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Making a local connection in Morocco

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The scent of Maghrebi mint tea filled the tent, the door fluttered in the occasional breeze revealing the sand dunes with our camels kneeling in the heat as the sun scorched the sands. The dunes stretched out for what seemed like endless miles in every direction to the horizon. I sat on a low wooden bench, happy to be in the cool shade. With a smile on my face I took a deep breath, sipped my tea and thought back over the last few weeks. I couldn’t wait to get off that seat. The temperature in the cramped minivan as it rocked along the road was torture. I stepped off the bus into the midday sun with my backpack flung over my shoulder. As the minivan doors squeaked shut behind me, the intensity of the heat hit me. My nostrils were filled with dry warm air that I could feel filling my lungs. The bus pulled away and left me in an empty street. Ramadan. I looked around the palm tree lined boulevards, walked past the shutters of the empty pizza joints and stopped on a wall at the pristine beach that met the Atlantic Ocean. When I had set out for Africa, I wasn’t expecting a western resort never mind an empty western resort. None of this felt authentic. 

I was deflated. I only had a couple of hours before I was due to catch a boat to the Canary Islands. I conceded that I was to spend my only hours in Africa on this beach, alone. The silence was accented only by the sound of the gentle rolling waves, the warmth in my lungs and the smell of the sea air in my nose. There was nothing wrong; at any other time I would have been elated to be in such a beautiful location. But that was not quite what I had seen in my minds eye.

“You see nothing today. It’s Ramadan”. I turned around to see an older gentleman standing just over my shoulder. I hadn’t heard him approach me, I thought I was entirely alone. The gentleman must have been in his 50’s at least, with dark brown skin, a receding hair line, a thick black moustache, and small oval glasses. He stood in sandals, light wash denim jeans with a yellow linen shirt stretched desperately across his potbelly. His name was Omran.

There was an extreme serious language barrier, but we tried to have a conversation. I speak English where words can be pronounced in the same way and mean completely different things; Omran spoke Arabic which has letters that my alphabet has no equivalence for. It was hard work, but well worth it. That kind of communication meant we had to pay close attention to each other. We listened, not just for a gap to signal our turn to talk, but to the tone of voice which established mood and feeling, for intonation to discern if a question is being asked, or a statement made. We focused on the movements of the face, the motion in the hands. 

“I show you Agadir.” I followed him to his beige 1980’s Mercedes 240D, got into the front seat and through force of habit I floundered trying to find a seat belt. There was no seatbelt. We drove through the rich part of town, he showed me the Ornate mosque, the white washed walls of the villas and the houses of rich. I sat behind the leather dash, with its mahogany details as the fans blew out hot air making no difference to my comfort levels. He began to make a swirl in the air with his hands saying

“This no Médina.” 

He then pointed down a main road made the swirl again and repeated the motions while saying 

“Médina; No Médina! Médina; No Médina”.

Then changing his inflection, he pointed down the main road and said

“Médina?”

I agreed to his question, with absolutely no idea what he was asking but I had enjoyed his company so I went along. He drove me from the riches, and across our language barrier he explained that the Médina is the old town and that this is where I would see the “real people”. 

He parked up and we took a walk together through the markets, the first of which was a meat market and a real culture shock. The bodies of meat hung from bars above me while the legs and heads were discarded; sensing my uneasiness with this, Omran insisted that I pose with the pile of black and white goat heads, the heads of horned rams and the head and legs of a Camel while he took a photo. Then he walked me to another market and the multitude of smells assaulted my senses as I walked off the dusty paths, out of the heat and into the cooling shade of a spice market. There were many stalls with bags of spices, as tall as me and the colours joined the advance as the assault on my senses continued; reds and oranges of the Harissa spices, yellows and beiges of the curry powders, the green of mint leaves and the browns of the cloves and grains. The dusty, dirty, old spice market is how I had pictured that part of the world; My search for authenticity suddenly felt successful. The hustle and bustle of the market, the bartering, the buying and the sound of the busy streets outside filled me with utter joy. To my self-appointed guide, this must have seemed rather irrational; this was just his home.

Omran brought me to one of the stalls and introduced me to a friend of his, who welcomed us out behind his stall to a little room, with short benches and a small table in the middle with a beautiful throw draped around it and he began to make tea. His friend was a lot older than he, with similarly dark skin, a thinner moustache and stood tall towering over me, wearing a dark grey traditional tunic, the thawb, stained with the all colours of his spices. His English was exceptional and we discussed football and my home country of Ireland. He tells me the tea should be ready and he began to pour from a beautiful swan-necked steel pot into a short glass and handed it to me, before sitting down next to me. Noticing that he was not having a glass himself I began to feel a suspicion rise in me.

“Are you not having a glass yourself?” “Oh no, this is Ramadan and I am not allowed.” “Oh I don’t want to be rude…” “Please friend, to reject our hospitality in our culture is more offensive than to drink tea, merely because I am not having any.” I push the suspicions out of my mind. The tea is delicious, with hints of menthol.

“This is lovely, what is it?” “That my friend, is Maghrebi mint tea. It is a traditional drink for us”

After sitting and talking a while he leaves for a moment and returns with four bags.

“This one is for chicken, this one is for meat, and this one is for fish. This is our tea. For you.” “Oh thank you, how much do I owe?” “No, this is for you” He showed me how to write my name in Arabic before me and Omran decided to take our leave. I was guided across the street to a dusty outdoor fruit and vegetable market, where wooden carts with metal bindings were piled with carrots, donkeys stood next to carts of turnips, men in thawbs and skull caps stood next to enormous piles of Mediterranean oranges, watermelons and tomatoes. We ventured through what could only be described as a gap in a wall and ascended three flights of stairs to a row of mini-markets selling all kinds of branded shoes, clothes, bags and gadgets. Omran even stopped to buy a new pair of sandals.

We walked back to his car and got back inside, and as with every other time, I floundered looking for the seat belt that was not there. As we drove around, Omran parked on an active and busy street, raised five fingers and seemed to be insisting he would be right back; leaving the keys in the ignition, he pressed the door lock and got out of the car causing the door to bolt behind him. I felt the nerves swirling in my stomach, as memories of the tea I drank alone flooded to the front of my mind. I tried to push these thoughts from my head, but it was futile. I kept looking at the keys hanging in the ignition, trying to formulate an escape plan. Every noise around me was amplified and somehow muffled at the same time; I heard laughing and adjusted the rear-view mirror and caught sight of a group of men walking up towards the car. It was them, these were Omran’s co-assailants. They were younger, fitter and in numbers. Every news report, movie and all the hysteria of the anti-arab media flooded forth, waves of memories crashing, each one fighting for its turn to play out in front of me. I frantically looked round the cab still trying to form a plan; I searched under my seat as far as I could reach, I opened the glove box, I stared at the key and then I tensed up, sat back and stared into the rear-view mirror. The group split, four walking up the left of the car, three on the right. I sat bolt-upright and waited. The men walked past the doors, past the bonnet, regrouped and then simply walked on. They were not Omran’s co-assailants. I relaxed and looked around. Men continued to man their markets, women milled to and fro doing their shopping, children played and dogs barked. The co-assailants I was waiting on did not exist. 

I became annoyed at myself for my attitudes, and then I became annoyed at the media; how dare they affect my attitudes towards others so blatantly. I became annoyed at Liam Neeson’s character in Taken, considering all his enemies were Arab. I then returned my annoyance to its rightful place; myself. Only I am in control of how I see the world. In my arrogance I had not realised how much I had been impacted by all the propaganda. I closed the glovebox tried to return Omran’s rear-view mirror hoping he wouldn’t notice I had moved it. Soon I noticed him come walking around the corner with his arms laden down with shopping, which he placed in the boot. He wrapped his window and I leaned over and opened the door for him and he clambered in to the driver’s seat, started the engine and asked would I mind if he drove to his house to leave the food in for this evenings meal. I obliged. 

We drove out of the dusty streets, passed a big communal square and towards the suburbs of the town. The streets narrowed and I wondered how he could possibly steer his seemingly massive Mercedes through the maze off winding streets as the building leered over us. He pulled up next to a doorway and together we carried his shopping into his home. I yearned to take Omran up on his offer of sharing his evening meal with him and his family, but I had to say no, and apologised profusely remembering what I had been told about rejecting hospitability. He drove me back to the beach he had picked me up from and leaving all my stuff in his car we went for a walk along the beach and I thanked him for all he had shown me throughout the day. I offered him money, but he rejected it. Time slipped further away and I had almost forgotten that I had to catch a boat and I had missed my bus to the port. Omran rushed me along a road that although empty earlier, had burst into life, as we hurtled through traffic, swerving in and out of spaces, thrusting through gaps that I was convinced the Mercedes was too big for. This was the second time today I was concerned I may not see the end of it. Horns blared, lights flashed and gestures were made but eventually we passed through the gates, past drab military buildings under the red fluttering flag of Morocco and into the port. I thanked Omran once again.

“Shukraan!”

“Shukraan?”

