Monthly Archives: October 2013

Better Giving Presents

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It is always better to give than receive. (From the Bible, Acts 20:35)

I find buying presents hard.  This is mainly because I want the person I buy the gift for to enjoy it, or love it, or need it…  this is often a pretty hard task as the world is so full of all the stuff we want and we have most of it already. Going out and buying a present for anybody nowadays is like buying for the person who already has everything.  Getting that perfect gift, for me anyway, is usually a bit stressful.

One of the hardest people to buy for is my Mum.  Firstly, my Mum never really in her entire life, wanted anything.  She loved my Dad, loved us kids, loved her work as a school teacher and was possibly one of the greatest gift givers of all time on par with my wife.  Mum has just been doing it longer.  Mum gave us all things that we needed over the years.  It was Mum’s birthday recently and I was at a complete loss.  Okay there were flowers (we could even have got them on the way to visit her at the Servo and Mum would have loved them) and chocolates (which she would have given to her visitors anyway) and an endless list of ‘granny gifts’ of picture frames, hankies, soap, doilies (what was the real purpose if a docile anyway.) and all the other gifts for the sake of arriving with a present.  All these gifts are really only to pacify our sense of gift giving and because we thought we had to.

I like making cards.  So I just sat down and made my Mum a card and wrote the following:

Dear Mum,IMG_5119

I know that you don’t really want anything for your Birthday:  so I went to the cupboard in my heart and mind, and thought I would return some of the gifts you have given us.  I return to you:

FAMILY
It is the largest gift you have given all of us, and the most precious, because you made it yourself.

LOVE
It is the oldest and most enduring gift, it doesn’t have any conditions and it comes with an unlimited lifetime guarantee.

FAITH
It came in so many parts, and we had to put it together ourselves.

MEMORIES
This came in a huge package, filled with laughter and tears, triumphs and tragedies, but everything always looked brand new with each moment wrapped in your influence.

I found a very small box in the back of the cupboard, which I had lost a few times over the years, but you kept finding it for me.  It was HOPE; and now I share that gift with everyone, when I can.

My cupboard of life is full of the gifts you have given me, and today I am giving back just a few.   But I saved the best for last.

You gave me the gift of being your son.  Sorry, but I am going to keep this one.

Happy Birthday Mum.  Thanks for all the presents.

Better with the Black Dog

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I wrote a post not too long ago about being naked – naked to the world by writing this blog, that is.

Well today I thought it was about time to get naked, climb on a pedestal and slam cymbals together over my head.

Let me tell you about the Black Dog.  First of all I got the phrase from a friend of mine who went on the Black Dog Ride (click here to go to their web site).  The Back Dog is depression.

I feel like I am really standing on the pedestal now….

Some time ago I wrote a letter to my family (although it was only for my wife as the kids already know I am not all there – all our kids think that about us! …. my kids know that Dad sometimes goes to a place that it is not a good idea to follow him too) trying to tell them what it was like.  Here it is again.  Let me tell you writing this feels a bit like tearng off a band-aid…. really slowly, plus it’s a bit scary:

“I am writing this because I am just feeling so bad, no worse than I have for the last 5 days, just more of the same worse.  Imagine you fill a glass with black water and then you keep pouring more, blacker water into the glass; but it never overflows; it just gets fuller, denser, deeper, heavier; more black than black.  This is what it feels like when the Black Dog arrives.  There is no joy in anything.  Even as I sit here and think about all the things that are good in my life (I can intellectualise it every time), and there are many.  There is no joy in it, there is nothing in it.  When the Black Dog comes he takes over your life, it’s dark, it’s black, it’s heavy and it’s overwhelming.  Although it always seems the worst when it is happening, it is always the worse at that time, and only that time, at the time that matters.  I can’t explain how it feels to feel so rotten.  I withdraw from you guys because I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want to say the things I have said before, but I have to live with you all, and you have to survive me. I have been horrible to myself and to all those around me in the past when I have gotten in this hole.  I try to stay away, physically and emotionally because I know I will hurt you.  Hurting you makes me feel worse and I get further and go longer into the hole.  I know it is horrible and perhaps even scary and inflicts long lasting pain to everyone when I am like this.  But, when I am like this, I don’t care…. and you all rightfully stay away from me to protect yourselves, and I feel so lonely, and alone; me and the Black Dog.  I fail at all the mindfulness that has been guiding me, and get more into the hole.  My brain doesn’t work properly.  I spend most of the day in confused thinking, walking through noise and things I can’t quite grasp.  I shake without shaking, I can feel it but not see it.  I ruminate about every bad thing I have done from yesterday to 40 years ago.  Waves of regret, after regret, after regret, smashes into my mind and stabs my heart (sometimes it is so bad it actually feels like it is a real physical hurt).  The Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda witches haunt my every waking moment, and often the not waking moments.  I get to relive every bad moment in my life over and over again with increasing pain, regret, sadness and shame.  When the Black Dog arrives, I can feel him in the pit of my stomach, he doesn’t just ride on my back, he becomes an actual part of me, on a cellular level, he taints all the things that should be good, he makes everything so…. not good.”

