Blown Away With The Wind

I make a lot of jokes. At work. At home. In a way I am "always" playing (as in Huizinga's homo ludens) with the rocksteady ground of people's (pre)assumptions. A couple of months ago my daughter L. asked: why are you so cynical?

My answer: I love people, being alive and life on planet Earth with everyone and everything on it. I am not cynical because I don't bark as a dog - cynic is derived from the ancient greek word 'kynikos', meaning 'dog-like'. I think, speak, write and live my life as a 'homo sapiens' not as a dog. It's ok for me that every individual 'homo sapiens' is motivated by desire, greed, materialism and all other activities in all steps of Maslow's staircase (more). For me personally it's all vanity but I accept and embrace the fact that people are motivated by it. And I am personally not an exception. I am included.

To live a simple life free of all possessions. What a nonsense! It's never simple. Never free. There will always be possessions. And that individual will only survive by the generiosity of other people.

I am not a cynic because I accept the fact that we are what we are, this is selfish genes. I embrace. I don't bark. I try to look in the mirror as honest as I can. All what we see around us: books, houses, streets, villages, human beings etc it will all be blown away, in let's say 1,000 years from now. All vanity. At the same time the genes of the species 'homo sapiens' will survive. Homo sapiens: individuals die and the species survives. Survive forever? No, in a couple of billions of years from now life on planet Earth will be impossible because our sun will no longer radiate the way it does today and become a red giant (more). So ... some day "we" have to move.  

Your middle class man with sometimes aristocratic daydreams

Cuckoo

Last Sunday I saw the first #2018 Pinksterbloemen (English 'Cuckoo flower'). Growing on the borders of a creek. Spring has come again on my corner of planet Earth.

 

Our Air

What about love? For me personally it's something you practise not something to think, analyse or read about. But the truth is I read a book about it this weekend: Corine Koole, 'De zeven wetten van de liefde' (2018). The title of this book translated from Dutch into English: 'The seven laws of love'. Laws is too strong for this book (marketing trick?). It's not about laws, it's about the seven themes Corine found again and again in the more than 1,000 interviews about love she made last ?ten? years. Seven themes:

• Being in love
• Desire
• Sex
• Great love
• Eternal love
• Pain
• Faithfulness 

Was I surprised? Did I read something new? Flabbergasted? No, all I read felt natural and pretty familiar.

A few quotes I would like to share. A series to describe great love (page 170):
1. A great love makes life whole.
2. The beloved is a constant; against that background everything becomes meaningful.
3. If your partner has disappeared, it feels like real pain in your body.
4. Great love can not be suppressed. Not even after years and years.
5. The great love is like a hug, overwhelming. It protects against anxiety, nervousness.
6. A great love evokes a shared, free energy, as if you are breathing the same air together that is otherwise available to no one else.
7. A big love is nice, exciting, horny.

Faithfulness (page 235): Faithfulness is constant wonderment, faithfulness is looking at the other person, looking very closely, and accepting that the man or woman you are with changes over the years, as everyone changes, grows older, and perhaps flawed. Faithfulness is not sticking to how it used to be and how it started, but rather the change itself. The realization that no day is the same, that perfection does not exist, and that you rejoice in it. (...) Being and staying loyal to a loved one is not something that restricts individuals and prevents individual development, but makes it possible.

Balance (page 239-240). It's all about finding a balance between the sun side and shadow side of the one you love. Embrace the shadow side too of your lover.

Space (page 246). The very heart of love is faithfullness. Give your love the space to be her- or himselves.

In other words, just be you. I don't want anything else. Be like a cat - she always is her divine self. Be like a bird - fly or land whenever you want ... I will not squeeze.

Pins

It's a standing joke in my family. You feel bored? Take a bag of clothespins and play with them! Make a train, a tower (as high as you can) or ... use your imagination.