“It means thanks” “Ah I see. Shukraan”

We shook hands and Omran returned to his Mercedes. I went to immigration control.

A light breeze and the smell of fresh tea brought me back to the tent, in the sand dunes where my camel reclined outside. I thought about the lessons I had learnt that day in Morocco, before reaching into my bag and taking out my notepad and pen. 

I wrote about that day; I wrote about being in Rome just two weeks prior where I shared a great experience with a couple I didn’t know and how I travelled to Sperlonga with them and I wrote about the Australian man that helped me hike through the mountains in Spain. I reflected on how trust and travel are related. One of the toughest things to do while travelling is managing your trust. If you trust the wrong person, then you could ruin a great trip but if you choose not to trust the right person and an experience could just slip away.

I finished my tea, tied my keffiyeh around my head and stepped back into the dry baking heat. I put my aviators on and awaited assistance climbing back on to my camel. I may never meet Omran again, but I will not forget him or my hours on the African continent. 

[guerrillathoughts]

Guerrilla Book of the Week - Book 7 - Happy, Derren Brown

Over the last two weeks I began to read Happy by Derren Brown. As they say, never judge a book by the cover. Derren Brown’s latest writing are not about Magic. They are about being happy. The tagline of this book, for example, is “Why more or less everything is absolutely fine”. The book cover is a baby sky blue hue with the word Happy in the form of golden letter balloons emblazoned across the front. It looks very cheery. I assumed this book would be similar to the other self help books out there. It is not.

This book is some heavy reading. It is extremely enjoyable and contains within its pages information that Derren Brown claims he himself uses for happiness. He talks about the history of happiness and the philosophers that popularised the concept of happiness - He talks of the timeline of our philosophical thinking from Socrates who taught Plato, who taught Aristotle, who in turn taught Alexander the Great. He talks about the romantics, the stoics, the christians and the modern day phenomena of self help. Derren Brown goes on to endorse Stoic practises and then proceeds to explain how they are still relevant today and can be put into practise and make a real difference in the modern day times.

The book addresses themes of the human attitude to life and to happiness and identifies Happiness as some sort of entity we seem determined to obtain and maintain and how we determine our happiness and what we put our faith in.

So far this year I have read Nothing is Impossible, The Alchemist, My Life at the Limits, The Ragamuffin Gospel, The Shortness of Life and Fight Club. I have not done so for any deliberate means, but all of these books have been about grabbing life and making the most out of it and being happy. They have been about identifying our problems and finding solutions. Except none of them have offered any practical help as to how one identifies the problems and seeks solutions. They have been lovely, and they have been motivational; but they have not been practical. Happy is the bridge that brings all the information together. So I have read six books telling me to identify what I want, what the road blocks are and how to get round them - Happy is the one book that tells me HOW to identify what I want, what the road blocks are and how to get round them.

I an recommend this book highly enough. I do not think that he takes the reader too deep into the philosophical histories to a point where they will get lost. I think he guides the reader quite well. On top of this, the book is well written, and at parts funny.

[guerrillathoughts]

Guerrilla thought for the week: Fill my heart with a fear of fear

I took last week off due to midterm. I also chose a rather long book to read and it will take me the two weeks to read it through. However, today I wanted to talk about fear.

During the week I decided I would climb the tallest mountain in my province. I have done this many times, and I wished to approach the summit via a different route, that I had not done before. I drove down to the town at the base of the mountain, parked up and looked up. I could not see the summit through the mist. I’ve been here before. I have abandoned a climb halfway through before because the mist was too heavy. I decided not to climb today, especially since I had intended to do a new route and I was worried that I would get myself into bother. 

It was lovely in the village and as I sat in the car, I convinced myself to give it a go. I began my climb. The ascent started through a beautiful woodland, following a river. As the path climbed upward I passed over dangerous overhangs and slippy rocks. I considered going home. I pushed on. I kept climbing and eventually found myself walking along a cliff open to the elements, the wind was heavy and I considered going home. I pushed on and the rain started. I put my shell on and decided to push on further. The mist came down quickly and I suddenly realised that I was unable to see where the trail went. I considered going home. I pushed on. I found myself crossing a river. I considered going home. I pushed on. I realised that in my haste to get out this morning that I forgot my map and compass. 

From here the climb became steeper and the mist heaver. I pushed on and on. I stopped for tea and food and I pushed on and on. After food and tea I made my attempt on the summit. It was tough. The ground was caked with ice and snow, the wind had picked up and the mist brought my visibility down to no more that 20 feet. I know that I became scared a long time ago; In fact I had spent most of today thinking about going home. I stopped for a sit down huddled behind a rock fall. I considered going home. Two young boys scarpered past me and on up. They began throwing snow balls at each other and having a laugh. Here I was huddled behind a rock, in the mist, scared that I should go home. I realised that somewhere in my growing up, I have lost that fearlessness that I once had in my youth. The young Punk kid that would take any opportunity had become a weekend warrior and now he seemed his warrior days were becoming less and less adventurous. I decided to keep climbing and it turned out I was about 10 minutes climb from the top. 

So coming home I reflected more about what I had experienced today. I really enjoyed the climb and I enjoyed the slight danger of it all, but I had spent most of the day preoccupied about going home. I was full of fear. With hindsight, for a long time I have been gripped with fear; the fear of fear. I have become so worried about being scared away from something that it has actually impacted my ability to take the opportunities that come to hand. This sounds negative, but in all honesty it has been positive. It had had a good impact on me. I don’t know where I go from here or where I end this post, but that has been my thought for the week.

[guerrillathoughts]

Guerrilla Book of the Week - Book 6 - Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

“Someday I’d be dead without a scar and there would be a really nice condo and car. Really, really nice, until the dust settled or the next owner. Nothing is static. Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart.”

My own mortality scares me. I have mentioned this multiple times through this blog. I alluded to the problem in a previous blog. It is not that I am afraid of dying, I am afraid of not living before hand. I am scared that I will be dead someday with no scars, and no stories for others to tell.

Fight Club is a movie I have watched a million times and I really enjoy it. I will watch it many times more. I am a massive fan of Edward Norton and Brad Pitt is obviously not a bad actor. Again in a previous blog I discussed how one can have the same experience multiple times and yet experience different things each time.

For example, in my youthful naivety I merely saw this film for its antiestablishment anarchical message. That is indeed an aspect of this film, but it is not the only aspect. Rewatching the film I can see that now, where as I feel having finally read the book that it portrays the other aspects far more clearly.

So lets start with the basic story; Two men form a fight club where other men can meet weekly to beat each other black and blue for no other reason than they are unhappy with the way their lives are going. The fight club takes an anarchistic turn and develops into Project Mayhem, an army of angry adults that intend to destroy the current American social structure. I think you can see how I mistook this for a mere tale of anarchy. Anyone that knows me will also understand how that would appeal to me. However the author seems to be addressing, rather than a belief in anarchy, what it is that leads to a belief in anarchy. Russell Brand addresses this topic so often in his Youtube series The Trews, which I highly recommend. This book is based in America, but it applies globally.

There is a frustration among the work class people, the proletariat, of the world. In recent years we have seen this distilled in many ways such as the Occupy Movement and, if not addressed positively, the rise of the far right. People have a desire to see life as more than their jobs and their bank accounts. This book was published in 1996. This is a desire than has existed long before then, since Socrates and Plato or the Stoics in BC. It still exists today and it will for the foreseeable future.

“You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world.” 

The book addresses the fact that we mere mortals have become just another commodity. Marx describes this as reification. The author has made a very deliberate choice of employment for our protagonist narrator. It is his job to decide wether cars should be recalled when a serious fault is identified by calculating if it would be cheaper to just put up with the court fees. The novel addresses consumerism as a way of keeping the working class unaware and in their quarter and sums this up by saying “The things you used to own, now they own you”.

Basically, none of the things we were told we could be, none of the things we were told we within our grasp are actually within our grasp and we are pretty unhappy with that.

“We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”

So a fight club was the way of addressing these complaints. Now, I am more likely to identify with Occupy, the 99%, than a fight club, considering I am a pacifist, but I understand the need to find an outlet or a way to escape the tedious repetitiveness of current social structure.

Another notion repeated in this story is how horrible an impact this way of living can have on people. The book addresses this at a few points but I think the best way of depicting this was captured in the lines

“…if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention. If this might be the last time they saw you, they really saw you… You had their full attention. People listened instead of just waiting for their turn to speak”.

The fact that one has to be dying before they are worthy of real contemplation is a frightening reality for a lot of people; and in fact even those that are dying are sometimes deemed unworthy of our time.

My very purpose of taking to this blog, was the clear fact that no one listens. I was fed up of the eyes rolling and people saying “Here he goes again”. And that was family and friends. 

Now I am not saying that Fight Club is a Marxist or Anarchist text, just to be clear. I think this message identifies with all working class people, as well as those in the upper echelons who didn’t find happiness in their pursuits of money or fame, and I think the author makes it clear that the narrator knows that Project Mayhem is a step too far. The book does have themes of class warfare, but it also addresses masculinity, love, violence, mortality and religion. 