So there is the Black Dog for me… and a lot of the above is probably on a good day.

Somedays I see the Black Dog hanging around in the back paddock and can scare him off.  Other days he attacks unexpectedly from my blind side with such ferocity and viciousness that there is not escape.  Some days getting out of bed in not an option.

I’ve slammed the cymbals together now and everyone is looking.  I don’t know if the noise of those cymbals scares off the Black Dog, but I know sometimes, banging a couple of things together just makes you feel better for not reason.

Maybe, being a better man, is sometimes, just about being able to tolerate yourself, so that later, you get to like yourself, then learn to love yourself..  and, that’s probably okay.

Better on the Riverbank

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I am really good at revenge. I suppose what I am saying is that revenge is really good at wrecking my life!!! I can consume myself in the company of the three Evil Witches – ‘Woulda’, ‘Shoulda’ and ‘Coulda’. But, they are just the ruminations of the past; the future is where real feelings of revenge can be placed with the Evil Warlock “Gunna’. My greatest gunna, is revenge.

But, I noticed a while back (before I became the all knowing mindful sea of tranquility I am today….?) that pursuing the future with Warlock Gunna was perhaps making me a little bitter. It is when I changed my mantra to:

“If you sit on the riverbank long enough, eventually the bodies of your enemies will come floating by” (Sorry, the closest citation I can get for this is an ‘ancient Japanese proverb’)

I decided that this was a good course of action and it actually involved doing nothing with a potentially vicious outcome. Historically the doing nothing part of revenge had not been my strong point and I had destroyed work environments, relationships and even a family (my own) in the activity of revenge and vengeance (well I thought at the time there was a degree of vengeance but most times it was revenge and it involved all consuming anger – and fuck the consequences… sad thinking about it now?).

So, I began to sit on the riverbank and wait. I was vigilant. What if someone missed something – it wasn’t going to be me. I was also pretty obsessed and imaginative about how my enemies would eventually end up in the river. Imagining the demise of my enemies was a good way to fill a few minutes of my day, or hours, or the entire day, or a week, month, year, or come to think of it, a life…….

Then something happened during my all consuming ruminating (which of course was better than the actual pursuit of my revenge because not doing anything and just waiting of course, was making me such a better man – outwardly anyway.)

… a friend came by and gave me a fishing rod.

I thought this was a good idea as I could use it to pull the bodies of my enemies over to the side of the riverbank so that I could see what their final agony was – which I hoped was prolonged and painful.

I didn’t do anything with the fishing rod at first, it just lay next to me all day. I couldn’t fish at that time, I was too busy; I had to be vigilant and watch for those bodies. Be under no misapprehension I was dedicated to this. I knew happiness would come from their pain (this never really quite sat right with me, but I had to put any thoughts of leniency out of my head, no weakness here! They had to pay, I had been wronged by them, I can’t remember all the specifics, but, that didn’t matter, whatever happened to them they deserved and I was going to be there to watch!)

Sometimes you do something for no reason, sometimes it is because you have to, sometimes it is because you need to, and sometimes it is just because now, in this place, at this time, it is the right time to do it. One day, I thought, for no reason, i would give the fishing rod a go. I picked that fishing rod up… and used it to just fish.

