A random thought about organized chaos

I recall something quite amusing that happened to me a few years ago, when I was a teenager. A friend of ours had just come to our flat for a visit and, for some reason which I can’t remember, he’d asked if we had a pair of scissors. I just happened to notice, by pure chance, that the scissors were actually lying on the floor, under a cupboard. So, I just pointed them out to my friend. My friend went and picked up the scissors from the floor under the cupboard, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for them to be there and, when he finished with the scissors, he went and put them back under the cupboard. A little bit bemused, we asked him why he had put them there, and he replied that he thought it was where we usually kept them. He probably must have thought that our place was a bit unusual, which it was, I have to admit, I mean, you can’t have six children in a house and not expect some degree of chaos in it. What surprised me was his logic. Obviously the logic of someone used to organized chaos.

When there is organized chaos around you, you know exactly where things are without having to tidy up the place. For organized chaotic people there’s nothing more irritating than those people who decide to put things were they think they “should” be kept. So, you come back home thinking “I’d love to listen to that CD I was listening to last night, I could do with some relaxing music just now.” Then, you go and look under the bed (that’s where you remember leaving it the previous night, therefore where it’s supposed to be) and realise, to your horror, that the CD is no longer there!!! What’s happened? Where is it? You start cursing everybody and start thinking of all the possible places where it could be, by which point your stress levels start getting higher and you need more than ever that relaxing music. You turn everything inside out, upside down, you look inside bags and paper bins, under the pillow of your settee, in your coat pockets, inside your shoes… and finally… There it is! You find it in the CD rack and, what’s worse, in alphabetical order!! Wow, so you’ve looked everywhere apart from the place where the bloody thing “should” be!! Damn! So that makes you feel even more irritated than before. That relaxing music would do you some good after all!

So, remember, if you live with a chaotically organized person, don’t touch anything!!! You may regret it afterwards. You’ve been warned.

Understanding People

Very often we think that we understand people, but… do we really? On a daily basis we see things happening around us that we consider out of order. We wonder what made some people do this or do that. We wonder why some people are so stubborn and will never change their minds. We wonder why some people never take what we consider the “reasonable” path… The problem is that we take these things absolutely out of context and we only think about them in terms of our personal life experiences, because that’s all we know… and that’s why we don’t understand them.

Do we ever stop to think about the socio-political environment where these people grew up? Do we ever think about their family circumstances? Do we ever think about the gaps in their education? Have we ever stopped to think that each person’s values and beliefs depend on all sorts of environmental circumstances including their religious upbringing? And, sometimes, we think we are clever enough to change all these aspects of someone’s life which, as a matter of fact, are so deeply rooted that have become part of the people they are and can’t unfortunately be changed. And not only that, we also sometimes think we have a right to criticise them as if their unusual behaviour was just a sudden twist in their minds, that they’re just thoughtless unreasonable people who don’t want to listen to anybody… Well, think again.

It is very difficult to understand some people’s actions and feelings simply because it is very difficult to put ourselves in other people’s shoes. And that’s a fact! And we will never fully understand them unless we’re put through everything they’ve been through in their lives. We can only try… and maybe misunderstand.

Existence and dreams

I love it when in my dreams I have experiences that would not be possible in real life. For example I once dreamt that I had an amazing kiss with Johnny Depp! It was, unfortunately, a one off. Very often I have dreamt that I can fly like a bird, going wherever I want and enjoying the amazing view of the world below me… The most amazing feeling ever, even better than Johnny’s kiss…

…And the other day, something very amazing happened. I had two choices in my dream: to destroy a room or not to destroy it; and I actually had the possibility of experiencing both choices before making the final decision of what action to take!!! Isn’t that great! If it went all wrong I could go back and start it all over again! So, of course, I made the most of it. I decided to make first the choice I would have never made in real life, that is, destroy the room, he he. I smashed everything I could smash; I threw all sorts of furniture across the room and knocked over everything that could be knocked over… I had an incredible time!

…Now, have you ever experienced lucid dreaming, by the way? It’s fantastic! You are completely aware that you are in a dream; therefore, you can do whatever you want!!! It’s just a dream after all, you will wake up and that’s it! No damage done! Unfortunately, the moments of lucid dreaming I’ve had in my life have been few and far between and too short… Still, very enjoyable…

I wish I could experience all these things in real life… But then again, if I could experience them in real life, they would lose their “unusual” status and would not be exciting anymore… So, I’ll just keep dreaming…

Sometimes I wonder… If our brain is the key to our existence, maybe the answer to all our questions about it is in our dreams, which we cannot understand. In our sleep, everything happening in our brains is in a state of organized chaos, a trick of the mind, an intricate puzzle… If we don’t understand anything, tough! We’re not supposed to understand… Someone, something out there is having a good laugh at our lack of understanding, and we just have to go with the flow, in utter ignorance… Live, wonder and die with no answers…

Genuine Guys

It always puts me off when a guy claims to be genuine. At the same time, this statement really amuses me. So, a genuine guy is, in theory, honest, sincere and not a hypocrite, which I believe are very good qualities in a guy. But then again, why does he need to emphasize the fact that he’s genuine? I mean, is he trying to hide something? It makes me feel really suspicious indeed, and my first instinctive reaction is not to trust him.