But what do I get out of reading Fight Club? Simply, confirmation. Confirmation that I am not the only one aware off and dissatisfied with the current social constructs. Where as I am not willing to accept that fighting is the answer to these problems, I am willing to accept that there is a real danger of society spiralling out of control, and depending on how we distill the anger, it will not necessarily be for the better.

What drives a young male from Birmingham, to make the difficult and dangerous journey to Syria or Iraq to join the forces of Daesh? What drives the young people onto the streets each weekend to drink their weekends away? What makes a man walk into a primary school with a gun and shoot children? We need to identify these issues and then solve them i the most peaceful way possible.

However the other message that comes gleaming from the pages of this book, is to make sure you are enjoying your life. You get shot at it, so make it a good one. Quit that job you hate; stop studying that course you have no love for; do not waste anymore time with the people that make you feel inferior. As Mike Rosenberg so elegantly puts it, in Passenger’s song Scare Away the Dark, “We should run through the forest, We should swim in the streams, We should laugh, we should cry, We should love, we should dream, We should stare at the stars and not just the screens” and more importantly we should not forget that

“This is your life And It is ending one minute at a time”

[guerrillathoughts]

Guerrilla thought for the week: The Formal Education System

As a qualified teacher working in the formal system, I feel the arguments that I will put forth here, though deemed radical, bear some value. 

I would suggest that for the development of critical thinking and wise men and women that the current system of formal education is futile, but then this is no longer the purpose of the system. It is now clear that the current system is to produce workers, that will accept the ongoing development of a capitalist status quo, to keep the cog’s turning in another, massively flawed, system.

This is evident in schools in that students from the age of five are expected to adhere to strict uniform policies and wear a uniform preselected for them; they are expected to report to duty based on the ringing of a bell; they eat when they are told; they learn when they are told, so far as it can be deemed learning; any dissent from this is met with punishments and even the punishments offer little substance.

Then one can apply similar arguments to the curriculum. Who decides what a student needs to learn? Who is to say what subjects or areas of study are more important than others? For example, a student pursuing music will likely be told they “need something to fall back on”, where as a student pursuing science for medicine will not be likely to be hear “best learn an instrument in case the whole medicine thing doesn’t work out”. This is a mere reflection of the capitalist status quo where by the pharmaceutical trade benefits the rich more than music.

Teachers can not stray from this curriculum despite knowing often that it is flawed. I could, as an ICT teacher, send students out with a deeper understanding of HTML and CSS, or teach them to create games with Python coding but if they do not pass based on a mark scheme, which itself is often flawed, then I am unlikely to keep my job very long. As such we teach databases and Web Design with software that is easy, producing less work, but that easier to get past the mark scheme. Students will enjoy less, and learn less; but then again that is no longer the purpose of the education system. The system is designed to produce a work force that will unquestionably go to jobs they hate, everyday, and do the work even when they see no value in the work.

As teachers, we no longer inspire children to have dreams through no fault of our own. No one becomes a teacher to stunt a students growth but the work load and the demands of league tables leave us unable to do what we though teaching was about. We teach children from the age of five to live for the weekend but that weekdays belong to our teachers and in turn our bosses. 

Now, I encourage that children go through education, get their qualifications as society deems fit but I do encourage them to get qualified in subjects they enjoy and to seek external education, be this quantified by a further piece of paper or merely by the building of their own personal library.

Reading is no longer cool. I believe that this is no accident. The more one reads, the more educated they become and the more likely they are to live a life they see fit and not one that the governments see fit. I believe as teachers it is our duty to inspire young people to desire learning. 

I believe you can tell a lot about a person from their bookshelf. Upon my book shelf one will find books about magic by the mysterious S. W. Erdnase, Derren Brown, Paul Daniels and Dynamo; books on travel such as “A Walk in the Woods”, “Into the Wild” or “Shadow of the Silk Road”; books by Malcolm X, Fidel Castro, Russell Brand or Noam Chomsky. Novels such as “Fight Club”, “Jurassic Park” and “The Alchemist”; books regarding religion such as “Mere Christianity”, “U got 2 Love” or “The Man in White”. In short you will find books on travel, history, politics, philosophy, magic, imagination - none of which I ever covered in school. Because these are frivolous endeavours.

Why in school do we learn about the history of war, but never the history of great exploration, such as George Mallory? We learn about “great” men travelling to colonise land and murder their people, but never to the truly great men that travelled merely to explore and learn. “The human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for." ~ Dead Poet Society Not that I reject the need for math and science, indeed I find these subjects truly fascinating. My question here is that faceless men and women decided which aspects of these subjects are to be deemed necessary. When the human soul identifies with beauty, why do we only learn horrible histories? 

Our system needs to be rejigged to allow us to create inspire young people, who seek to make the world a better place, who can take an argument with an open mind and turn it on its head. As William Butler Yeats said “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” Or at least it should be.

And that is my thought for the week!

[guerrillathoughts]

Guerrilla Book of the Week - Book 5 - On the Shortness of Life, Seneca

This week I chose to read a short book that I have started before and yet never finished. The book, or rather the essay, is another purchase I made many years ago and never got round to reading completely. 23rd of August 2015. It really is crazy the information you can find about yourself stored on the internet, right? Now before I digress, the book I am talking about, of course, is De Brevitate Vitae.

De Brevitate Vitae, translated to English is “On the Shortness of Life”. It is an essay written in 4AD by a Roman Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca, commonly known as Seneca the Younger. I say commonly. Commonly among the circles in which Roman Stoic Philosophers get attention. Stoicism is a philosophy of personal ethics, which was seen to be the main focus of human knowledge. He wrote the essay for his father-in-law Paulinus. The essay was basically his opinions on how to get the most out of this life we live. Seneca was forced to take his own life in the end because of the role it was believed he played in the Pisonian conspiracy.

Again, as in previous posts, I accept that this is not meant to be a history lesson. However, I make all this known to the reader for one reason; I want to make it clear that although this is a short book it can be difficult to read and if you are not used to reading philosophical essays it would be best to read this in small doses and try to digest them. However I do suggest that you read this book.

I have literally in the past three weeks concluded that there are three books, that if read and acted upon, would change the life of the reader, undeniably for the better; The Little Prince, The Alchemist and The Shortness of Life - My Life Changing Trilogy. Again, if read, digested and acted upon.

When you open this book, you will find that actually it contains three of Seneca’s Essays, namely “On the Shortness of Life”, “Consolation to Helvia”, and “On Tranquility of Mind”.

The basis of this book, and the three essays, is that we humans have been giving a certain amount of time, and that time is our most valuable and least renewable resource. The essay is intended to draw our attention to how well we do, or do not, invest that resource. The essay starts by highlighting that we humans complain a lot about how short life is. Seneca counter argues this with a fairly straight to the point rebuttal.

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us”

It is hard to argue with that and in fairness if this was all that Seneca had committed to paper, it would have sufficed to make his point clear. However, Seneca goes on to highlight why it is that we see life as short and his conclusion is that we humans do not dedicate time to ourselves, rather we labour after useless tasks. It is our insatiable greed that leads us to waste life by pursuing that which is not important with “laborious dedication”.

This was true in 4AD apparently, but it is certainly true today. There was a survey carried out in the UK, that I can sadly not find to reference. It basically stated that most of the working class felt that their jobs weren’t actually important to society. In the search for this survey I found others that I thought also brought meaning to the point that Seneca labours here. “Investors in People” found that 60% of those questioned were not satisfied in their job. Yet another survey by “TLNT” found that 60% of people say that the money they earn is what keeps them in their jobs. So I know that this isn’t strictly scientific as it is two different companies asking two different lots of people two different sets of questions. But I feel it is enough to make the simple point that people will work in tasks they deem useless just to feed their need for money and in some cases insatiable desire for money. However Seneca does not just state money, but also a greed for power or recognition and this is most likely true today also; Think Donald Trump as President of the USA.

Seneca makes reference to a beloved poet, although he fails to reference them by name. The quote he chooses is “It is a small part of life we really live”. After making the point that we waste a lot of life, and highlighting what it is that we do to waste said life, he almost sums up his points with this bit of poetry. He explains it further when he says “So you must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkle: he has not lived long, just existed long.” He talks about how people waste their life getting angry at trivial matters, like the barber who miscuts your hair. He makes the point that people put off their leisure until retirement at which point they are no longer fit enough or able body enough to do that which they have always wanted to do. My previous post was an article from Erma Bombeck, late in life, that lamented the things that she wished she had done, echoing the sentiment committed to paper centuries before by Seneca.