I did this a couple of times. Then I did it a lot. Then I found myself at the riverbank with the primary aim of fishing. I don’t think I actually caught very much, I don’t think that in the end I was even baiting the hooks; I just liked sitting on the riverbank. There was no purpose to it. I would sometimes think of my enemies, but they weren’t there, then, and I was fishing. I wasn’t even really waiting for my enemies anymore, as a matter of fact I started to notice that my friends used the river quite a bit and when they went past I would often wave to them; I also noticed all the other things around me on the riverbank, the birds, the small lizards, which would pop out, spy me and run away again. I noticed the movement of the sun during the day and how the wonderful river gum I sat under, cast a majestic shadow throughout the day that up until now, I had not notice, canopied the place I had been sitting for so long.

The other day, I went down to the riverbank. I didn’t go for any reason, I just went. And I sat there for a while. I didn’t think about too much. I didn’t think about my enemies, they weren’t there, and may possibly never be there. I did notice, that I was at the riverbank. I did notice what it really felt like to be at the riverbank.

And then I went home, I think, a better man.

I suppose the above should have been the end of this post.  But, I just have one more moment to write about.  It is the moment in the picture above.  It is actually the moment, my wife took me to the riverbank (both figuratively and literally), it was the moment in my real life that I picked up the fishing rod, and, can I say, it helps if you have a glass of wine in your hand, you’re with the one you love and one of the most beautiful sunsets you have ever seen is in the background.

Every time I think about that moment, I get that, NOW, all over again.  I made a new memory and feelings for my home (see Better Homes).

I think, sitting on the riverbank, can just be about, sitting on the riverbank.

Better Simple

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Yesterday I was commenting to a mate that sometimes it is all too hard and too complicated to bother doing half the stuff we have to do just to survive in modern society.

In my last job the boss said one of his things was, ‘don’t make it too complicated – keep in simple’.  Funnily enough in that job we did that and got the job done.  The down side was that because we didn’t create any fuss, demand additional money, people, resources, complain at every meeting and constantly bitch about how hard we were working…. no one noticed. In that job, what was a great strategy, faded into non-existence because it had actually got the job done, without fuss (oh the irony!)

I started to think about the complexity of things.

I know there are a lot of complex things in the world, and lots of complex things need to be done in life (bringing up kids is no walk in the park!), but…..

I am sure that most people don’t want it to be that hard, yet ‘those people’ are often the ones that are making it hard.  It is a bit like, it is only hard if I have to do it, but, it is not hard if you have to do it; do you know why? because you have to do it, it’s not me.

When a person is requiring you to do things a difficult way, they will justify this as reasonable because that is ‘the process’ (I’m sorry but you can’t have the refund etc etc etc, until you complete this form which of course requires information you don’t have with you – and a DNA sample – all of which you have to travel home to get, again…. you can of course fill out the form on line but that will require you sign up for a new account requiring the verification of identity which you can only do ‘in store’…. fucking kill me!)

Where was I….

…. this is the process or their job, or they don’t make the rules and they have been told it must be done that way (have you ever said these things and realised how stupid and obstructionary you sound – probably not).  In addition, when you explain the illogical nature of what they are asking, they mostly can not understand what you are talking about.  They don’t know why it is stupid, unnecessary. More often than not, they can not even explain what happens next and why you are doing it in the first place…. is this you, it has been me.

It is usually, if they can not explain why they want you do some obscure process usually for the age old reason of modern logic which is, because that is the way It has always been done.

Is the entire world going insane and not actually realising it, because insane (complicated) is the new NORMAL.

I think being a better man means I will be the one that doesn’t do this anymore. I don’t think I want to be ‘those people’ or the infamous ‘they’ (whoever ‘they’ are – perhaps I am they?). But, I suspect I will have to notice I am doing it first……

 

Better Naked

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The heading of this post is much like the email you receive from your boss or someone else in the office with the subject line “Free Beer”. It has nothing to do with free beer but does get your attention.

In actual fact this post does relate to the subject line, just not in the kind of naked that one would expect.

I am taking about being naked on the internet. Not, naked like a ‘sexting’ with pictures or the teen photographing themselves in the bedroom of there parents house for the love of their life boy/girlfriend of a whole three weeks now, where that private photograph follows them for the rest of their lives including their first job interview kind of naked (longs sentence, sorry…. take a deep breath now if you are reading out loud…) but, the kind of naked as in being out there completely exposed. I am thinking this is what I am doing with this blog. I am not sure if that is what I want to do?

