life in marvelous times

I once heard a story about this woman who'd day in day out break her back cooking for her husband, and every day he'd just sit there, eat and go to bed without saying a word. So she'd interpret that to mean maybe her food wasn't good enough, and so the next day she'd try even harder. Eventually she started to get weary, so as a last-ditch effort to get him to notice she hatched out a plan. That day the husband came home and almost died of shock - she'd cooked grass! and served it!! 

"Er, honey," said he. "Is there something wrong today?"

"Of course not, sweetie. What would make think that?" she replied.

"You seem to have mistakenly served grass. It's a little different from what we're used to eating...."

"Really?? Grass? Huh. You never seemed to notice anything I cooked all those other times, I thought this time would be the same! You mean to say you can also tell the difference between good food and bad? Could have fooled me.."

The lesson, of course, was clear: when your wife [or mum, in my case] makes a good meal, say its really nice and thank her. If it's not so good, well, say it's really nice and thank her anyway. The same principle should apply for every principle we live by - gratefulness. There's a lot that's wrong with the world today, if you ask me. All those wars in the Middle East, our current president, and in turn everyone he works with (especially that finance minister who misspells 14.2 billion in the budget - he's asked for one thing! and he can't even do that right), the rapid rate of deforestation and pollution, this so called New World Order (just saw a documentary the other day that said this New World Order was actually the bankers behind US and England leadership plotting to take over the world, that it's them who've engineered that economic collapse over there and that they control Obama even, scary!), frequent droughts, the rising price of oil, together with rate of accidents and car jackings, Ben Stiller movies and all those American Pie-wannabe's, impossible-to-deal-with HMO's... this list is long.  I could go on for a while.

But thing is if you really think about it, for everything that's wrong with the world we have 10 others that rock about it. There's the new Macbook, and the redesigned 4th gen iPod. There's the Altezza and the new 5-series Beamer, Transformers and The Dark Knight, Grey's Anatomy, all those people who champion environmental conservation (Al Gore, Wangari Maathai and one Mukuria Mwangi who's only one degree of separation away from me...), Michael Moore, the Playstation 3, ARV's, capitalism, Samsung, the Companies Act that requires that all limited companies be audited, democracy a la US and France, christianity, rock music and the Fraunhoffer Institute (those  are the guys who created the MP3 format), Brabus, McFry's and Steers and Southern Fried, Acer, HP and Microsoft, mobile telephony, rainy seasons, stand up comedy, stem cell research, choice, Hillary Clinton, Rob Reiner (he made the West Wing and in my books that just makes him a superstar!), wireless internet, wikipedia, 24-hour shopping and all-under-one-roof megastores, Rose (she might not know it, but she makes my days!), Nu Metro (now Silverbird - the most asinine corporate rebranding strategy I've ever seen!!),... ya, this list is also long. I just wanted it to be longer than that other one. :)

We need to be people that appreciate things. We can't just always be about what's wrong. At times it's lighter on the psyche to enjoy the things that are good. It even lengthens our life expectancy. There's a thing about positive energy attracting positive outcomes, and negative energy affecting everything else around you. I think it was in The Alchemist (that fictional book that's now been all but canonized) where the guy was saying something about the Soul of the World detecting what kind of aura you exude, and then treating you in like fashion. So if you're always bright and bubbly, good things come your way. If, on the other hand, you're downcast and pessimistic all the time, then it'll make sure you never run out of things to complain about. Mos Def talks about life as it was and still is - "...this is Bed-Stuy '82, 9th Floor, 3 tiny rooms, one view; Buck Town, Roosevelt House, your green grass is green, our green grass was brown; heavy beef on the streets, ET had to flee; hungry bellies bright gold on their teeth; the windows on the ave look like sad eyes; ends don't meet where arms can't reach; crash landings routinely happen, some survive others never rise from the ashes;.." but then goes on to say "... whatever ya lane, this road called life is a beautiful thing; and we are alive in amazing times....it's scary as hell but there's no doubt in my mind; we can't be alive at no time but NOW!..." and that's a guy who's been through it all.

I am persuaded, whatever comes my way, there can be no better time to be 25 than 2009!

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