I was lucky as a teenager. I had a really good support group. I had a group of friends that I spent every free moment with. It was great. Then I went to University. I had always wanted to do History and Philosophy at University. However at the last moment, I changed my mind. I went to study design. I went because I thought there would be more money and I went because two of my close friends where going to do the same. They didn’t. I ended up alone. Now do not get me wrong, I enjoyed my time at University, and I enjoyed the culture of the Art College, but the point I make here is that I went to the Art college for other people and to earn more money. After leaving college I got a job in retail, and despite being qualified to be a designer my main income was working in this shop. I became a supervisor, assistant manager and then manager. Now I loved that shop, and had I not worked in that shop I would not have missed another great opportunity. However it was not what I wanted to do and to do it for three years was a silly task and a waste of life; especially since the area manager walked in after it all, and through no fault of mine, informed us that we were all being made redundant. Around the same time I started that job, I also met a girl and a relationship blossomed. She lived far away, and even on weekends that I didn’t want too do it, I would drive the whole distance to see her and then late on Sunday evenings I would drive all the way back again. I skipped family events that I wanted to go to, came home early from trips I was enjoying and miss the birthdays of my nearest and dearest because she requested that I do so. I was living for someone else. Or as Seneca suggests, I was not living but merely existing. Then I took a job in a call centre; a job I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy. For two years. I despised that job but rather than live for me, I was afraid of not finding more work. How frivolously I threw away time.

If anyone takes any thing away from this it is this; Do not throw your life away frivolously - Invest time with the people you want to be with, in the places you want to be in. I will leave you with a quote from Seneca’s essay to his step-father Paulinus:

“Every individual can make himself happy”

[guerrillathoughts]

Guerrilla thought for the week: If I had my life to live over again

“If I had my life to live over... Someone asked me the other day if I had my life to live over would I change anything. My answer was no, but then I thought about it and changed my mind. If I had my life to live over again I would have waxed less and listened more. Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy and complaining about the shadow over my feet, I'd have cherished every minute of it and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was to be my only chance in life to assist God in a miracle. I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed. I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded. I would have eaten popcorn in the "good" living room and worried less about the dirt when you lit the fireplace. I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth. I would have burnt the pink candle that was sculptured like a rose before it melted while being stored. I would have sat cross-legged on the lawn with my children and never worried about grass stains. I would have cried and laughed less while watching television ... and more while watching real life. I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband which I took for granted. I would have eaten less cottage cheese and more ice cream. I would have gone to bed when I was sick, instead of pretending the Earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren't there for a day. I would never have bought ANYTHING just because it was practical/wouldn't show soil/ guaranteed to last a lifetime. When my child kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, "Later. Now, go get washed up for dinner." There would have been more I love yous ... more I'm sorrys ... more I'm listenings ... but mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute of it ... look at it and really see it ... try it on ... live it ... exhaust it ... and never give that minute back until there was nothing left of it.” Erma Bombeck, Eat Less Cottage Cheese and More Ice Cream: Thoughts on Life from Erma Bombeck

[guerrillathoughts]

Guerrilla Book of the Week - Book 4 - The Raggamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning

This week, I knew that my reading time would be greatly reduced. Due to work commitments I had to reschedule a lot of my time. So I went to my ever growing box of unread novels and memoirs, facts and fictions, Satires and Horrors, Travels and Histories. All various sizes and even shape. I dug down to the bottom and chose a book I bought many years ago. It was in near perfect condition and had never been read. It still had it’s purchase invoice inside. 2009. Eight years ago I bought this short book for less than four British pounds. Had I really been that busy over the last eight years that I couldn’t make room for 174 pages? And what had I achieved in those 8 years? 2009 I was just about to finish my undergraduate degree. Five years after buying this book I would go back and complete a one year post graduate. But in between, could I really not have found the time to read 174 pages?

Memories came to me that saddened my heart. The reason I bought this book, was because a friend at the time requested that I do so; a friend with whom I had fallen out of touch with. In eight years I had become so far removed from this friend that I wasn’t even in attendance at her wedding. This week I decided to find the time to read 174 pages. At first I was a little uneasy with this book, as it is not at all what I thought it would be. By the title I had assumed that this title would be about a Vagabond, or Ragamuffin, that just travelled or was at least semi nomadic, expecting it to be a travel memoir. This is very far from what this book is. This book is one man trying to help the reader to see the beauty and the grace of God. However I do not think that one needs to be a Christian to find value in the words. On nearly every page I found my self reaching for my pen to write down quotes, or make notes that could help me to write a post this week. Obviously not every quote or note will see the light of the blog, but it is a testament to just how Christian Brennan Manning is - As with Jesus, his words are not just for the righteous. He starts the book by listing who the book is for: “The bedraggled, beat-up, and burnt out. It is for the sorely burdened who are still shifting the heavy suitcase from one hand to the other. It is for the wobbly and weak kneed who know they don’t have it all together and are too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace. It is for the inconsistent, unsteady [disciples] whose cheese is falling off their cracker. It is for poor. weak [and sinful] men and woman  with hereditary faults and limited talents. It is for earthen vessels who shuffle along on feet of clay. It is for the bent and bruised that feel their lives are a grave disappointment [to God]. It is for smart people that know they are stupid and honest [disciples] that know they are scallywags. The Ragamuffin Gospel is a book I wrote for myself and anyone who is discouraged along the way”

If you take away the references to God, I am sure that many people would find themselves in this list. And this book has a lot to say. Yes Manning says it through the avenue of belief in the Christian God, but I feel much of what he says is relevant, or should be relevant, even to non-believers of that faith. This post is not an argument for, or against Christianity. It is not about which faith is the one true faith. This post is about the book I read, the thoughts it stirred up in me, and who I become.

Disclaimer: I was born into a Catholic Family, raised in the Faith and still practise to this day, despite countless doubts.

This book is not about judgement. It is not about telling the reader that they are a sinner and that they must repent. This book actually has a whole chapter entitled “Tilted Halos”, that starts with an anecdote of a very uptight conservative Christian talking to the doctor about headaches. After questioning the Christian about his values he concludes the that cause is “Simple, my dear fellow. Your halo is too tight”. It further includes a very forward thinking quote that states simply “We miss Jesus’ point entirely when we use his words as weapons against others. They are to be taken personally by each of us”. Basically, he is passing no judgement in this book. He does not list sins of which one need to repent, nor does he use it as an opportunity to snipe at the Homosexual Community, the Atheist Community or communities of other faiths. Christians take all the flak. The book starts by talking about how incredible our universe and planet are, and how mathematically our Planet seems to have been created.

“The slant of the earth, for example, tilted at an angle of 23 degrees, produces our seasons. Scientists tell us that if the earth had not been tilted exactly as it is, vapours from the oceans would move both north and south, piling up continents of ice. If the moon were only 50,000 miles away from earth, instead of 200,000, the tides might be so enormous that all the continents would be submerged in water. Even the mountains would be eroded. If the Crust of the Earth had been only ten feet thicker, there would be no oxygen, and without it all animal life would die.

Had the oceans been a few feet deeper, carbon dioxide and oxygen would have been absorbed and no vegetable life would exist. The earth’s weight has been estimated at six sextillion tones (that’s a six with 21 zeros). Yet it is perfectly balanced.” This is of course incredible, to consider our planet’s perfection. Our planet is literally just perfect for life to exist. Any slight differences and our planet would not be the home it is today. And yet it is home. How much more incredible this becomes when we take a wider view of our existence and consider the perfection of our Universe. “The nine major planets in our solar system range in distance from the sun from 36 million to about 3 trillion, 6,664 billion miles; yet each moves around the sun in exact precision… The sun is only one minor star in the 100 billion orbs which comprise our Milky Way Galaxy. If you hereto hold a dime, a ten-cent piece, at arm’s length, the coin would block out 15 million stars from your view.”

So sorry to quote such a considerable chunk of this book, but I think it does a great job of putting us in our incredible place. You see the reason I think this is important, is because for me this can’t all be an accident. I am not arguing the existence of a creator God, I am merely suggesting that there must be more to life than the dull drudgery of working nine to five everyday, in jobs most people do not even feel are important. There must be more wonder. This is a point that Manning labours over nearly two full chapters, concluding with a quote from Rabbi Heschel; “As civilisation advances, the sense of wonder declines”. He labours the point because it is very important, that people of today no longer take the time to experience wonder. He describes some of the ways our race used to wonder at the world around us, and he describes how we are losing that ability. Again I am using a large quote from this book, but I really couldn’t cut it down.

“By and large, our world has lost it’s sense of wonder. We have grown up. We no longer catch our breath at the sight of a rainbow or the scent of a rose, as we once did. We have grown bigger and everything else smaller, less impressive. We get blasé and worldly wise and sophisticated. We no longer run our fingers through water, no longer shout at the stars or make faces at the moon. Water is H2O, the stars have been classified, and the moon is not made of green cheese. Thanks to satellite TV and Jet Planes, we can visit places available in the past only to a Columbus, a Balboa, and other daring explorers.”

One of the reasons I practise Landscape, Nature and Wildlife Photography is because I do still wonder at the world. When I see a beautiful painted sky or indeed a rainbow I will often pull over and enjoy them, even sometimes when I am in a rush. For me this is probably the most important time to enjoy such sights; whenever I am simply to busy to do so. I remember my shock just this year when meeting a girl from the country, to find that she had never laid in a field and counted the stars; There I was from the City, talking of my experiences on the west coast of Ireland, or under the unspoilt Bosnian Sky. I have discussed my love of the exciting. The moon may not be green cheese, but why not choose to believe it is anyway? I know this sounds naive, but hopefully if you take the time to read my previous post about this, you will understand and hopefully enjoy.

