Recently in Meaning of life Category

Ever notice how everyone is in such a hurry and always decides to choose to take the quickest route from A to B? How about if one were to develop a new state of the art technology that allowed people to take the longest route instead?

Who knows, maybe in the future some kind of paradigm shift could take place which would make people think differently, e.g. no need to rush, remain relaxed, etc. I wonder if such a product could ever become popular and would sell very well in the end.

I better put a patent on this clever idea before it's too late. In the meantime, don't tell anyone.

Remember the good old days when the word 'urgent' really meant something? When an occasional exclamation mark or two could raise one's attention level like a good kick in the rear?

You would see that word and jump, it was truly an eye-catcher. Got to do something right away, or else! Had it appeared on an envelope falling through your mail slot, you could not do anything else before that important letter had been opened and read very carefully.

Nowadays the word appears everywhere, usually formatted as large bold text, more often than not followed by a series of giant exclamation marks. In order to cast a hook into your eyeball in case you don't notice.

URGENT !!!!!!!!

I don't know about other people or the average human being, but I've become so numbed by word 'urgent' that I'm embarrassed to admit that I do not notice it anymore.

I should be careful. A life or a fortune could be lost in the not so distant future, just because I do not notice how urgent something really is.

One often wonders how people can be so overly eager to attach much value and meaning to quotations that seem like fairly insignificant collections of random words.

On my way home driving on the highway from Rotterdam this afternoon, I passed this large white van with all kinds of bible quotations plastered across the sides and back of the vehicle.

Perhaps for some this is a strategic manner of preaching worthwhile thoughts to non-believers, but it looked more to me like a waste of effort and paint.

"... and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee."

I'm watching this older man negotiating his way up the stairs, pausing every few steps to catch his breath. He's almost reached the top where a new challenge awaits him.

At the bottom of the stairs the woman who could be his wife is looking at this old man's back while she chews on a large sandwich with tomatoes falling out.

Suddenly feeling like I too am being watched from somewhere near, I turn my head to see a young stylish woman glancing at me just before she embarrassingly looks down at the ground.

Just beyond her I see some unshaven teenager with a slight belly carrying a guitar case staring at the young woman who was looking at me.

At any moment in time there is a web of visual interactions criss-crossing the platform as the crowd collects and then disperses again.

How far back or how far forward this unpredictable broken path of connected people watching other people extends is impossible to measure and not easily imagined.

There might be ten people connected this way, and then none, and then more than fifty, and then just a few again.

The more crowded it is the more connections there are, increasing and decreasing as the evening progresses, oscillating more and less, damping out until there is not a single soul left in the world.

A Buddhist monk once told the famous physicist Richard P. Feynman the following proverb of the religion:

"To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell."

Taken from his book What Do You Care What Other People Think? which I just finished reading and thought was great.

That line over there in front of the cash register was shorter than the others, so I took that one because the others were waiting for me outside. I could see in advance that the girl sitting in front of the cash register was not in the greatest of moods. She had this smirk painted on her face, and she never once raised her eyes to look directly back at the important customers.

The same treatment was repeated with me. She stabbed the flat screen with dagger-like motions, rang up two-fifty-five, and I handed her the blue ten euro note. I held my hand in place hovered in the air as she groped around for the money. She handed me back the small change, along with a red twenty euro note.

Caught off guard for an instant, I hesitated slightly before gathering up enough courage to react. I told her politely that I thought perhaps she had mistakingly given me back the twenty euro note when it should have been a five, because you see I had paid with ten.

For the first time she raised her eyes and looked at me directly with pierced vision, her grumpy glance becoming even more irate. She had been trained well to beware of bums like me trying to short change the store.

"That's impossible," she snapped back at me. I responded with a smile, "Excuse me but I originally gave you ten, so I think you meant to give me five back, not twenty." Trained not to think, she kept her lips sealed and just shook her head back and forth. She waved me off and tarted helping the next customer in line.

I'm normally a pretty honest guy. I should have insisted until she called the police to take me away, but that look on her face combined with the growing line of impatient customers and  their rattling overflowing shopping carts hinted that I should just accept this turn of fate and continue with my life.

I walked away wiithout making a big deal, accepting my good twist of fate although underneath I still feel a little guilty about it all.

Sometimes even non-heroes can cheat death. Why become a tragic hero when it makes much more sense to first ignore the call to adventure until the time is ripe. Besides, how many of us are non-heroes at heart anyway?

If I had such a big ugly wart, I would certainly have had it removed ages ago. Getting up every morning, looking at myself in the mirror and being confronted by such a disgusting protrusion would have made me feel very uncomfortable or driven me insane.

Obviously the old man does not seem to care, hasn't yet noticed it, or has simply become so attached to this extra facial ornament, that living without his big ugly wart would make his life unbearable and perhaps even not worth living.

The famous and well-loved Luciano Pavarotti dies at the early age of seventy-one.

Meaning that if I end up living that long I have only a little more than twenty years to go.

Something for me to think about.

The skinny guy wearing a dilapidated baseball cap shuffled up to me and asked shyly if I could spare him some change. Hesitant but desperate at the same time...

"Can you spare some change?"

"What for?!"

"I just got out of prison and they put me out on the street without a cent..."

"So how'd you end up in prison of all places?!"

"Well they picked me up off of the street where I was sleeping in some alley. I had nowhere to stay, sorry."

So without thinking much except that I was in a generous mood for some reason, I reached into my wallet and gave him a 2 euro coin.

"Is that enough?"

"Yes, yes, thanks alot..."

Right at the moment I was hoping we had reached some kind of repore, the poor homeless guy had disappeared around the corner. Say good-bye and be gone.

Never to be seen again. Oh well, there goes my two euros.