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It is never personal, you're not the protagonist

It's so easy to become offended. It actually comes pretty natural. Someone says something.  You feel it's directed at you Strong reaction follows No need to react, it's got nothing to do with you as a person Imagine some remarks about academic work versus manual one, a bit dismissive about the latter. You don't have a degree and never wanted one. You know very well it takes years of experience and training to do what you're doing. Talent is involved too, as some people do have "two left hands".  You still feel you should add something to the conversation, but not sure if it is going to be well-received. No need to enlighten the other party right now Most people think in terms of opposites. If it's not this, it's that and it can't be anything else. Certainty of one's convictions is also a form of self-reassurance that everything is stable in one's world. Other points of view cannot be allowed because they are disruptive. Cognitive disrup

On audiobooks

How were people able to survive in the past without audiobooks? It is a ridiculous question, I know. Just by looking around I can see that the human species is still thriving, so lack of audiobooks has not in any way endangered it Should I have rather expressed my total devotion towards audiobooks, tinged with a bit of sadness? Print copies of the same books anguish on dusty shelves. I no longer read them. Instead of listening to  the voice in my head while the eyes move from left to right again and again, I listen to a stranger's voice (the author or a professional reader) telling the story. Eyes get a rest, ears get a bit of a battering. Legs get exercised, as audiobooks are the ideal walking aid, the literary equivalent of a Zimmer frame. The only inconvenience is battery life. Still, in the great scheme of walking, it's really minor. After all, one has to return home at some point.

The pleasures of being judgemental

Come on, don't recoil in disgust, as if you have just been the victim of a selfish dog-owner. You know the type, walking the dog and not picking up the poo. We all like being judgemental. The more we deny it, the more we do it. The art of making grand pronouncements about our fellow human beings must have been born in the depths of the cave, where everyone was a rival, someone to compete with for the best place near the fire. Backbiting, I can only imagine, could become quite literal. It's so understandable, with few resources and a constant danger lurking as soon as you stepped outside. This is to say nothing of the dangers that sneaked inside, as everyone is hungry at some point, from fleas to lions. If you believe in epigenetics  (big word, I know, so big that the auto-correct puts many red dots under it, just through sheer ignorance), so if you do know a thing or two about epigenetics, you can only conclude that human temperament had to incorporate the 'judgement

Oppression? What’s that?

The sky can be oppressive. The atmosphere in a room is bound to turn tyrannical if too much time has gone after the door last closed. Winter clothes, ah, winter clothes, lead-heavy, turning shoulders and back into a shuddering mass of fatigued flesh. Who said it’s all political?  The strangest example of oppression is the kind born inside. What is called ‘the soul’, (in a rather cavalier manner, one must say), is a fugitive slave. Ready to die for a sliver of freedom, it will feel oppressed till the end.

Strength is not what is seems

It's heard everywhere, the call-to-arms type of appeal: "Be strong". Fortitude is praised, resilience is envied.  I could not agree more, they are all virtuous expressions of some kind of inner steely mechanism, the kind that triumphs over misfortune and does not recoil before blatant injustice. Stiff upper lip, a straight back, eyes never looking down, an assured step. You know the lot, romantic propaganda has been disseminating it for ages and philosophers have usually gone along with it. If the physical body is in any way a manifestation of our true essence. It has been a good recipe to save face when confronted with adversity. We could say at least that we got beaten down, but not vanquished. No one seems to care much about non-exceptional situations, when inner strength is not just a slogan, but a consumable, quickly exhausted by the continuous drip-drip of demands. Life is usually exacting a heavy price just by allowing us to experience it. We are not immortal,

Ode to ageing

I adore getting old. While most of my youthfulness was spent in a blur of emotions and irrational decisions, growing-up at last feels like real freedom. Once captivity is over, life appears as the real chance to see the choices clearly and then pick up something that does not harm either body or soul. Ageing is a luxury train if the right ticket has been bought. It's not the Titanic, definitely. I would rather arrive at the natural destination than end up on the bottom of a frozen sea. I admit the journey starts in a lush environment and ends up in the desert. It is called the cycle of life. To each camel, its own reserve of water. Sharing is for oasis stopovers. Sailing to Byzantium  should be compulsory reading of any mature education curriculum, be it humanities or civil engineering, let's say.