Manning really labours this point and it is beautiful. He labours the fact that sometimes we are simply just to busy. That in a modern civilised society “We barely notice the clouds passing over the moon or the dew drops clinging to the rose leaves. The Ice pond come and goes. The wild blackberries ripen and wither. The blackbird nests outside out bedroom window. We don’t see her. We grow complacent and lead practical lives. We miss the experience of awe, reverence, and wonder.”

Manning seems to be suggesting, as I alluded to earlier that there must be more to life than the dull drudgery of working nine to five everyday. We live our practical lives. We drive to work, come home and prepare for the next days work. We clear the massive pile of meaningless paper work, merely to make room for tomorrows massive pile of meaningless paper work. Manning makes a statement about religious people, but this statement could apply to all but the simplest of Children. “So often we religious people walk amid the beauty and bounty of nature and we talk nonstop. We miss the panorama of colour and sound and smell. We might as well have remained in our closed, artificially lit living rooms. Nature’s lessons are lost and the opportunity to be wrapped in silent wonder before the God of creation passes.” I have blogged about the importance of the sound of water in my life before. But it is too true that I have in the past missed the excellent glory of the world around me. I recall one trip hiking through the mountains of Spain, that I was so set on my destination that I missed the beautiful vistas, the birdsong in the mountain forests and the smell of the pines. I may as well have stayed at home. This is exactly why it is when I am hurried or rushed that I choose to pull over, stop the car and watch the sky, the cloud formations or the colours streaked creatively. I wish to be wrapped so often in that silent wonder. So often people tell me that go go climbing and hiking alone is dangerous and a bad idea - But sometimes when you do so with another soul, where your souls may be quiet, maybe that day is not a quiet day for them.

Manning has not finished labouring this point. The author is really trying to hammer home the nail; There is beauty and wonder all around us. “Our world is saturated with grace, and the lurking presence of God is revealed not only in spirit but in matter - in a deer leaping across a meadow, in the flight of an eagle, in fire and water, in a rainbow after a summer storm, in a gentle doe string through a forest…” and we need to take the time to take it all in. We need to live full and enjoyable lives. And this is almost as important to the author as the beauty of the world. It is not just about accepting that we have a really incredible world, but it is about getting out there and experiencing it; about wondering.

The author does accept that “It is only the reality of death that is powerful enough to quicken people out of the sluggishness of everyday life and into an active search for what life is really about”. It is so true that for so many people, they need a near death experience before they realise that they can actually live life whatever way they wish. That they can break free from the monotony. But until that near death experience, the majority of us may never make our decision; We have “To choose between generatively and stagnation, between continuing to have an impart, or sitting around waiting to die”.

Manning labours this point quite a bit also, concluding it with Norman Mailer’s quote “We are either living a little more, or dying a little bit”. A really scary concept. We are either living, or we are dying. Its black and white, fifty fifty, “do or do not, there is no try”. I addressed this concept in my post earlier in the week. We must decided to live deliberately. Either way I find some truth in the quote “The child of God knows that the graced life calls him or her to live on a cold and windy mountain, not on the flattened plain of reasonable, middle-of-the-road religion”. Not from a religious point of view, but from a literally point go view. I don’t just think that what has become of our civilisation is a waste, I know it is a waste. The concrete jungles do little for my mind, body and spirt. As John Muir famous said “The Mountains are calling, and I must go”. I know that Manning intends this as a metaphor and not about literally living in the mountains, but we all have that calling deep down in side to do something different. Manning goes on to talk about how wonderful the he thinks “The God who flung from his fingertips this universe filled with Galaxies and stars, penguins and puffins, gulls and gannets, Pomeranians and poodles, elephants and evergreens, parrots and potato bugs, peaches and pears and a world full of Children“ is. Messner talks about how wonderful he thinks the galaxies and stars are. It does not matter where it came from, both are expressing the need to find wonder in the world again.

What strikes me most about this book, is how easily one would reject it. Manning is labouring many of the points that Reinhold Messner laboured in his own book. How important is the wilderness to our soul? How beautiful a world we live in! How unnecessary and unsatisfying it is to live the bourgeois lifestyle. Those that would read Messner’s book may be quick to reject Mannings due to his belief in the Christian God. How quick Mannings reader may be to reject the non-Christian writing of Messner. Yet both authors labour the same point. That we live in a really wonderful and incredible planet and that so many of us are missing the joy of it all.

Another point made by both is the importance of other people. Last week I reflected on how Messner found his first solo attempts to be too difficult because he “…was lost at the mercy of my own loneliness” and he talked about the importance of a shared experience, and his book finishes with a reflection on the importance of real honest friendship. Manning makes a similar point in this book. He uses his experiences at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting to bring this point.

“Some talk to each other daily on the telephone, others socialise outside the meetings. The personal investment in one another’s sobriety is sizeable. Nobody fools anybody else… For one small hour the high and the mighty descend and the lowly rise. The result is fellowship”

The personal investment in one anothers sobriety is a wonderful concept. But it should not be unique to Alcoholics Anonymous. Maybe if we all sought investment in one another, there would be a lot less people that struggle with sobriety. Maybe we would see the decommissioning of arms and the take up of peace. Maybe there would be less infighting within religions and a lot less between religions. Maybe. Either way it is the other people in our lives that get us to the end. Even in their absence. It is the knowledge, or the feeling of their presence that makes keep going past the final hurdle. Manning reflects on this with the imagery of war “The soldier in combat who, during the lull in the battle, steals a glance at his wife’s picture tucked in his helmet, is more present to her at that moment in her absence that he is to the rifle that is present in his hands”

Now as a pacifist, I think this is a wonderful image. Where could one be farther removed from their loved one that in seperation due to war.

I’ll end by repeating a harrowing quote.

“We are either living a little more, or dying a little bit” ~ Norman Mailer

[guerrillathoughts]

Guerrilla thought for the week: “Not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived”.

I am a fan of many books, but I am also a fan of many authors. For example I have read, and I do indeed love “The Lord of the Flies”. I oft call it my favourite book, due to the incredible imagery created by the library of techniques the author, William Golding, uses to carry you through the tale. When I read that book I can see the panic on the boys when they arrive on the island. The Island that I can see, clear as day, in my minds eye as if I were there; I can see as the boys become more animalistic as the tale goes on. A quick google search tells me that William Golding has indeed written many books, but I have never sought to find them, nor do I currently intend do. Lord of the Flies is my favourite book, but really the author is not as important to me.

I do however love John Muir, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Orwell and Henry David Thoreau to name but a few. If you simply google Henry David Thoreau you will be lost in an amass of quotes that speak to the mind and soul. This leads me to find out where each phrase came from and seek out the books to read the quotes in context. This has resulted Henry David Thoreau becoming one of my favourite authors, despite my favourite book not being one of his.

I could pick any one of hundreds of quotes and reflect on that one quote for an entire month of posts; The same could be said for any of the aforementioned authors. Today I wish to speak briefly about the following quote: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

To try and translate that to a more modern reading may be sacrilege but I picture it would have been written thus; “I went to live in the woods as I wanted to make my own decisions. I wanted to learn what life really was. I didn’t want to have regrets on my death bed”. Of course this is less catchy.

This quote is quite popular and comes up when you google his name; In context it is taken from a book called “Walden”, aka “Life in the woods”. Henry David Thoreau built a cabin, by a pond in a forest woodland, where he lived for over two years. Walden is effectively his journal, or memoir, of this time. If you take the book as a whole, it is really about inspiring a simple life, living deliberately and self-reliantly. If we take just this singled out quote, one could apply an almost opposite understanding, as I did for a long time before I began to read his quotes in the context of his books. As a minimalist, this quote works both ways for me; I am attracted to a simple and deliberate life, in a cabin or living in a van, but I still see my original understanding as I did when I first read the quote. That one should live a fantastic life, exploring and amassing experiences.

At the time I first read this quote I was working in a call centre. Every day I would go into the open office, sit next to someone different and for the rest of the day my computer would automatically call complete strangers in England, Scotland or Wales - where I do not live - and I would try to force them to buy a product that meant little to me. It was insurance, for the home. It was irrelevant to any homeowner as they would have had house insurance. Still, for over a year I sat at a desk, arguing with strangers. My spirits literally dwindled, as the young boy who, at four years old, dreamed he was going to travel the world, turned into a man with a 9am to 7pm desk job and no prospects. I got into a rut, and I couldn’t envisage a way to change my current situation, despite the fact that there were literally thousands of options open to me.

It was around this time that I first read “to see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” It actually did not have a positive impact on me, such was the darkness of my mental psyche at the time. I could only focus on that last part; “When I came to die, discover that I had not lived”, for at that time I was not living. Merely surviving.

