I pass people in the street and say hello and I smile.  I hold the door open for strangers.  I pick up fallen toys for children.  I talk to people’s dogs.  I clean up litter from my neighbour’s front lawn.  I offer to help complete strangers with their heavy bags.

I am trying to pull myself back in – I am trying to remember where I was before I became lost – and my smartphone can’t help me with that one!

Thank you for reading my thought on an ever-changing World!

You might also like some of the stuff on my website

https://collywobspearson.wixsite.com/mysite

Am I living my life on auto-pilot?

When I was a kid, all I could think of was all the cool things I'd get to do when I was a grown up.
I couldn't wait for the freedom to choose for myself!

When I left primary school and moved up into secondary school, all I could envisage was studying the sciences, history, mathematics - and emulate my heroes - Leonardo, Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler and Einstein - discover something new, exciting, World-wowing!

Off to polytechnic then with dreams greatness in academia - I'd get my degree in chemistry and physics, become a great home office pathologist like Dr keith Simpson, or Sir Bernard Spillsbury - and I'd solve the unsolvable, and bring the killer to justice.

But something around this point changed.  I failed my degree because I didn't put the effort in.  I'd lost my way.  I got a job making pizzas - and thought maybe I could join the police.  I applied about 5 times and failed each time - I started working as a civilian answering 999 calls, and began the lazy drift from one day to the next.  I no longer had any purpose.  I had under-achieved myself to mediocrity and that was where I was going to stay.  I put my life onto autopilot.

Ten years passed and I was exactly the same - no real prospects, no additional skills, nothing to look forward to, no purpose.  I bought a small one bedroom flat, and continued to drift.  Autopilot was doing just fine, thank you.

I had a blip though - made a decision and flipped autopilot off whilst I changed course.  I moved to Exeter and began working for Devon and Cornwall police taking 999 calls.  I got a promotion, extra responsibility, met a girl, got married.  Had a daughter, changed jobs and started working in IT for the NHS.

But I realise today, I've somehow snuck back onto autopilot again.  I don't ever remember flicking that switch, but it definitely got flicked!  I've been doing this job for about 13 years now, and I'm at the top of my pay scale and little or no prospects on a promotion.  My daughter is about to go into secondary school, my wife runs her own business - and I'm cruising from one day to the next with no real interaction with the present moment.  I wake up, get up, make tea, clean my teeth, get dressed - same routine every day.  I drive to work, but arrive there without really realising what happened during the 15 minute drive.  I log onto my PC, check emails, check calls, drink coffee, eat at my desk, until it's time to go home.

Another 15 minute autopilot drive home, get changed, sit on the couch, watch TV, make dinner, eat, watch TV, go to bed.  Life on autopilot!

If any of this rings a bell with you, if you see anything familiar in the routine, then, like me, you need to flick that switch and come off autopilot!  I have managed to get to 53 years old, and I can only account for half that time as being lived with meaning and purpose.

Too many of my days are lived in a haze, not paying anything very much attention, losing time, wasting time, achieving nothing - living like it doesn't matter that nothing got done yesterday or the day before because I was busy drifting along as if in a dream.  I'm acting like I have an infinite number of days at my disposal, so wasting half of them isn't a big deal - but you know what?  I don't have an magical supply of days that'll go on forever.  I need to wake up!  I need to pay more attention, and I need to make better use of my time.  So I'm going to rip out autopilot, and I'm getting Mindfulness installed instead.