I just read a couple of older posts out loud to my wife and as I was reading them I was thinking that perhaps I sound a little insane. But, the post was really what I was thinking at the time, which was the purpose and point of the post. My blog is about getting my ideas, thoughts, opinions down and putting them somewhere other than my Journal. But, is ‘out there’ the place they should be. Do I really want you to see me, as me, when I am having a fair bit of trouble actually finding me at the best of times.

Plus, is all this just a bit to pretentious and too self indulgent…. Yes, has to be the answer, I give myself.

So as I am putting it out there, when I am putting my ideas and thoughts out there, I am also putting myself out there….. Naked. Is that what I want.

Well, look at this this way. I know that in theory that is what I am doing, but in reality that is not happening now, because no one is reading my blog, because I haven’t put myself out there yet. That is the Catch 22 I am living with this blog at the moment. I am truly, at this time, writing to myself and the one friend who visited the site for a critique… And then went on with their life and I am pretty sure hasn’t visited since…. But, knowing I am writing in a public forum where eventually someone will read what I have written….. And I have no control as to who that will be (other than the about 300 spam posts which I have blocked and appear now to have stopped!)

But, I must be hoping that people will eventually read my blog, or otherwise why would I be writing it…. See, it is happening already, you are finding out my secrets.

Perhaps it is not about being naked that troubles me (although getting the naked me, standing in the middle if the road for all to see mental picture out of my head will be a problem) it is, can I accept the reflections I might receive from the world…. Some may be too true… Or some may be distortions like the fat and skinny mirrors at the Show.

Maybe the reflections are only in the eye of the beholder.

I want to ramble about how I don’t want this blog to be subjected to the toxic attacks of internet trolls (whatever they really are – does an internet troll call themselves an internet troll…. Do they have to be short?) and for it to not be about me being naked, but me being naked and laughed at, and ridiculed, and bullied, and embarrassed….

So why go there, or actually here… At this blog?

It may not be about being naked, it might just be about not hiding anymore.

Being a better man, unfortunately can not be done in a bubble. Life goes on, and I suppose being a better man is like the tree that falls in the forest….. If I am just a better man to myself, would anyone hear?

Do you mind, if just for a while, I keep my clothes on, we don’t necessarily have to go all the way, we can just sit here and talk, and perhaps cuddle….. We’ll see how things develop from there. If it doesn’t work out, I suppose one of us can just leave….

Better at Happy

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I am writing this blog entry live as I am teaching myself about now…. That is noticing now and doing something about it… That would be noticing it!!!

I am happy.

I have tried to consider what it is like to be naked in the world (and it just occurred to me that is the way we come in and go out) in a previous blog and I suppose this is me getting my gear off.

I am happy.

I am realising this in a country town in South Australia while I am on holidays with my wife. We are doing nothing special other then sitting around after having a day out driving around the area (and while I was doing this I realise I had become my parents!!) and now after putting the aerial on the caravan (again I can’t believe I have a caravan!!!) so that my wife can watch X factor, I realised…. I am happy.

The word may end tomorrow, or we could just have another fight with the kids about drinking and tattooing, but, NOW, I am happy.

Take a moment, sometime, anytime, and look at your life, for what it really is, and probably, you too are happy, it is okay and alright….. If not run, really run, really hard until you find a place to rest. Then consider again, after your run, are you happy.

None of this is mine to consider for you, but, don’t be unhappy if you can not find that moment, any moment, in any day, to be naked and say….

I am happy…. Now.

Better at Nothing… Something

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I was just reviewing something I had written a few months ago when I was having one of my profound moments (well I reckon they are profound – in hindsight sometimes they are just me getting something I didn’t get before – this is particularly hard to accept, especially when everyone else got it before you!).  It is about mindfulness and I suppose the best way to describe it is to just transcribe it:

“I have been writing for a long time now (I am guessing 2 years…) to be a better man.  When I say 2 years I am talking about when I discovered mindfulness and realised, that understanding this was how I would understand me.

It takes a long time to understand that mindfulness is about everything and nothing; changes nothing and changes everything.  It all has to do with nothing in your life and everything in your life.

But, even when you understand and accept that, you have to live your life everyday and everyday is full of noise;  the noise of life that takes your concentration and blurs each day, year and moment into the next.

So what does this revelation do for me?