However eventually, I took this quote and used it as a motivator. I was not going to let myself rot away in this job. Now I didn’t go into the woods and build a cabin, but I began to make deliberate decisions. I don’t know how I was expecting a better opportunity to fall at my feet if I wasn’t going to look for it. I began to reflect on the author and how he had deliberately went to the woods, for that is what he wanted to do, and that by this quote he meant when he died he would know that he had lived the way he wanted to live and not defined by anyone else.

I decided that I was going to do the same. I had always wanted to return to college, but of course I could not. To return to college would mean giving up a full time and well paid job, and risk my security - But I needed to ignore the naysayers in my own head and make a deliberate choice; So I applied for a Masters in Photography and a Post Graduate in Education. I was rejected from both. However, with perseverance I did eventually get accepted back to college for a Post Graduate qualification. When I finished that course, and all the others that I studied with went on to apply for jobs. Some even left home and went to England. I deliberately went off to travel for the summer, not a massive trip but enough to quench the immediate thirst for the world.

I would recommend taking this quote and using it as motivation. I will leave you with the paragraph that this quote is from, because the full paragraph is even more emotional.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms...”

And that is my thought for the week!

[guerrillathoughts]

Guerrilla Book of the Week - Book 3 - My Life at the Limit, Reinhold Messner

The third week of the year has drawn to a close; it is hard to believe that the first month is nearly gone. This week I took to reading “My Life at the Limit” by Reinhold Messner. This is another autobiography of sorts; It is a long interview with the man himself about his life in chronological order. 

Reinhold Messner was born in the 1940’s and went on to become one the most famous mountaineers in the game. The quote from Time magazine states that “Messner is not only the greatest high-altitude mountaineer the world has ever known; he is probably the best it will ever know” Messner made the first accent of Everest without supplemental Oxygen, which was thought to be impossible, and then became the first climber to summit Everest solo. He was the first climber to climb all fourteen of the eight thousanders - Every mountain over eight thousand metres, and on top of that he did not use supplemental oxygen on any of them. His back catalogue of first ascents and time records is incredible; Despite the tragedy of losing family and friends on the mountains he kept climbing. He is himself an author, writing about Alpinism; He is a former MEP; He crossed deserts and climbed mountains; He has designed gear, such as boots, and has basically changed the game. The man believes in the Yeti and claims to have seen one in Tibet, lives in a castle and basically he seems, as the Telegraph once claimed, the greatest man on earth. He is not without his controversy but that is addressed in the book and my aim here is not to comment on all of that, but merely to reflect upon his book. These are not meant to be book reviews; to be honest I found this book to be a real slow starter, but I was able to find some real gems of information in there. The first of which describes his views on education. I have been educated to post-graduate level. I am a qualified designer and teacher and I have various qualifications in youth work. I am not against formal education - However I do feel that formal education is only one half of a full education. Messner says “During my last few years of school, I came to realise that my path to knowledge would not lead me to libraries, professors, universities, and studies. My path to knowledge was through living life and experiencing reality. I could learn plenty second hand, but nothing was ever to surpass the experiences I had in the wilderness.” Where as I do not feel that formal education should be rejected completely, I accept that it is not the be all and end all and that academia is not the path for everyone. I love libraries and I love learning. Messner is not saying here that libraries have no value; just that they are not the only place one can learn and also that he can learn more in the wilds. I agree that a lot of my learning has been done on my travels, hikes and climbs. Combined with my post-graduate education I have formed a rounded view of the world and developed my opinions on topics that I could easily glide through life without even thinking about - but not live a full life without.

Messner talking about experiences does scare me as I consider all the experiences I have let slip through my fingers. He talks about his father’s support for his climbing, despite how dangerous it was. He reflects that his father “All his life he stood with his back to the wall and never climbed it”. I am determined that upon my dying breath I will be confidently able to say that I climbed the wall. Quite often it is easier to let opportunities escape through fear of how they will play out, as last weeks book reflected. Messner goes on to say that “Killing time gives me the horrors.” I have to admit that I understand this. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I decided this year that I would no longer lie in on my days off. I will no longer wait until the afternoon to get out of my bed. Just this week I was up at 7am on Saturday morning, and went for run along the coast. I caught the most beautiful sunrise, my first for the year. Messner discusses at this stage that he does “…things with a passion, or not at all.” As the questioning turned to the dangers of the life he chooses to live, he discusses how he needs to live this way. When accusations of lunacy and careless selfishness are brought up Messner merely brushes this off saying “The symptoms of my disorder is defined by a lust for life”.

I have written about this before on this blog. I know that sometimes when I set out at 5am on an icy winters day, to drive and climb, that it seems reckless and that I don’t value my life. But it simply is not true, it is actually the opposite that is true. It is my desire for life that makes me do these things. Messner has lost people to the mountains, including his own brother on his first trip to the Himalayas. He has been close to death himself - It is being this close to death that makes him feel fully alive. He says “It is through resisting death that we humans experience what it is to be human.” I do not know that I whole heartedly agree that one must be close to death to feel truly alive, but I know that danger does fill us with adrenaline. Working in the office does not. The conversation develops, and an accusation is brought up that in a dangerous situation Messner broke the rules. “What do you mean by rules? Who makes the rules”. This sentence jumped out at me as I agree with it in so many ways. In this case Messner was asking who has the right to make the rule of how to climb a mountain, especially since he fundamentally disagreed with their rules. I think we need to apply this to life. Who makes the rules? Who said that you have to work 9 to 5, have weekends off, holiday in summer, pay off your mortgage by sixty and then slowly fade into a grave? And yet for so many people in this world, that is the reality. It is those that reject the working world that are deemed to be insane and not those that turn the wheels of the big machine. Messner says some great things about the planet we live on. He was an environmental Member of the European Parliament - for the Green Party. He loves the planet, because it provides him with the extremes that he loves. He is questioned about these extremes and how he allows himself to duel with nature and he refutes this stating “…not like a duel, I expose myself to nature; I don’t set myself against it or anyone else. I am prepared to step out… into a nonhuman world.” He speaks about how he does not belong in nature and how he goes out to the wilds to allow himself to learn and grow within nature. It is not a duel, it is a coexistence.

I amn’t in complete agreement here. I feel that humans are very much part of nature, but I love the sentiment that it is not a duel. I would be more in line with John Muir’s way of seeing the world, that humans are merely out of touch with nature, not separate from it.

Messner climbed his eight thousanders. He did it without oxygen. But he wasn’t finished. Now the deserts called him.

“I kept being drawn to the outer limits of civilisation, where once more I had to learn to see the invisible, to cope with the remoteness and the exposure” Although I have never crossed the Gobi desert, or submitted Everest, I have that same call. Whenever I see a dirt path, or trail disappear off into a forest, despite my current plans, I have to follow that path. When I walk along a beach, I am drawn along that beach. I always feel drawn to keep going, to find the end of that beach; or the top of the mountain. Messner talks about the indigenous aboriginal peoples of the world and likens them to Mother Nature - Yes these people provided him guidance, but “So, too, did the artic night, the fog, the open waters of the Artic Ocean”. So far as we learn to see the invisible and realign with nature we can learn to understand it. As a photographer I have learned to predict the quality of sky that I will see at sunset, judging from the light throughout the day. But we can go so much deeper and learn to read nature like we read a book.

Messner also reflects upon a similar conclusion that Christopher McCandless also made; that true happiness comes from experiences with other people. Messner does not say as definitively as McCandless that you need other people to enjoy life, but he does talk about the positive impacts they make. He talks about his first failure at a solo climb, claiming that he couldn’t face it alone. Physically he could do it, emotionally he could not. He states that he “…was lost at the mercy of my own loneliness”. He discusses that “It isn’t the summit that is important; it is the shared experience”.

The final point I would like to pull out of this book is this: “Failure itself is not important. It’s what happens immediately after that counts - the inner feelings, the the turmoil and self doubt - and how you deal with it”.

Messner is basically saying that the way we deal with failure is what determines wether it is good or bad. For example if we allow ourselves to be beaten, then failure is a bad thing, but if we allow it to push us further, and develop it into further motivation then “Failure is a more powerful experience that success”. This book is a wealth of wisdom - Everything I have mentioned is captured within the first two chapters.

[guerrillathoughts]

Guerrilla thought for the week: Travel is too costly

I got a message recently through my tumblr that asked how I can afford to travel so much. I thought this weird at first because I don’t actually travel that often; But I reflected on this blog and realised that I am blessed to travel as often as I do. However this message went on to ask how I can afford it, and made outlandish claims about travel being too expensive for the normal man and woman. So I have been thinking about this, and I thought I would give some insight into how I have managed to do “so much” travel.

The truth is that travel can be expensive, but it is not a rich man only club. It is possible to travel fairly cheap. For example, 5 years ago I travelled to France and I walked across the the north of Spain. This whole trip cost me £600 including my flights home. Travelling cheap starts at home. If your big desire in life is to spend as much time away from home as possible, then you need to make the efforts when you are at home. You need to cut down on your out goings as much as possible. Now you can take this to the extreme if you so wish; Elia Locardi is completely location independent. He got rid of every single outgoing cost and now travels and is a photographer for a living. You can check out his story here: https://youtu.be/SS9aVfjV9qY

However you do not need to go extreme to still benefit from this. Do you really need that £50 a month mobile contract? I have a smart phone, and I have plenty of data each month and I am spending £15. I intend to cut that down further. You just need to take the time to research the best deal. The same goes for car insurance - find the best deal.

