la vita è bella

Sidebar: For a while now I've been using song and album names as titles for my posts. Today I found myself at a fork - to use life is beautiful which as actually a song by Vega 4, or its Italian counterpart la vita è bella, which is the name of a movie. As you probably already know, the movie won out. Italian sounds so exotic....

A friend of mine's grandmother was killed recently. The worst possible way - she was first stabbed, then when she failed to bleed to death she was strangled. Here's the kicker - by her son, now the friend's uncle. And what's worse, this friend's mum got to the scene before the grandmother died, so she saw it all. The trauma is real in their house. Real!! It surprises me at times, how fleeting life can get. One moment you're here, the next you're not. I find it a little ironic, that life is God's most precious gift, bar none, and yet of all of them, it's the one gift we're sure is going to be taken back someday.Regardless of religion, creed, belief, culture, upbringing, we all converge on this one point - we're gonna die someday. The English even coined a phrase around it: as sure as death and taxes (turns out the government is pretty efficient when it comes to collecting those...:). But the sad part, is that for those who remain life has to go on. The hardest part of saying goodbye is having to do it all over again, every day for the rest of one's life. Having to face the same truth each new day, that life will never be the same again. Our time here is short. It feels like a part of us has been ripped off. And I guess it usually has. I've so far had the good fortune of never having lost someone close to me. I can't even begin to imagine what it feels like. It's been 4000 years and we as a civilization still haven't grasped the mystery that is death. The closest we've come is to call it the Grim Reaper.

That said, it's not so hard to tell how bad death is from the effects it has on the people it surrounds. No matter how bad someone was alive, there will always be nice things to say about them at their funerals. It's a twisted stroke of fate, that people should find the heart to share all these great things about someone when he's no longer around to hear them. They say the one thing worse than having loved and lost is to never have loved at all. But I would like to contend, the worst thing that could happen to someone, is to die before their time. Before they get the chance to realize all their dreams. Before they get to show the world just what it is they're made of. Life owes it to us to last until such time as our potential is fulfilled. Preachers preach and a lot of them call the grave yard the richest place in the world. They say it's coz it's full of people who died with dreams untold. People who didn't live long enough to see their ambitions through. That, I think, is the worst thing that could happen to someone.

And as terrible as death is, life is that much better. It's under the cover of life that we can, well, live. And love. Learn guitar. And play the music in our hearts. Travel. Meet new people. Climb the Everest (or maybe just the Nandi Hills, but still). Win an Olympic medal. Get an autograph from Snow Patrol. Exercise. Eat fast food. Listen to indie rock and rebel against the law. Fantasize about Jessica Alba. Run a blog. Fly. Freaking anything we wanna do!! And then turn right around and do it all over again. Ever wondered what it would be like if you weren't there? If you were suddenly gone, how would your world react? Well, whatever you thought you were wrong. There can be nothing glamarous about death. Grief is like the ocean. It's deep, it's dark and it's bigger than all of us.

So, does life really end at death? For most of us, yes. But Mary Elizabeth Frye wrote the euology of eulogies, and I'd like to to be mine:

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain
I am the gentle autumn's rain.

When you wake in the morning hush
I am the sweet uplifting rush.
Of quiet birds in circling flight
I am the soft starlight at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there, I did not die.

END

a rush of blood to the head

So it's been a pretty long week. Actually a long month, coz this is the first month I've spent working. Like ever! I never did any of that internship thing when I was in uni, I just used to bum all holiday long. It's a new experience, like being thrown into the deep end (that would actually also be a new one for me literally - don't know how to swim :). But yesterday I did something good. I bought something big for my new house. It's not new really, I've kinda been living there for about a month already, but I haven't gotten anything at all, except for the bed which I really did need. Anyway, the big thing. It's not really big, it's just a coffee maker. I decided on that one coz Im an absolute lover of coffee, I think they're really cool and convenient, and it's something I've always wanted. But mostly it was that I could afford it at the time -:). Im a guy who likes symbolism to some extent, and so to break it in and mark the day all I had was coffee. Breakfast, lunch and supper. Ok, not lunch coz I was out for that one, but definitely the other two. And its been great. Now I want a TV and a Playstation. (What's that? Im too old? No Im not. Leave me alone!)

The first time I paid rent was depressing. I can totally see now how it is our parents got so old so fast! Growing up the way I did, one never realises this day is going to come. I was a pretty sheltered kid, add that to the fact that I grew up upcountry and you have yourself naivette at its best. We weren't really rich, but we comfortable, Id say, and I got most of what I wanted (except for a certain mountain bike that has eluded me to this day..:( ). And so you tend to learn to not care where stuff comes from. All you know is if you want it it can be found. The stories about hungry kids in Sudan don't really impact us the way they do white people coz we're so close to it all. It's that case of familiarity breeding contempt, I guess. Of course as a kid you don't really think like that anyway, these are things that just cross my mind in hindsight. When I try and think about how different I probably would be if I'd grown up having to hustle for myself. Or if I'd ever been in the middle of a live strike (can you believe I've still never seen one??!) and had to escape the scene.

Im not complaining by the way. I loved my childhood. And I think my parents did make me who I am today, together with Starch of course, no one goes to that school and chucks without being changed in some way! It's just that now that I have to get all my own stuff and pay all my own bills it's a little new. There's no lifeline at the other end of the phone to bail me out. (ok, there is, but who're we kidding?) But there's a sense of achievement, I find, that comes with being able to call something mine. It's refreshing, like a breath of fresh air, knowing deep down inside that my life is now my own. Coz it is. I answer to no one but myself. If you don't count my boss that is - all 60 of them [and they say it's a flat structure. What!!]. Ok, not really 60, but still.