Nothing, everything…… it makes me notice my life.”

Better than 10%

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I read somewhere that 90% of all information on the internet is just a rehash of the 10% of truly original materiel.  It might be like a lot of things on the internet, that is, complete rubbish!  However, I realised that we are influenced so much by the stuff that is going on around us.  How much of what we think is really original thought and how much is us just thinking what someone else told us, or in the worse case scenario, told us to think!

People who know me may think that I spend far too much time thinking about statistics and odds (just to let you know I suspect Texas-Holde’m Poker is possibly the best game in the world as well as the best psychological experiment in human interaction).  I do think that thinking about, I mean truly thinking about the chances of something happening can be a worthwhile exercise in making decisions – although it is obvious that a vast majority of the population do no do this…… you WILL NOT win xlotto, stop buying tickets – it is 76,000,000 to 1, that is three times the entire population of Australia – looking at it that way, NONE of us will win!!!!

So, the percentages and odds are interesting in looking at the world and life.  I once gave a lecture which was attended my a neighbourhood group of concerned citizens about things that were happening in their area.  Before I went to the lecture I did a bit of statistical analysis.  I told them at the lecture that things were in fact very dangerous.  Statistically it became clear that they were in more danger of being KILLED in a car accident coming to, or going home from, the lecture than they were EVER (for the rest of their lives!) being involved in the ‘concerning trend and dangers’ in their neighbourhood.  I don’t think they really believed me, but, they were the facts….  I never checked to see if they all made it home?

I have to write this, although there is no basis in anything scientific I have bothered to research; but, all of us at one time or another have thought (or probably been told, we just thought we thought it) that at the exact moment you were doing something someone else in the world was doing exactly the same thing (how weird is that, in that when I was writing the above I was thinking of someone, somewhere is the world, sitting at their computer, writing their blog, about exactly the same thing that I am writing about now… and they suddenly realised that somewhere in the world, someone was sitting…… you get my drift).

Which brings me to the point of this post.

It might have a bit to do with the idea that you, and me, might already think that there is not a whole lot of ‘new’ going on in any case.  This is of course other than the ‘new’ idea we are all going to come up with one day that will make us overnight millionaires (although even nowadays you have to be a billionaire as millionaires are everywhere – or so we are led to believe…).

In writing my blog entries I am often just rebadging, rewording or recounting the thoughts, ideas, and/or theories of others.  So… I was just sitting here thinking could I actually write a truly original blog entry.  It is pretty hard to imagine writing anything that is not influenced by things you have read, seen or been told.

As I keep thinking, is being a better man being a different man.  Will I be a new original man, obviously better, or will I just be the same man, but doing things differently.

This reminded me of a story I once read about paradoxes.  If you are restoring a boat and have to replace a few planks in the hull, how many planks do you have to actually replace before you are not actually restoring the boat but building a new one…?

Maybe the magic 10% is the answer; but that seems far to small amount to be considered changing something so far from the original that it is not the original anymore. Although I suspect just about everyone at one stage or another will say if you replace 50% of something then it isn’t the original something anymore… or is it?  I also heard that in using someone else’s material if you change 10% of it then it is considered new material. Just for information I have no basis for what I just wrote other than the vague recollection that I might have read it somewhere, or heard it, or been told it.  There is a great example of this in a movie called ‘Flash of Genius’.  I can’t give you the punch line which relates this movie to this post, but it is in the final couple of scenes when he describes what is truly inventing something and what is really original thought.  It is based on a true story which always helps stretch our gullibility that it is good for us to watch and believe, and that it may really, actually be true.

So here I am, in my ‘better man project’ writing about original thought and I have spent most of the post writing about what others have said, or written, or even made into a movie.  Maybe original thought can only exist in the realms of the mind that we haven’t begun to understand yet, or, maybe original thought is for the geniuses that are discovering the universe with mathematics (I can never quite get my head around that – just like I can’t ever quite get my head around a mathematical problem that they have been trying to solve for years – isn’t 1 + 1 always going to be 2 – so just work it out; we have calculators to help – stop using the blackboards and squiggly lines!!!)

Maybe original thought is not about new ideas at all. Perhaps it is about understanding.

I don’t know if this post has contributed to making me a better man, but it made me think about the odds of something happening, if you do it long enough, they usually improve…. Unless you’re insane (click here to see Einstein’s insanity quote).