Make sure that all your purchases are essential. Whenever I am thinking of buying something, I take a two week gap from the time I decide I want it, to the time I actually buy it. If in two weeks I have forgotten about it, then I don’t need it. If I go to buy it and its gone, well then tough luck. Most recently it was tickets to see U2, on their Joshua Tree Anniversary Tour - I went to the office, forgetting my wallet and decided not to return to the house to get it. I missed the tickets. Thats £100 I was going to spend, saved. This may sound like you are making life miserable for yourself, but you make your own decisions and choose how extreme to go. But if travel is the dream, then the tickets don’t matter. So you are saving money but now you have to actually book the trip; and there goes the majority of your budget, right? Well this is where money can be saved again, and it really does make an impact. Rather than booking a package holiday or going through a travel agent, you can save money if you do the hard work and book your flights and your hotel. Now, this can get very confusing and there are offers all over the place and it may just be easier to go through a travel agent - but get the quote from the agent, and see if you can beat it. This isn’t a high horse “I plan my own trips” stance - Just due to commission, one can save money by booking oneself. My last visit to Rome cost me £300 for an entire week - That price included the hotels and the flights. Remember, maybe a package holiday will work out cheaper, so check both options.

When you are booking your flights, look for airlines that will let you pay less if you take less luggage. And then take less luggage. I guarantee you, you are taking to much. You will not need the 6 pairs of shoes.

I have stayed in some seriously nice hotels; but my best travel stories revolve around the times I stayed in hostels. It really depends what it is you want to do and experience. I have stayed in hostels that charge €4 a night. You can imagine the luxury in that place. I am willing to stay in large dorms, with little in the way of luxury, considering it is after all only a room.

When you are there, eat like a local. If you walk into a restaurant along the Champ-Elysée, note how many “locals” are there. The prices will be a lot higher than a restaurant off the main street, and it will likely be more authentic Parisian. Travel will cost you money. To make the most out of it, you may have to do some work. But really, travel can be as affordable or as expensive as you make it. If you don’t save money for travel, travel will always be out of your reach. If you aren’t willing to do the work to research the cheapest deals, you won’t find them.

So get out there and go! That is my thought for the week!

[guerrillathoughts]

Guerrilla Book of the Week - Book 2 - The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho:

This country is sweltering. The air i breathe is hot in my nostrils. It is dry and their is little humidity. I was glad to be off the camel’s back, and resting in this tent in the desert sand dunes drinking Arabic tea. There isn’t a breeze in the air and looking through the flapping doorway of the tent all I see is the expanse of sand and in this place the odd palm tree. Just a few days ago I was scuttling through the narrow dusty streets of the Medina, through the markets and eventually taking respite from the sun in the merchants tea shop. The smells of the herbs and spices in the market harshly contrasted to the smell of the meat and fish from the nearby meat market. As I sit in this tent…

I am suddenly shook awake as the phone rings. Except I wasn’t asleep. I was reading the Alchemist. The imagery thrown forth with the words within this book, is simply phenomenal. I could feel the heat, smell the smells and see the people. This book brought me right back to 2015 as I walked through the streets of that Moroccan village, and later crossed the Sand Dunes by camel back before taking rest in a tent amongst the dunes to drink the Arabic tea. For this reason alone I suggest one reads this book. However there is so much more to this book. In the song “Growing Up” by Macklemore, from his album “This unruly mess Ive made” there is a line that simply states “I recommend that you read “The Alchemist”. I had never heard of this book, and to have such a line in the middle of a hip hop song was enough to warrant my interest. Now, all I can say is

“I recommend that you read The Alchemist”. This book is simply about following your dreams - the subtitle is literally “A Fable about following your dream”. Even if it means giving up everything in your comfort zone. The author, Paulo Coelho says of dreams that “there comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our souls as to be invisible. Bit it is still there”. He talks about how people know intuitively what it is they want to do, but they themselves find reasons not too. Coelho believe that if people just went after those things they want, that they will receive them. The only person that can stop them, is themselves. Throughout the story characters repeat the phrase  “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

Coelho’s book makes the claim that we are in fact only on this planet to realise our dreams. Our dreams are our purpose on this planet and that the reason the world is in the state it is, is because too many people are afraid to follow their dreams. There is a line in the book that says "The soul of the world is nourished by people's happiness”. The whole beginning of this fable, in the fields and towns of Andalusia as the conversation between the boy and the old king takes place, the author is making this point. One of the lines I found to be poetic and relatable was "... when each day is the same as the next, it's because people fail to recognise the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises”.

It reminded me of a quote I had read many times before and had tried to make a mantra for life.

“Don't live the same year seventy five times and call it a life.” ~Robin S. Sharma

This author, through his writing, is trying to inspire those to make the most of their life. The author makes the claim that you will never be satisfied unless you go after that dream. Nothing else will satisfy the mind, body and spirit.

The fable talks constantly about Omens and intuition and listening to your heart. I think this is something we all know, something we all experience but some refuse to accept. You have that “gut feeling” and you just know that something is right or wrong, or its a good idea or a bad idea. Where we say “gut feeling” Coelho says it is our heart speaking to us. Either way, all of us have had that feeling, or a hunch. Coelho talks about these throughout the book; about omens, and the language of the world, and intuition - eventually he describes them. 

“ ‘Hunches’… the boy was beginning to understand that intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life”

This is a reflection, I feel, on the old connections that mankind had with the earth. The connections slowly dying out to technology. We are part of this earth, and when we get our hunches, or our intuition kicks in, it is because we are still connected and the hunch is, as described, the sudden immersion of our soul back into that current. For that split second, minute, week, month or year, however long that hunch, gut feeling or ache from the heart lasts, we are connected again to the world. Coelho eventually reflects on the fact that all people already know these things. We know that our heart, or gut feeling, is right. But it is not until many of us read a book like this, or hear another speak that we accept it as true. In the book the Alchemist says “I don’t know why these things have to be transmitted by word of mouth, he thought. It wasn’t exactly that they were secrets; God revealed his secrets easily to all his creatures.”

The truth is out there, as Fox Mulder would say, and our souls are more than capable of finding it. As Damian Dempsey muses through his music, we humans are cursed with a brain. The brain stops us following our heart.

Every thing in this world is connected, which is why it is so simple to really find the truth. But simple scares us mere mortals. The author sums up the unity of all things as “The Souls of the World”. One of my favourite authors, John Muir, once wrote "When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world." This bears the same meaning. Mr. Coelho is not the only man speaking these truths. So the author is telling us two important truths here; everything is connected and our hunches have value, and that fear is a dangerous feeling. Fear will stop us from achieving that what we want. To reject fear completely is to be irresponsible but to let it control us is to be beaten.

There are many fine examples of people out there that have the power to inspire. I have reflected on them before; George Mallory and Christopher McCandless are two massive influences to me, from the point of view of ignoring the norms of society. Casey Neistat is another massive inspiration, as he gave up his job, maxed out his credit card and moved to New York with nothing. He followed a dream and made it work, and the universe conspired to help him there.

I have yet to do as any of these three have done. But I have on many occasions dabbled in it. When I was 17, about to turn 18, I left my final high school exam early and went to Dublin for a Guns ’N’ Roses gig before flying out to Paris on a one way ticket to travel around Europe with no idea when I was coming home. Or when I had been made redundant and I used my redundancy money to fly one way to Toulouse to explore Spain in depth. Everyone told me as I had no job and no income that it was a bad idea. But I knew it was a good one. And so it was. I have immense wanderlust and I have yet to follow it. But that is ok, as there is always time, right? Except, their isn’t. I am nearly 30. If I live to 90, then one third of my life is already gone. If I live until 60, then an entire half of my life has gone. The purpose of a book like this, is to change your life. There is no point reading The Alchemist if you do not intend to listen. It is a fantastic book, both visually and philosophically. Wether you wish to change your life, or merely for a time be transported to the African desert, this book should be next on your list.

So I will advise everyone to read this book, and I will encourage them with a quote from it;

“When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed off…”

So dive into the current and let yourself be taken where you need to go. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” ~ Mark Twain.

[guerrillathoughts]

Guerrilla thought for the week: “You can’t walk in the same river twice”

A quote I find myself using often, is that “You can’t walk in the same river twice”. When I first heard it, I would never have imagined that it would become a mantra for helping me make decisions. 

For Eleven years I worked as a Youth Work Volunteer. I remember my first youth retreat - the feelings were incredible, I was on a high and felt like I had achieved something useful. I remember as the time drew near to the next retreat that I said I was worried that I wasn’t going to have the same experience or feelings. I remember afterwards that I didn’t. A friend then used the phrase, “Well you know you can’t walk in the same river twice”. I have found this to be a very important mantra from then on. 