On ice

               Thalassa, Thalassa, said the older fish.  Can't hear you, replied the younger one.               I've got an ear infection, spent too much time on ice, and fish don't speak anyway.

Beauty within, beauty without

"Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite" is a wonderful book by Robert Kurzban and the site where you can read a bit about it has a great URL too: https://www.hypocrisybook.com. It is all about evolution and the mind that has different compartments, creating this apparently terrible habit of noticing inconsistencies in all but ourselves. As our mind is a kind of cabinet with many drawers and some of them are full of junk and others of exquisite art objects, things can look a bit incongruous. Our inner balance depends on ignoring the co-existence of junk and art and happily thinking of the whole cabinet as a solid piece of furniture.  This is of course a bit of a simplistic review of the book and the theory behind it, but it serves the purpose of my own theory: that physical beauty is our greatest source of hypocrisy. If there is a drawer that very few people dare to open, let alone examine its contents, that is the drawer of our looks. The real physical appearan

Pour l'amour des arbres

Trees are the most underrated subject. Also the most difficult one, really. A human face changes all the time, visibly. A tree does not. All of its essence is running much deeper, inside each of the small netted veins of each and every leaf. They move with the wind, fooling everyone that they have no power whatsoever. They lie.

The Day

Must have read it somewhere, that no one wakes up and decides that they are going to ruin their day. Every day starts with the best intentions. Then it all goes pear-shaped. Most of the time. So never look at how many days have already gone since the time of birth, despite the fact that it's quite tempting to use online calculators that throw at you a horror-inspiring number. What, so may thousands of days already behind me? That cannot be true. Denial is the first symptom of the disease calling flight of fantasy.  As it has been carefully and abundantly nourished by various stories, first by fairy tales and then by novels and movies, the disease is like a severe eye condition. Wearing glasses can make it better only up to a point. Then an operation is needed. Then as luck would have it, some eyesight is regained, but never fully. Ideally, we should be exposed to reality from a very early age, and then never go too far from it, the same way most people don't walk a

Everyman and everywoman and every habit

It’s been repeated so many times that it has lost any trace of meaning: ‘we are all creatures of habit’. Waking up at the same hour every day, buying the same brand of toothpaste and using the same type of toothbrush. Toaster set at 3 for the perfect slice of bread ready to be buttered, oven temperature at 220 Celsius or point 7 for the ideal roast.  Dinner at 6.30. Thankfully, the gods of consumerism and commercial greed will not allow too much self-indulging in the comfort zone. If they can’t change out habits, they will at least change our desires. What ambitions and lust for glory never achieve at personal level is easily done by advertisers. It would take most people a lot of persuading and motivation to move closer to a childhood dream. It only takes a couple of well-placed and well-crafted ads to stir up unknown hunger for a new perfume. Or car. Or cardigan. Holidays that involve lots of money, preparations and distant travel become a lifelong objective and no effort is spar

Compulsiveness, the old enemy within

                        It is worth putting up a fight in defence of technology as a liberating force. Various Cassandras are prophesying a future of lives lost to non-flicker screens (before the pixel revolution, the flickering was an aggravating circumstance). With implacable periodicity, a study will unveil to the world cases of 'digital addiction', with most unfortunate consequences. Suddenly, going back to scratching beautiful drawings on cave walls  is desirable pastime and sending messages by word of mouth looks like a sane solution. Some say that technology is a ferocious creature that eats up its children, like ancient Cronus. Mythological allegories are always useful for doomsday scenarios. What if Cronus is actually eaten by its children? Not all of them, just those that would eat too much whatever is put in front of them. I was inspired to turn the allegory upside down by a videoclip with Sadhguru. He makes a very insightful comment about the ti