What every gal needs to consider

So you’ve met Mr Great and settled in together. Wonderful!

And of course you expect him to be monogamous. (and fair enough too!)

But just realise the implications of what you are creating. You are saying to him that you are now the one and only woman on the face of the entire planet that he can kiss, touch, caress, shag, …  (you  get the idea).

You are actually placing an enormous responsibility on yourself.

Imagine if he needed a certain medication that he was unable to self-administer, and you were his nurse. He is now dependent on you. He has no choice in the matter.

If you demand or expect monogamy, you have limited his choices of sexual partner to exactly one! You!

I’ll say it again … You are actually placing an enormous responsibility on yourself.

It is my observation that many woman don’t get this. Don’t get it at all.

Yelling and screaming and kicking and spitting

Years ago when  did my counselling course, I learnt there was a school of thought that life is a series of grief processes, starting at birth with the sudden loss of the safety and comfort of our mothers’ womb.

When someone does any or all of the above, they are probably just expressing grief.

Even if it means taking one on the chin, it’s probably better to respond to their grief rather than how they are expressing it.

James was wrong

The book of James in the new testament is supposed to have been written by James, the brother of Jesus. James the Just (his nickname) stayed in Jerusalem with Peter during the early days, until the Romans decided to finally flatten the place.

James (or whoever the idiot was who wrote it) said “Resist the devil and he will flee”

This is just plain wrong. Completely wrong actually.

What a tragic waste of energy and effort and emotion I expended as a teenager all those years ago “resisting the devil” as he tempted me with such awful sin as sexual fantasies and the urge to masturbate. The more I prayed and fasted and resisted, the stronger the “devil” seemed to get!

The more you think about something, the more reality you give it and the more powerful it becomes.

James would have been far more help to everyone if he had written “Look the devil square in the eye and see him for what he really is”

I am so so so so glad to be free of Christianity and it’s awful teachings.

The $35 million dollar question

I recently asked a friend of mine what she would do if she won $35 million.

She listed off eight things.

All eight of those things were for other people.

Very cool.

The Sharemarket and Religion

Listening to the radio in the car this morning, I was struck by the similarities between the sharemarket and religion.

Both are governed by the fundamental human emotions of fear and greed.

If we think the stock will rise, greed kicks in and we rush to buy. When the prophets (analysts) predict impending doom, we sell in fear (and sometimes panic).

Religion appeals to our greed in promising eternal life to those who believe and act (and donate) as desired, and also to our fear should we not toe the party line, with threats of eternal damnation in a very unpleasant place (how’s that for the ultimate scare tactic!).

I must say that I’m so very very glad to be rid of the yoke of organised religion from my thinking, and am so very very glad  to have the simple freedom to decide Who I Really Am for no other reason than because That is Who I Wish To Be, and not because I am greedy for some prize or fearful of some punishment.

A first class enigma

For the greater part of human history, man has had no real idea at all how his body worked! The countless millions of chemical processes that occur every second in every cell in our bodies, the memory, imaging and reasoning abilities of our brains, the wonder of one strand of DNA that somehow contains enough information to build a complete human being!

Entire civilisations have been and gone – Incas, Mayans, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Vikings – yet none had even the most basic understanding of how their own bodies functioned. No idea how the body produced its own heat. No idea about blood circulation, respiration, digestion, or how their hearing or vision was possible. No idea at all of the vast complexity of the molecular makeup of their bodies.

How is it that our bodies have developed to such a high level of complexity, but our understanding has not?

How is it that a caveman groping around grunting and eating raw nuts is at the same time the most complex organic machine that we currently know of in the universe?

Plan B

I am managing a big software development project at the moment, and have just received the news that my key developer has suddenly gone off sick with an eyesight problem. Of course this could not come at a worse time for the project.

When I first entered my glorious career as an engineer, I thought that the role of managers was to formulate a plan, and then ensure that that plan was executed.

Oh how and naive and wrong I was. If everything went according to plan, then there would be little need for management at all. The fact is that things just always seem to move and shift and not go as planned.

Thus the effective manager is a nimble creature that is forever building and demolishing and rebuilding on the shifting sands of Plan B (while for the most part his staff remain blissfully unaware and sleep peacefully at night knowing that all is well in the universe).

Plan B it is!

The stuff rules are made of

It occurred to me today that, while we all have many rules for many reasons, it can be helpful if we make them out of rubber rather than glass.

It just means we can have them, but also not be needlessly harsh on ourselves when we bump into them.

Pick a universe … any universe

A variant of the “many universe” idea is that every possible outcome of this moment that could occur, actually does, and “branches off” into a new universe. So every possible universe that could exist does, and I have chosen consciousness for this particular one. (And of course there are an infinite number of “other me’s” in all the other alternate universes all equally convinced they are the “only me”)

Now what difference does that make?

Well quite a lot actually (for me anyway). For me it takes the pressure of having to worry about whether or not I have made the “best” or “right” decision, because actually I have made all decisions!

A while ago a friend asked me how I thought my life would have been different had I not married the particular woman I chose to marry. With this “many universe” idea, I have experienced life not just married to that particular women, but to all women with whom I may have possibly married. I just happen to have experienced this one.

This helps me avoid regret and wishful thinking, and frees me to not worry excessively about future choices.

I don’t really know what I’m talking about. Just  an idle musing that I find interesting!

The paradox of them and us

We don’t need anyone else in order to be ourselves
We can’t express ourselves without others

Within this paradox, every encounter we have with anyone is an opportunity for us to create ourselves, to decide Who We Are.