A friend of mine is taking me out to dinner tomorrow night as a belated birthday gift, and it is kind of funny. Because we have been friends for over twenty three years now and the first time we went out for a coffee, she thought we were on a date. I guess in hindsight I can understand the confusion, but I think it comes down to definition or perhaps expectation of what a date is. For me, a date is when two people have enough interest in each other to consider starting a romantic relationship. At this point of the relationship though, I was more trying to find out what kind of person she was, before I would consider going on a date.
My definition doesn't meet expectations.
But it is far more valuable.
Because during that coffee we became friends, have been friends for over two decades, and we never dated. We used to spend heaps of time together though and pretty much every Friday and Saturday we'd party and then Sunday, meet up in a small group for hangover lunch. They were good times. Hard times for me in many ways, but a lot of good times too. My friends were all at university and in part-time jobs while I was working full-time (in a very underpaid job with terrible salary), but we had good times on shoestring budgets and laughed a lot.
I am not sure how much I laugh these days.
Perhaps it is aging, perhaps is it is what I surround myself with, perhaps it is that I have just changed a lot over the last few decades, but while I find thing interesting and amusing, I don't really find much funny enough that I laugh out loud.
I reckon it is largely a side-effect of experience, where over time things have just worn me down to the point where I don't have enough energy for humour, or that I just don't see things in the same way as before. I guess my "new funny" is just recognising how absurd this world we have created is. It was always absurd no doubt, but we have taken it to a new level in recent years and I suspect that there is little coming back from it, unless something drastic happens - like as people have suggested, aliens attacking.
Is there anybody out there?
With earbuds in listening to some chill acoustic music, I spent a couple hours trimming some trees in preparation for spring and I was thinking how absurd it is. Not that I can do much about the world, but I see it falling apart, yet here I am cutting away crossing branches on the cherry tree, pulling out dead leaves from our herb boxes and sweeping the terrace. There is nothing wrong with doing these things, but at the same time, it does seem kind of irrelevant, doesn't it?
Or perhaps it is the thing that has meaning?
Maybe it is all the human-created drama that is irrelevant and what we should be doing is pulling ourselves back from all that shit, and doing more around the house. The problem is, that doesn't stop many global conflicts that impact on our way of life and daily living, does it? Ignorance might be bliss, but conflict can get to a point that it just can't be ignored, and then not only is the bliss gone, but it comes as a surprise.
Is that better?
I don't know, but I won't discuss these things with my friend tomorrow, as she is not the kind of person to really dive into the weeds in these areas. Most people aren't. At least from what I have observed, the majority just want to go about the daily lives pretending that all the negative things happening around them aren't anything to worry about, even while at the same time they complain about how things are getting worse. Sure, why think about things that we can't influence?
But what if we can, and we just aren't thinking?
I still believe what we do matters and what we do is who we are. We can change who we are by changing what we do and by changing what we do, we can change the world.
A handful of pebbles can make a lot of ripples.
Taraz
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