Now, if you think of genuine in terms of a genuine object, then you think of something that is not fake, it’s pure, original, authentic, the real McCoy! It hasn’t been changed or adulterated in any way; it’s made of the real material it claims to be made of, it’s exactly what is supposed to be, no more! Therefore, a genuine man should be, first of all, human (not an alien or a robot, which is reassuring!), so it should have all the basic stuff (skeleton, brain, muscles, flesh, human skin, hair…). The next question would then be: is he really a man? Because it could be a woman disguised as a man or a woman who has undergone a sex exchange operation, who knows? Can you tell by the picture? He might have even taken that picture from a magazine, there’s no way to tell…

So, my advice is, watch out for all those “genuine” guys out there in all those dating websites. They might be aliens, underground creatures or members of a “genuine guys” sect. Don’t fall for it. It’s a trap!

Dreaming

Dreaming

It’s night time: Time to go to bed. The body feels tired. The brain feels tired. You lie down in bed and close your eyes. Everyday thoughts cross your mind: What a horrible day at work, some people are just plain rude, but lovely guy there, pretty handsome actually, oh, by the way, need to pay gas bill and telephone tomorrow, should phone my family in the evening, and so on… then weird thoughts start developing. The brain must be going for a break, since it’s not making any sense of anything anymore. That’s a good sign, I’m falling asleep…

Yes, the brain is not making sense of anything anymore. It’s not in control.

I see the brain like a big computer with lots of information stored in it: Your hard drive with your genes and main bodily functions and your software with its many multiple applications containing all your life experiences from childhood to adulthood; all the smells, sounds, textures, feelings, things you see and people that cross your path, even those you’re not aware of; all your emotions, musings and relationships with people; all your inner desires, passions and cravings…

Going to sleep is like switching the computer off. Yes. The information is there but you’re not longer in control of it. Every single bit of information in your software is free to wander as they please. Break time, relax, no control, no order, chaos… And then, all those weird dreams… They’re challenging you, yes! That’s why you can’t understand you dreams. It’s an uncontrolled mayhem. You would really have to dissect every single bit of your dreams in order to make any sense of them: Extremely hard work! But only you can do it, because only you know exactly was going on through your mind, you are the only and privileged owner of your life’s history. Therefore, you are the only person in the world that can really interpret your dreams, so, if you can’t, just forget about it and laugh at them, don’t take them too seriously, really, don’t.

Death by shoe

You are in your bedroom doing your stuff and, suddenly, out of the corner of your eye, you spot a tiny little crawly creature in your surroundings. You don’t think about it twice, you grab a shoe and… PAF! Death by shoe! Tiny little crawly creature is dead. RIP…

Were you to defend yourself in court about your acts, you might be able to say something on the lines of “it was having my clothes for breakfast” if it was a moth, “it was covering all my body with nasty bites” if it was a mosquito, “it was infesting my house” if it was a cockroach… However, what would happen if it was just a tiny little spider not doing you any harm whatsoever? What would you say? It was just annoying me?

I can imagine the prosecuting lawyer saying something like: “The poor little creature was just there minding its own business, not doing any harm to anybody, and was met by the cruel actions of a thoughtless, inconsiderate and aggressive human being who’d just decided that its death would not make any difference to the world, that after all it was just an ugly, disgusting and annoying little creature. The poor little thing was just there in the wrong place at the wrong time, and PAF! It met its death under a shoe… Very sad indeed… This human being, if he or she could ever be considered to be human, should be ashamed of his or her actions.”

Final verdict: GUILTY. Yes, I am guilty. I do now think about it twice before I use my shoes in this way.

Trust

It’s amazing how many people you have to trust every day just to get on with your life… Just think about it… You have to trust that your bus driver will have had a proper sleep and won’t be drunk, that the cars will always stop when the traffic lights go red, that your butcher will get its meat from reliable sources, that your babysitter will take good care of you baby, that the guys in charge of the world will do their job properly so that you don’t get bombed by terrorists, that your partner won’t run away with the first good looking person of the opposite sex he or she meets on the way, that there will be no paedophiles in your child’s school, that chefs will follow the correct hygiene procedures, that your house will have been properly built, that your friends won’t betray you, that translators won’t be communicating the wrong messages, that bank clerks will key your details properly so that no one else gets your money, that your surgeon will know what he or she is doing… I could go on and on. The list of people we have to trust on a daily basis is just far too long, and sometimes we don’t even think about it… What’s the point? It would just spoil everything, wouldn’t it? If you didn’t trust anybody, you would not be able to get on with your life…Yet, it makes you think about the importance of every single detail of everything that is happening around you, and it makes you appreciate the huge effort that some people out there are making and that often goes unnoticed…