I, for one, feel it is a lot easier to write somewhere away from home either on the move or in a strange place.
I know some writers shut themselves in, in a room of their own, while I, on the other side, need people fussing and buzzing around me.

The environment is not just important for creativity. I think it is very important for people’s happiness.
When we go on vacation it is all about getting away from the normal life, house and daily habits.

Thing is, it seems to me that a lot of people live for these vacations and struggle through with only the vacation on their mind, which is what keeps them going.

I think it is important for them to remember that you don’t need to go far or have a lot of time to get away from your daily life or environment.

I suggest that in the weekend there are so many things you can do, for free, instead of just getting lost in the telly or the huge shopping list.

In the weekend you can, for example, take the car for half an hour drive to the woods or the park and go for a walk…
Take the bus to the other side of town and go for a walk there…
Take a tennis ball out to the nearest green spot and throw it about…
Try to walk to work, might turn out to be quite a nice morning walk, and it’s healthy…

It is all about changing your environment, taking your mind of things that won’t get away unless you have something new, something else to think about.

When I write by hand, so many of my thoughts keep popping up in my mind while I am writing and I really have to concentrate to remember them all. But with the keyboard I seem to be almost as quick as my thoughts.

So, does that mean that technology not just made a more fast-phased society like faster cars, trains, planes and software, but also a faster mindset?

Well, if that is true, then our children will be able to work better during stress and think a lot quicker? Or, maybe, they will just ‘keep up’ with our society, meaning they might be better at thinking than us, but it won’t make them better at the job, or have it easier at a job because their machines will be just as quick.

Maybe they will get more that way.

This makes me think about something else.

‘A faster society.’ I am not sure how much faster we can make it. I sometimes leave work during rush hour and the stress that meets me on the underground!
People will run down the escalators even though there will be a five minute or more wait for a train with room in it.

Also, people seem to run on the underground no matter what these days. People (including me I have realised) will rush to the trains and if they miss it they will go ‘oh no!! I can’t believe I missed it!!!!’

But there is a new train only a minute or maximum two minutes later!

That is why I try and tell myself not to rush on the underground but for some reason when there are people around me I just have to walk sic-sac, rush ahead and sneak into a train just as the doors close.

I will try my best though to walk slower…there is no rush for that train and I won’t lose a lot of my life taking it a bit slower in the underground that train a minute later will have to do

I feel very saddened by this, not just because she is part of my family, but because my dad and his mum can’t seem to understand each other.

My dad seems to have problems seeing his mum not want to live anyway, which must be difficult as it is a person he has looked up to during a whole life.
My gran on the other side doesn’t seem to understand why her son won’t leave her own business to her own and live his own life, and (here comes my main point too) she is angry at my dad for not understanding that being old is difficult.

That is a difficult argument.

All through life there has always been people I can talk to that has experienced being my age and been in the situation I have happened to be in. Especially my parents have been of great help in those kinds of moments.

But when you are old, when your friends have passed away then you have none to go to. Who can say, ‘yeah I experienced being 90 and oh, yeah that was a hard phase of my life’. Not a lot of people can!

What also comes to mind is that when my gran married, she had never lived alone before and when her husband passed away she was alone for the first time in her life. That must be difficult at 70! And then living for 10 more years seeing all your friends pass away, feeling your body hurt, your sight go, your hearing go, getting a new radio and TV you haven’t a clue how to use…

Also, having your own children trying to get you to sell your house and go to an old people’s home (although I think, then again I am 22, it is a great idea, as long as it is a good one)

And knowing… that you are actually going to die and one day actually never wake up.

It is a feeling few people can say they know…so then it is difficult to tell your gran, ‘cheer up girl and don’t be do depressed. Life is great!!”

What to do in these situations? How do you try to hide your disappointment that your own mum is tired of life, is becoming an alcoholic, don’t want to go out and meet people anymore or be around the family (because she is embarrassed herself?)

How do you cheer her up without showing your anger/your sadness?

It is a difficult question and it is something that will become even more relevant in 20 years when the kids of the 50s get old.

I wonder how I will handle my own parents when that day comes…

It was almost empty in my carriage in the front of the train (so no one kept walking back and forth to go to the toilet or get a tea either). And as I had just come from a room full of screaming, swearing and stress I didn’t even turn on my I-pod. I just sat there looking at the chair in front of me enjoying the peace and quiet.

It was pitch dark so there wasn’t any use looking out the window except from the occasional time when we would pass a station. ?

Then it hit me??

Why can’t I enjoy such peace and quiet in my own home? As usually on a deadline day I’d go to the pub then home and probably put on the telly or some music, or even just go to bed and sleeeeep.

But why can’t I just sit in the sofa and look at the kitchen table, the chair in front or something like that?