I refuse to believe that there is nothing new to be discovered, my religion does not allow this!! I also believe that perhaps discovery and understanding are the same thing but we perceive them so differently and find that sometime neither are enough. But, then when is enough, enough in a world where enough is never enough!

10% may not be very much! but at least someone, somewhere is being new and probably writing about it right now, sitting at a computer on the other side of the world…

Also, remind me to write another post about six-percenters, that is one of my favourite statistical anomalies.

 

Better as a Dancer

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I have just returned from my daughters school dance concert….

If you are a parent this may bring moans of oh, no, how many of them have I sat through.  Well I have sat through a lot.  My girls did ballet from when they were in kindy; those were the concerts that you sat through for a couple of hours to see your daughter on stage for about, oh, let me think… 30 seconds!

They were also the concerts that afterwards I would also say to the girls “Why do you walk around on tippy toes, why don’t they just get taller girls!”… which was always greeted by moans that you can only hear the tone of after doing a really good ‘Dad Joke’ for the 400th time.

These where the concerts that made the thought of drip torture as a viable alternative.  I do recall that I used to go to the pub before I went, which made them a little better, but unfortunately made me a bad parent.

I also could not tolerate the self important photographer who made it as difficult as possible to order photographs of the girls before the concert.  He had devised a system that required not only an ordering area insufficient for one parent, let alone the 200 that were trying to order, but was time consuming, questionably reliable (I often chased for weeks after the actual photographs I had ordered of my girls as opposed to the photographs of what appeared to be random members of the ballet school which had been sent to me!) and involved you doing everything so he could reject your initial form due to error which the form had been designed to create.  I would go through this process each year (for about 10 years I might add) as my Mum cherished the photographs dearly… and in addition each year I would ask the photographer to lend me his ‘good pen’ and always fail to return it.  Sometimes it is the little things!

Well tonight, and fortunately over the last couple of years, the girls have gotten older and thankfully much better.

But, lets face it, it was never about the dancing.  It was about the parenting and the moment. Before my Mum went to the nursing home I used to take her to the concerts.  It was a moment where we wondered at these little people that came from us.

It was a moment to be proud.  Tonight I wasn’t just proud, I was grateful; grateful that I had all those previous concerts and all the concerts to come.  Grateful that, just maybe, over the years the girls have become better dancers and I have grown with them and become a better parent.

Better Tempered

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Apologies for the heading of this post but it is not about the angry type of tempered, although maybe it is.

I like (love actually) to write in my Journal.  some of the ‘greatest’ entries are late at night in a fit of fatigue, or returning home after a few – nothing like the actual musings of a drunk who thinks he’s being profound.

I have stopped drinking and texting, and most definitely drinking and Facebooking (the last time I did that I woke up the next morning with only 25 of my 200+ friends still on the list – embarrassing recollecting them… what reason do you give… I dropped you when I was drunk and I had a moment of clarity – great!)

I love to get on a roll when I am writing.  Sometimes if flows and sometimes it just stalls on page one – even line one….

Its like the metal sometimes cools before I get to shape it…  the moment is there and then it fades away.

Letting the metal cool…
Things remain the same when this happens
Even when the metal is hot, unless force is applied, nothing changes
It just remains the same
Apply heat, or cold and there may be the expansion or contraction
But when the heat or cold is gone, it is just the same as before
You have to keep on the heat, or keep on the cold,
Or, apply that force, for the change to remain the same
You have to decide if the change is what will become normal
Is it the temperature, or the force
And in the end is it just a change, is it just a bend
Are you stronger than before, or just different
Is the metal tempered

I wrote the above in one of those ‘profound’ moments late at night and resurrected it today.  Sometimes I am not sure if I am writing a poem, a verse or a muse – and I am not too sure if I actually know the difference (No, I am pretty sure I don’t.)

Maybe the changes we go through have to be a combination of the hot and cold and the bends in our lives.  I think that we also get a few dents along the way that it doesn’t hurt to repair when we get the opportunity – maybe in one of those hot or cold moments.

Maybe the tempering in the metal of our lives is really not about the end result, but about the way in which we change and how we deal with that change….. of course, that is for those who even notice.

I suppose being a better man is sometimes about being a different man, or is it about being the same man better.