Possibilities and Inevitabilities.

Just a brief post from me this fine Friday afternoon, as I survey the Brisbane skies from the comfort of my leather chair while I peer out of the portholes in my secret volcano lair and contemplate world domination and cute kitten antics.

I was musing today on how things begin, and everything about them is new, and fresh and exciting, and the possibilities seem endless.  We have experienced something new and unfamiliar, a taste of something away from our mundane routine, and it liberates us, leaves us feeling free and walking on air, all happy and full of the new life we have discovered.  Or should that be rediscovered?  It's the same happiness, the same joy we are capable of finding for ourselves all the time if we learn how. 

Sometimes though, it all dies, and that death becomes a sad inevitability.  And yet still we grieve, we rail, we protest and ask why.  Is it because we left that new life to whither on the vine?  To die from lack of nurture?  All things are changeable and nothing lives forever, but not allowing things to grow and find their form is even more sad.  We lament those cut down in the prime of life perhaps more than those who lived a long and full life, do we lament in the same way for those things in our lives, those seeds of potential we allowed to die while we worried about the cares of this world, about money, status, possessions and power.  It's all just ego tripping.

Things Change

Things change, all things change.  All things are in a state of flux and impermanence.  We may start off as one thing but, if we choose to, we grow, we evolve, and we change.

Like evolution, this change can be slow and imperceptible.  Unless we spot the subtle signs, and we often do unless we have a complete and meticulous record, we are liable to miss change.  Sometimes we can look back, and spot the tipping point, the missing link, the "aha" moment when things started to change, and we know and understand that everything has led up to this moment in time, just as this moment is part of a chain of being that will lead to other moments.

The things is being in the moment, and recognising that this moment is both part of all moments, and another link in a chain.

Communication, Racism and the Cost of Your Principles

It has been an interesting few weeks here for me since I last deigned to prattle on in this blog. 

Not so much in the sense of being plunged into chaos and meeting disaster at every turn, but probably more in the sense of my dealings with people and the subtle shifts in the way I deal with others and my attitudes.  It has certainly made for some interesting discussions.  So as with all things, we begin with our story.

Thus we turn to my personal life.  Back in 2007 I was involved in a relationship that sort of continued on and off up until the end of 2008, a period of some 18 months.  So what you say.  It turns out that this was my first significant relationship, the first time I had ever known love and been loved in return.  For some of us that is something that happened in the distant past, for me though it is a recent reality.  I think no one ever forgets their first great love, and generally when it ends, it hits hard.  I spent a fair bit of time dealing with my feelings and moving on.

If we fast forward several years to several weeks ago, I received a phone call from this former girlfriend, with whom I had really not had any communication for some 2 and a half years.  It is interesting to relearn the art of communicating, and establishing a dialogue on the basis of friendship rather than sex.  It's a challenge.

And so on to this week, where I got into a discussion on Facebook about the asylum seeker debate that continues to rage in Australia.  It is a divisive and polarising issue, with some people thoroughly opposed to our country allowing asylum seekers to settle here, while others welcome refugees from other countries.  Most of the arguments against revolve around the way asylum seekers are jumping the immigration queue (which doesn't exist), or that they get citizenship and proceed to go on benefits and not work (but who drives your taxis and works in your convenience stores?).  Another argument is that if we allow asylum seekers in we will be overrun.  This flies in the face of government policy that caps asylum seeker intake at 12000 a year.  Our total intake per head of population is also low, just one arrives for every 1500 Australians.  Those who want to read more are advised to read this link.

In this debate I was surprised, or more rather shocked that in these supposedly enlightened times, there are still some people out there who cannot see outside their own culture.  I spoke with one person who stated he wouldn't work for a business run by immigrants.  I did ask the hypothetical question about whether this meant he would prefer to work for migrants for more money than he would if he worked for an Australian company and whether his principles were worth 15 thousand dollars a year.  Sadly I did not receive a reply to my question, so I cannot determine the cost of one man's principles.  I really wish I had an answer.  Sadly it seems the desire to tell ourselves stories to protect ourselves from the world around us, and to not venture outside our comfort zone leads us into a state of fear and hatred of all that is foreign and different.  Ignorance becomes easier than discovering and understanding different things. 


Thus this leads me back to communication.  We can choose to open a dialogue with someone, be it someone we have not seen in years, or someone who has arrived on a boat from halfway around the world.  Dialogue can lead to new relationships, to new understandings, new ways of communication, and making our lives richer as a result.  Hatred and fear only locks us up in a prison of our making.