It’s strange how it is easier to do that on a train. Is it because I am in way travelling somewhere so it is more accepted in my mind? I think it might be less boring (even though that chair didn’t change the entire two hours I sat there) on a train and maybe those few stations we passed actually made it more exciting? ?

Or possibly even the slow train sound that makes you want to fall asleep, I love that sound.

This brings me to another point.

I always envy the people who smoke because they can stand outside and ‘just smoke’. It seems so nice and peaceful, but if I was to stand there, not smoking or talking on my mobile, (or pretend I was talking on my mobile) it would look strange.

And now that I think about it, not many people probably fancy just standing outside not doing anything, and ‘just ‘stand’, so maybe even that makes me different.

But is does seem peaceful though. It does seem nice.
Maybe I should pick up smoking (an obvious joke)

But, if we know this to be a fact, then why do people dress up in a hoodey and then complain about being picked on by the police?

Should the police stop asking boys in hoodeys or should we stop wearing them altogether?

A hoodey is just an example here, others could be gold chains, military outfits etc. etc.

Now, have society come to this, that we just have to accept that if we wear something suspicious we should just go along with it for our own and others’ safety?

I know of some who puts it on to feel part of a gang (or even a group of friends, as the word gang has now got a very negative feel to it, in England especially) or as a part of an identity.

Or, hypothetically, if I put on a hoodey and a gold chain, I’ll think: ‘yeah, I look so cool and a little dangerous too!’
Then how can I complain when the police come over and ask if I have a knife, if I know I look dangerous?

But to feel part of your own identity doesn’t need to mean crime, does it? Even if it makes you feel cool and a bit dangerous.

The school I used to go to had a bad reputation and should something come up, the police would come to our school first. You feel like, even if you say, no that is not true etc. etc. you feel they don’t believe you, because you are already branded. That is the difficult bit.

I think, in future, the police etc. should try and be a bit more polite and at least pretend to believe us when we try and cooperate.

Then, if we can establish respect I don’t think anyone would mind being asked and asked and asked.

Might as well get them over with, even though I think they are ever important, they have to be, because how can they die out when people keep getting born and people keep dying thinking they didn’t understand how good life was until the end?

‘You don’t know what you got – until it’s gone’

Anyway, one of the everlasting, undying questions are:
How shall we find the truth; through our senses or through our reason? What can we trust?

To be able to tackle this question we need to have a few thoughts or ideas to go by.

First:
How can you be sure you are a human being dreaming you are a butterfly, and not a butterfly dreaming you are a human being? (Chuang Tzu)

This is one of the main arguments (in my opinion) to why you can’t trust your senses. I dream very real too, in my dreams I can taste, I can feel, I can be happy and sad.
So how then, can I be sure what I sense is real, when I can sense in a dream world as well as in the ‘real’ world?

On the other hand, I am not sure I can reason in a dream world. I know I do as I can remember reasoning, but I also know/or think I remember that the reasoning I did was quite a way out of this world.
Things would make sense when it definitely wasn’t and my senses and my reasoning would be somewhat the same.
For example, I dreamt about this huge elephant with 10 legs. I felt it and it felt real and I thought about it, and my reasoning said, ‘yes, that is a proper elephant.’

So does that mean that senses can lie (as they are the same in a dream) and reasoning is the only way forward?

I am not so sure.
I have always loves my senses because I feel they are more true to who I am than reasoning is.
The latter I have got from everyone else and no matter how I put it, and no matter how much I think or try and reason, it is always someone else’s conclusion.
A good example is a university academic essay. Why? It is full of; he sad, but he argued, but she agreed and all in all they both see it different ways and we have to look at both sides to come to the conclusion that we can’t wrap it up because we cannot come with our own answer, because scholars would have argued for and against.

In that sense, what I know is that my senses tell me as they are truly my own, because, forexample, I know, for no one has told me this, that a kitten is soft.
Because that is something I have figured out myself. Something I have sensed and no one else.

I have just come to a conclusion:

If we all reason, then we will all come to same answers, but if we all use our senses we will most definitely come to different conclusions… which is good. Because if we all believed the same thing, if we all agreed, if we all saw one way only, how would we be able to take things apart, build it up again, see it in new ways and keep wondering and finding new convictions and ideas which would otherwise have been lost forever?

Also (far fetched I know, but not, really, if you think about it) if we all used our reasoning then people could make us believe things we did not want to believe by saying, ‘we are smarter than you are, so listen to me’, and take over the world and our opinions.

Then again, a magician can do that too, like David Copperfield has done when he lets us see things we actually can’t. Then it is only our reasoning that stops us from believing it. Is that scary? Is it good that our reasoning stops us from believing things we shouldn’t?

