Look Around the Corner

Welcome to the first blog post for several months that was organised the day before. It’s rather satisfying to have the ideas and then the chance to pre-plan. It doesn’t happen very often either; that needs to change. We’re in the planning stage :D Today, therefore, I want to talk to you about variations in experience we encounter in our lives and how the perception of that is a really, REALLY big deal.

My discovery of exercise as freedom was not a precise moment to be pinned down and glorified. If truth be told, it happened over a quite long period of time. I’ve referred to certain moments as epiphanic, because they were, but only recently did it become apparent that this has happened with other people too. Key moments that changed their existence had the same, life-altering effects.

Finding faith does not have to be a religious experience.

Increasingly I am encountering those for whom religion really does matter an awful lot. I try and have the same conversation with them all: when did you know your deity of choice existed within you? Each time, listening to the person involved, the passion and dedication for religious faith that I also possess with exercise is apparent. If they are to respect me and my beliefs, that belief must exist both ways.

I understand the need to respect choice, even if it is counter to my own opinion. What never used to exist before was a grasp of what underpins that: now some does, communicating generally is considerably easier. Mass participative culture only works if you are prepared to accommodate the diversity of those around you. The ignorance that prevents it, wilful or otherwise, is where so many issues now lie.

To become a kinder person, something of yourself has to be sacrificed.

There’s a lot of people out there who make a career out of their Difference, whatever that may be. It might be religion, or science fiction, or cross-dressing, perhaps weightlifting… all these things are potentially niche in the modern world. All those spheres of difference have their own hubs, groups, forums, meeting places, celebrities… and if you’re all in the same groups that means at some point people will be outside, looking in, likely being less than kind to your life choices.

When different becomes dangerous of course is twofold: either someone inside your group decides they don’t like another sub-group and attempts to remove them, or society as a whole points a finger and says ‘no, you are now socially unacceptable’ which is where we are now. Would the world be better without all the alt right and alt left extremists, climate change deniers, xenophobes and colonialists..?

Once they were gone… who would be next up?

Is utopia ever possible when humanity is unable to deal with it’s own inequality?

Well, you won’t know until you try. The whole process of acceptance and tolerance is not happening when you’re mocking people you think aren’t as good as you are, and a cursory glimpse into my timeline shows that this is happening with increasing frequency. If you keep giving airtime to the idiots, even if it is to show just how fucking stupid they are, that makes you just as bad. No really, it does. If you want to be the person who’s learning in this World of Utter Fucking Stupidity, there are ways and means.

Listening is a good start, thinking more about what you post also helps. After that…? Everybody needs a reason to exist. Maybe, if you’re sitting here and reading this, wondering what exactly is it that I’m supposed to be doing with my life, this day when everyone is supposed to be at their lowest could be the one you choose to try and discover your real self.

The only what you’ll ever know what you could become, is to try.