Coz of this new-found freedom Im learning all the fundamentals. How to be fiscally responsible. Savings. Investing. Budgeting. Even the word "mortgage" keeps coming up. It gets overwhelming at times, but truth be told I've never had so much cash in my life, and so I really do need to learn these things, at the very least to keep me from bouncing off the walls after payday. Everytime I get a chance now that I live close to a megastore I go window shopping and there is ALOT of stuff to buy out there. You can never not find something, even things you weren't looking for. Or things you have no idea when you'll ever need to use. Discipline is hard. But necessary. And it starts now, with me admonishing myself over that skateboard I bought. Oh, wait, had I not mentioned that? Ya. The coffee maker Im proud of. The skateboard, maybe not so much...

END

love in the time of science

When the Time Magazine decided to do a Person of the Century edition back in '99, it was
to award the person who they thought had had the most impact through the entire century.
Now Time does a lot of cover spreads, and they're almost always who's who. So who better to pick the best out of the best than them! As you can imagine the list had like all the big names. FDR, JFK, Mahatma Gandhi, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs (ya, he of the ipod fame), Elvis Presley, and even (SHOCKING!!!) Adolf Hitler. But among them, a little known scientist was crowned king. Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity won out. He wasn't the loudest, or most eloquent, or most influential, and by no means even the smartest, person on the list. But see according to the guys over at Time, the one thing for which the 20th Century will be remembered for the most will be its scientific developments. Apparently science was a really big part of the last hundred years. So in a world full of scientists, what does it mean to be in love?

Is it the ancient mythic asian folk tale handed across generations depicting a conversation between two drunk people:
Drunk #1: "I love you!"
Drunk #2: "No you don't."
Drunk #1: "Yes, yes, I do. I love you with all my heart."
Drunk #2: "No you don't. If you love me, why don't you know what hurts me?"

Is it the whole romanticized idea of a guy bringing a girl the moon (or a red rose) and crossing the ocean for her? Does it necessarily mean sacrificing, to the point of giving up your life for another? Is it blind? When belabored with conditions, does it cease to be "true"? Does it take you breathe away, and does it never end? Is everyone of us really meant to end up with just the one person? Is it written in the stars? And if it's destiny, then is this just God's experiment in which we have no say? O ya, and what if the earth doesn't move?

Or is it the Hollywood interpretation, what Julia Roberts meant when she stood before Hugh Grant in his bookstore telling him "The fame thing isn't really real you know. And don't forget, Im also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her." Or what Anne Hathaway meant when in answer to Jason's question "Why me?" she said, "Because you saw me when I was still a nobody." Or what Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio shared when deep in the Atlantic she held his hand telling him, "I'll never let go!" Or what Chad Michael Murray was feeling looking deep into Hilarie Burton's eyes and telling her "It's you. When all my dreams come true, the one I want next to me. It's you,
Peyton." Or the connection Sanaa Lathan had with hip hop, all the way from her childhood, in the form of an apparently strapping young fellow by the name Taye Diggs. (BTW I think I now need to get a life coz these examples just keep flowing. What!!)

I think love is one of those things that doesn't have an absolute definition, it's purely subjective. You could ask a hundred people in love what it means to them and you'd end up with a hundred different answers. Much unlike the Theory of Relativity above, love is one subject that remains as fluid as the air. You can never really put your finger on it. To some it could be complete trust. To others it could be putting someone else's dreams and ambitions above one's own. And to yet others it could be
accepting the other person exactly as they are, warts and all. And I think all these people would be right. It seems to be the kind of thing that's really easy to confuse with want or desire (spelt l-u-s-t ;). See my thinking is one is fleeting, and the other lasts for a while (forever if the romantics are to be believed). One is superficial and the other runs deep. In hindsight it's usually pretty easy to describe love - after all, if after 27 years you still make each other's hearts skip beats then it sounds like love. But on that first day, can you usually see the next 27 years? Herein lies the problem with
defining love. It's one of those things that is until it's not. And when it stops being then you'll know it wasn't true, if it doesn't (stop being) then you'll know it was. (Eh, am I in danger of becoming a philosopher here?...)

We spend our whole lives searching for true love, which is why our lifetimes are divided into two - there's that first part where we're still searching, and then the second part called "the rest of our lives" when we've found it. And don't take my word for it: just turn on the radio. Depeche Mode - The Meaning of Love; Air Supply - All Out Of Love; Angels and Airwaves - Love Like Rockets; Ashlee Simpson - Love Makes The World Go Round; BarlowGirl - I Need You To Love Me; and that's even before I go into the R&B songs! Turn on the TV: One life to live; One Tree Hill; Felicity; Dawson's Creek; Tell Me You Love Me; Melrose Place... again, I haven't even broached the subject of Mexican soaps! Or go to the cinema: The Other Boleyn Girl, Titanic, Casablanca, If Only, The Notebook, Love In The Time of Cholera, The English Patient... I could really go on. And yet love
remains the most misunderstood concept of all time (although a pretty strong case can also be made for E=mc2 :)

I found this paragraph on the net some time and I think it sums it up pretty well: As an abstract concept, love usually refers to a deep, ineffable feeling of tenderly caring for another person. Even this limited conception of love, however, encompasses a wealth of different feelings, from the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love to the nonsexual emotional closeness of familial and Platonic love to the profound oneness or devotion of religious love. As in even they admit it's impossible to explain (ineffable). And of course, no discussion on love would be truly complete without The Bard adding his voice to the mix:

Love is not love which alters when it alteration
finds. It is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempis and is never shaken. Love
alters not with time's brief hours and weeks, but bears it out, even to edge of
doom.

END