The Greener Blog Block

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there's something stronger – something better, pushing right back.” Quote by Albert Camus

Friday, May 20, 2022

reminder

For a small amount of perspective at this moment, imagine you were born in 1900. When you are 14, World War I starts, and ends on your 18th birthday with 22 million people killed. Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and runs until you are 20. Fifty million people die from it in those two years. Yes, 50 million. 

When you're 29, the Great Depression begins. Unemployment hits 25%, global GDP drops 27%. That runs until you are 33. The country nearly collapses along with the world economy. When you turn 39, World War II starts. You aren’t even over the hill yet. 

When you're 41, the United States is fully pulled into WWII. Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war and the Holocaust kills six million. At 52, the Korean War starts and five million perish. 

At 64 the Vietnam War begins, and it doesn’t end for many years. Four million people die in that conflict. Approaching your 62nd birthday you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War. Life on our planet, as we know it, could well have ended. Great leaders prevented that from happening. 

As you turn 75, the Vietnam War finally ends. Think of everyone on the planet born in 1900. How do you survive all of that? A kid in 1985 didn’t think their 85 year old grandparent understood how hard school was. Yet those grandparents (and now great grandparents) survived through everything listed above.

Perspective is an amazing art. Let’s try and keep things in perspective. Let’s be smart, help each other out, and we will get through all of this. In the history of the world, there has never been a storm that lasted. This too, shall pass.

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Friday, May 13, 2022

ankle break part 2

I am finally liberated from the cast. The first order of business is to wash my left foot and scrub off the dead skin. Now I can start gradually putting weight on the injured foot.

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Broken ankle

This is the first time I have definitively broken any bones, and it was a bad one. According to Doctor Chang, it was one of the worst breaks he's seen. 

And then I had Covid while hospitalised and had to be quarantined. 

Wednesday, August 07, 2019

On Happiness

So perhaps happiness is synchronising one’s personal delusions of meaning with the prevailing collective delusions. As long as my personal narrative is in line with the narratives of the people around me, I can convince myself that my life is meaningful, and find happiness in that conviction.

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Thursday, January 24, 2019

Conversation

On Fyodor sticking his head out the door and running back when he saw me standing at the gate.

A: Maybe he sees you like I see Mdm. Jung. You have an air of authority.

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Thursday, January 10, 2019

MT

After a week of getting played by DHL, amd not getting my regular sessions in, I can't believe I'm saying this.

I miss going to the gym.

My wife insisted I get off my JoJo ass last year and join a gym. I'd been putting it off till a bout of lower back pain persuaded me that I should get more limber.

So tomorrow, despite the uncertain schedule of a delivery from Germany, I am gonna hit the gym, even if I have to leave halfway through class.

Did I mention that I'm really grateful to my wife for the encouragement to do this?

I must have.

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Wednesday, October 11, 2017

On "Elite" schools

I was reading some comments made online regarding education.

There seems to be a perception, which is popular with a fair number of commenters, that schools which produce academically brilliant kids stint on character and moral development and vice versa. I can only suppose it makes them feel better, because I do not think it's true.

The world isn't equal. It doesn't hold true that just because you have certain strengths in some areas, you must have weaknesses in others. Assuredly, they are the subject's weakness. Which, relatively speaking, might still mean that the subject's proficiency or grasp of it is still much stronger than the average.

A child could very well be poor in his studies, have a face that no mother could love, punch with the strength of a kitten and yet be someone who would happily kill cats in the most painful way available.

Leaving out my opinion that parents should be the ones to inculcate moral fibre and build character, a school that doesn't focus on academics doesn't mean it focuses on character development. For certain things, you can't have one without the other. You mean it makes sense that if a school teaches rigor and persistence, focus and analysis, the students will all do less well in the PSLE?

Personally, I find that people who have done well in life, and not unnecessarily just in the material sense, are more ready to extend a helping hand. The downtrodden may actually simply rob the bugger while he is down.

While that isn't always true and certainly not a reflection on the poor, it is what it is. In 2016, it wasn't the rich and educated liberals who elected Donald Trump to the White House. It was the poor who sent a poorly prepared billionaire armed with a grenade.

Life isn't fair and the system isn't going to make it equal. You are. And that should be what empowers you.

Stop blaming the system and simply try to make the best of it. Without the cat killing, of course.

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