After some quick research I have come to the conclusion that the quote originated from a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher called Heraclitus. However there is debate around this, and the attribution of the quote is found in Plato’s Cratylus. I am a fan of philosophy but I assume that not all will wish for a history lesson so all I will say is that Heraclitus is attributed with the quote

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” To simplify this quote, to my understanding; A river is in a constant state of change. The waters ebb and flow and run down the mountains to the Sea. When I cross a river to climb a mountain, by the time I climb back down, the water in that river is not the same. The river has moved on, replaced by a new water, a new river. Humans are in a constant state of change. Our physical bodies replace their cells, our mental attitudes develop and change. In one day a person can change their entire perception of life. Every experience changes a person. They leave parts of themselves behind, accept new parts and adapt others. The boy I was at 16 is no more; The man of 28 will one day be no more, while a 30 year old version of myself will exist. 

As this is blog originally was meant to be a reflection on reading and travel, I will focus this quote on those two aspects of my life but one could relate this to relationships, work or play. 

When I first read Animal Farm, it was a fantastic little story about a farm. As I grew and my political and philosophical mind developed, I re-read Animal Farm. It was no longer a short fable about Animals designed to entertain. It was a social commentary about the corruption of the Socialist Soviet Union, about Class separation, the dangers of an unaware proletariat, the abuse of language through song and repetition as a source of propaganda. I was no longer the same man and the hidden truths of the novel became clear. That is a massive change obviously, but even rereading the same book one can pick up details they may have missed. 

I was seventeen when I first visited Bosnia Herzegovina. I had never been out of the country. I’ll never forget the adrenalin and emotions rushing through my veins and arteries as our little bus rattled along the cliff edge of Dubrovnik, the Adriatic sea glistening in the sun, like a million diamonds reflecting the light back at me. The change as the bus rattled through the hills alongside vineyards and fields, into towns with their urban feel before eventually pulling to a stop in the small village I chose to visit. It was a type of magic I’d never experienced. I was well into my twenties when I chose to go back. “You’ve already been there” was echoed from my friends and family as I threw my backpack on walked through security. “You can’t walk in the same river twice” I thought as I boarded that bus that rattled along the cliff. 

I was twenty two when I first visited Poland, Krakow to be exact. I loved the bohemian vibe of the town. The old city was beautiful, the local food was great and the local beers weren’t bad either. I met some amazing people there and I had a fantastic week before moving on to the Ukraine. “You can’t walk in the same river twice” I thought as I sat on a bus for the eighth hour of its Journey, as the sun set, about to roll in to Krakow. I had been really apprehensive about this trip and almost didn’t go. 

I was twenty eight. Six years later. The town was the centre of a major festival that year and it was absolutely buzzing. Three million people had decended on the town; it wasn’t the same bohemian vibe, but it was definitely one of the trips I won’t be forgetting soon. I was sailing down the Italian Rivera. I was docking at Civitavecchia and I would make my own way into Rome. The sun was high in the sky as it was nearly noon before I arrived in the Eternal City. I got out at a dirty train station. I walked for miles through the dirty streets. The Trevi was closed for renovations, I didn’t get anywhere near the Colosseum and queues at the Vatican stretched on for miles. I left Rome eight hours later, down hearted as I stared out the train window, with no intention of ever going back. “You can’t walk in the same river twice” I thought as just one year later, my plane hurtled down the run away to an abrupt stop, there in Rome. The dirty closed town, in my mind, has been replaced with winding cobbled streets, the Vatican a jewel in my memory and the Colosseum a place of great suffering and history. Rome truly has become the eternal city to me, and who would have guessed a year before that I would have be stood there at the Trevi fountain throwing a coin into its waters with a girl I’d only met. You really can not walk in the same river twice. The water flows over the same old ground, but the waters are truly different. The words are on the same old page, but the buds of meaning have blossomed in to a flower in your mind.

And that is my thought for the week!

[guerrillathoughts]

Update: Refining How things are done

Ok so it is 2017 and I am planning to really get on top of this and make it a regular event. So this is another “update” and following that I will continue to “blog” less and share more.

I will continue to post every Sunday. In line with my New Years resolution, I am going to read a book every week of this year and so I will reflect on the book I read each Sunday night. Through the week I will reflect and make notes and then combine them here every Sunday. Now today I finished “Nothing is Impossible”, however I have already blogged about that and so I will not do it again. You can read about it here: http://guerrillathoughts.tumblr.com/post/154644369445/nothing-is-impossible So that is Sunday. However I am going to try and post twice a week. Quite often my blogs have consisted of just reflecting on travel, which I will have more off this year, but as well as that I have random thoughts; or guerrilla thoughts, that I have just blogged about. So on Wednesdays of each week I will post as well. My Guerrilla Thought for the week. This will result in more structured and well composed thoughts. 

So Sundays will be “Book Reflections” and Wednesdays will be “Guerrilla Thoughts for the Week”. I have big plans for this year, and I have 3 big projects; I will reflect on those through out the year - But hopefully I will move more into Video and have more of my photography up. But that is all to come!

For now, thanks for reading!

[guerrillathoughts]

Update: 2017

So it is the first day of the year, and the first Sunday of the year, so there really couldn’t be a better time to post. 2016 was an interesting year in many ways - I didn’t get as much travel in as I would have liked but I can not say it was a bad year. 

2017 is a complete mystery. I have no idea what it hold, and I have very little in the way of plans for it. As for resolutions, I have decided one thing - No more lie ins. I am going to try an make sure that I am up and busy every day. Too much off my time is spent lying in bed. My weekends were being eaten up by my lying in until 12 and then getting up and doing work and I just felt like I had no time to myself. I got up one Saturday at the same time I get up during the week and found that by 12 I had climbed the highest mountain in the province and was heading back home, in time to start work and get the same amount of work done that I would have done any other week. SO I have decided that I must continue this trend throughout the year. I will aim to get up at 7 am every morning.

Resolution two is to read more. Each week I will read one book. By the end of the year I will have 52 books read. I have 96 books waiting to be read so this can only be a good thing. 

Apart from that I will try to gather all the experiences that the universe throws at me! I will shoot more photography and film, I will write more and I will get my major project finished! Heres to 2017!

I hope that for all that are reading this, they will have a great year ahead, and remember to travel and collect memories!

[guerrillathoughts]

Guerrilla Thought of the week: The Christmas Hustle

The Christmas Hustle

https://youtu.be/riDWAgdmBmE

So it’s Christmas eve. I am posting today to avoid having to do it tomorrow on Christmas. It has been a busy few months and I was looking forward to things slowing down over the Christmas period. However I found myself having more to do with added tasks and deadlines, both in work and personal life, just because the festive period was approaching. Of course this lead to an additional deadline when I decided to put together a rough film, or a  short social commentary on the Christmas period.

As Christmas approaches each year the commercial market goes into over drive, with literally every single avenue of commerce exploiting the season until it has been striped of every ounce of meaning it had, leaving the glistening tinsel innards strewn across the metaphorical floor.

Now let me explain, I absolutely love this time of year. I love the buzz and excitement of the town, the parties, the festive music - But I can’t help but ponder are we being hustled. I know I have bought some cheap and tacky gifts this year that I would never have bought in a month of Sundays apart from the fact that its Christmas. As the registers beep and bell, and our wallets empty, are we really being festive, or are we allowing ourself to be manipulated? How does my minimalist ideology reconcile with Christmas? I can not force my ideology onto others and yet it seems hypocritical for me to enter into the world of consumerism for the month of December, when the rest of the year I reject it.

“Can it really be my duty to buy and receive masses of junk every winter?” ~ C.S. Lewis

I have found that the best way for me to combat this, is simply to request nothing for Christmas. I ask those who know me, to pick a charitable cause and make a donation for me - If they must buy me a gift, buy me something that I will actually need. And expect the same from me.

I would hope that all reading this blog, will recognise the importance of the people we love in our lives and make that special effort at Christmas to spend real quality time with them. For one day a year, maybe Christmas day, unplug, switch off and really talk, and really listen. Put the phone away, turn off the tv and the laptop, forget the tablet. Slow down and enjoy.

I amn’t arguing that Christmas has some kind of monopoly over these actions. But I would suggest that this year at Christmas, we try what we have not tried in a long time, or maybe ever. However the aim should be to allow it to be a catalyst for the year ahead. Maybe try to spend time with loved ones on Christmas. Then maybe in January find one more day. And then the same in February. By the end of the year, you will have 12 days dedicated to really spending time with the ones you love. Then next year, try one day a week. You’ll have 52 days a year set aside, just for those that are the closest to you. Eventually every moment we spend with those we love should be treated with the care of Christmas. If you are with your friend, or family - Then why do you need the electronic gadgets?

“Maybe Christmas doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more” ~ Dr. Seuss

Have a very merry Christmas, and a fantastic new year and may the year ahead be everything you want it to be, but more importantly, every thing you need it to be.

And that is my thought for the week!

Music: Back to the Light, by Ground & Leaves

https://soundcloud.com/ground-3/06-back-to-the-light