As a child the magician amazes us, and our parents lets us, too. The world was so much more exciting and fun when we were kids and that is what we should seek.
We have to find back to the child that saw the world as amazing, so we can start using our senses and experience things we never would, because at the moment, we are trapped in a world of facts and figures.

According to Aristotle though, the difference between humans and animals is reasoning. Animals can sense, but they cannot understand the world, which is why reasoning is more important.
Well, I think we should differ between animal senses and human senses, because we can sense with our mind, without it being reasoning.
So I would like to bring a new word to life – sophisense  (Sophia being knowledge in latin)

I think that we have something that animals don’t and that is the capability of wonder. And wonder is not reasoning, it could be called philosophy, but I think the word is too strong to use, but our capability to wonder should be one of our senses because it is not reasoning, and we can all do it, and it is there in all of us, although for some it might be close to forgotten.

At my last job I worked in hospitality and was delivering out fruit to the meeting rooms. I ask my colleague with a passion fruit and a banana in hand. – Isn’t it amazing that these things grow on trees? Isn’t it weird that these two fruits look so stern on the inside but are so nice to eat on the inside? How can these just grow on trees and why do we so seldom eat them when they are so good for us?

She didn’t see the amazement that I saw, but why is that?
Is it because she thinks fruit is so expensive it is not worth to glorifying the fruit? Or is she just so used to the fact that a fruit is a fruit, and it is healthy but not as good as chocolate or sweets?

Then again chocolate is made from the plant coco bean while sweets are synthetic, man made. That’s amazing too I say!

Then again, if you, like me, find this amazing, then you’ll find everything amazing, like buildings, or how the same animals in different countries say different things (it’s true, try it out!), big tons of metal and iron blocks floating on the water (I’m talking about boats) or the same flying in the air!

The most amazing thing of it all is that we, human beings, have thought it up! Where have this knowledge come from? I think that is amazing, and why is it only a gift we have? No wonder some people think we were made in God’s image? I can’t remember who said so, but a famous philosopher once said that God is in heaven laughing that wew do not understand him.

Which is funny, to be honest, if you have read Sohpie’s World (a book by Jostein Gaarder) there is another great example.
Say you are God and you are have just made a new Sims world on your PC…you bring them out to life and they all start to walking around, building cars, worrying about the stock market they invented but never once do they ask themselves how all this is possible… that’s us, or most of us anyway and it’s not right.

I watched an episode where a girl in the sixties wanted to dress as a boy as she didn’t see the reason for learning to cook, wearing make up etc. etc. In the end of the program (this girl got killed by the way) the camera shows a number of people, girls and boys, dressed in whatever.

One girl was a punker, one boy had red hair, one made up girl etc. etc. It made me think.
Today, more than 40 years later, I am not so sure that it is as accepted as they make it look in the program.

An example, you are an observer looking down on a buys high street. A teenager with pink hair and a nose ring walks down the street. What do the people around him do?

A woman and a child walks by him, the kid will turn around and look at him while the mum will try and stop him. The little boy will then ask his mum if he can dress that way too… I wonder what the mum will say in return…

A gang of pre-teens will point and laugh at the boy with pink hair, some teenage girls will pretend they’re flirting with him for then to laugh out loud and say; ‘freak, no way!’

A few will also look at him with a long sought after glance, wishing they were brave enough to do what he did – be different.

Yes, because you are ‘different’ if you dress in clothes the general population do not use. You are ‘weird’, ‘scary’, ‘funny’ and ‘brave’ depending on which eyes are looking.

Isn’t it amazing how we take after each other in everything we do? Do you think that is one of the reasons why we might not be developing as quickly as we could, because we are all afraid of doing something different or something no one else has done or thought of yet?

It sounds plausible to me.

Kids learn from their parents – that is a definite truth. Kids will go to school and say that the parent of a classmate is gay and that is wrong (although the child probably didn’t hear the whole conversation) and from then on the kid will continue to think that ‘gay’ is wrong.

So if kids take after their parents (apart from a few teen years) then that will also slow down the process of development… won’t it?

When I watched this episode of cold case I thought of how in a big city you feel more invisible than in a small local village.
I mean, it is easier to dress ‘differently’ or act ‘differently’ in a big city where you are less likely to bump into someone you know.

For example, I used to find it easier to sing and dance on the street (yeah as I was walking) and dress funny when I went to a big city, while at home in my local town it wasn’t so simple.

Why is that?

Why are we afraid of being ourselves, or not ourselves, but different?

This brings me to another discussion, when are we fully ourselves? Are we ever? How can we know what that is if we have already found out that we take after everyone around us?

Is the boy with pink hair himself?

Being youself is daring to challenge what you are, try out what to wear, try different styles of music and keep trying and keep reinventing yourself, especially when you think you are too old to… when that thought comes into your mind you know you have changes in some way, in which case it is time to find yourself again…

- I think therefore I am… so simple but so true