BEAUTY ETC

Humans as a race, I think, are naturally attracted to beautiful things. It’s an intrinsic part of what it is that we are. The sweetest and most nutrient fortified foods are bright, enticingly coloured gems, evolving to use us as walking fertilisers. New born babies have evolved to be as numbingly damn cute as possible, making it physically impossible to not take care of them and generally keep them alive. We will always gaze for longer at a flower in bloom than at a dying thorn bush.

And this is not a bad thing. It’s the way that the human mind has developed to navigate the world and pursue the things that will be of most value and benefit. Today, however, this has a slightly different everyday application. What it means today is that the fashion industry is among the most profitable industries in operation. This means that an artist can justifiably sell a piece of work for millions of his or her chosen units of currency. This means that if you happen to have shining green eyes, or a dazzling smile, or a perfectly formed body, having people stare at you constantly and generally try to be a part of your life will be amongst the most common occurrences that you’ll encounter.

So this leads me to wonder how we might take this natural tendency and relate it to enriching the general quality of our lives. I think perhaps the happiest person is he who can see beauty in the most varied and frequent places. For how better might a human life be enjoyed than by constantly encountering delights and articles to treat the senses?

So the recipe for happiness? Look harder, I think. Happiness awaits you, if only you can find beauty in as many of her different guises as possible.

CASUALTIES OF CONVERSATION

Ok, so I’m a pretty sociable kinda gal, when I’m in a sociable kinda mood of course. I thoroughly enjoy a bit of banter, an amicable conversation, a raucous anecdote exchange. But it’s the casualties involved in speaking to some people that make me awfully warry to even bring up the condition of the weather with a friendly looking bystander.

“Casualties?” I hear you scream in confusion. Yes dear readers – casualties. I’ll explain. A casualty of conversation may occur when I’m asked a question in conversation, and before I’ve gotten through the prefix of the first word of my answer I’m brutally cut off with a new question or the start of a brand new conversation topic, usually about something ridiculous like whatever jib happens to be floating through the questioner’s mind. Another casualty? Well, another may occur when you are seemingly engaged in a stimulating conversation and you look over to find your conversation buddy’s gaze drift off as lazily as a cow chewing the cud, your existence seeming to phase out of this reality that we’ve all come to know and love, and into the Realm of Disinterest. “Another!” I hear you shout, Thor style. And perhaps the harshest. The old nod-and-smile-until-it-seems-like-her-lips-have-stopped-flapping-and-therefore-stopped-talking-so-I-can-jabber-on-about-my-favourite-topic: me!

Now this may simply seem like the rant of a really boring and unexciting conversationalist. But this is simply not the case I assure you! I’m a regular social butterfly, who will win a bet every time that I can make you smile after the briefest of exchanges. A conversation is a dance with words, be it a waltz or full on street dance routine, crew and all. And without tooting my own horn, I’d have to say that I know a few moves.

But it seems that some individuals out there reckon a conversation is actually a full on street fight, where anything goes and any weapon is acceptable. This is not the case dear readers! If the conversation consists largely of your own voice talking about you and your general comings and happenings, then try your best to reset this balance, for all you’re doing is sending out a jab, jab, hook combo out at your poor convo associate. And when you feel like your attention is drifting off to what you’re about to eat later on (I understand, we’ve all been there), then give yourself a couple seconds to imagine that ravioli and fresh wholemeal bread (traveller’s dinner) melting in your mouth, then snap back to this realm I tell you! And finally, if you’re simply not interested enough in what the person is saying to actually listen while you wait your turn to speak then politely excuse yourself and jog on!

For the sake of world peace, readers (ha!), avoid these casualties! There’s enough pain out there in the wild world without you adding to it with sloppy conversation skills.

Just some friendly advice from your local (though currently international) Pensive Buddha!

TRAVEL SICKNESS

Warning! Understatement of the year coming up: life is a difficult thing. No matter how hard you may try to solve issues and overcome difficulties, one problem seems to just get swapped for a new one. Take me for example. I left the country, continent, even the hemisphere to try to escape the things that were proving to be barriers to my happiness. And indeed i escaped them completely. But in their place, a more tropical variety of problems slotted straight in. Like being so very far away from your most cherished ones and missing them more than words will allow. And like missing your baby nephew’s first steps and first words. And like being forced to see exactly the type of person that you are when it gets mirrored back to you by the reactions and responses of your travelling partner. And like feeling epically alone, when the magnitude of the world dawns on you and you realise the connections that you have are as feeble in comparison as the softest lace.

Now don’t misunderstand me readers – I am having an amazing time. I’ve met the coolest, funniest, most interesting people that are trotting the globe right now. And I’ve seen some sites that have literally made my voice box shrivel up and take a nap, and my jaw drop and hang like a post pubescent boy’s junk. And I’ve overcome some personal challenges that I had previously assumed were to be permanent tenants of my psyche. It has been wonderful. But boy has it been tough.

So I guess this is me raising up to the heavens my gratitude for allowing me to be where I am right now. Though I think this is also me sending out a friendly notification that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, but look up – there may well be more on offer above the ground.

DON'T HATE ME 'COZ I'M SICK.

So something mildly startling has come to my attention. And hear me out on this theory before you start throwing stones and rotten vegetables at me. So a couple of days ago I was rushed to hospital (dramatic pause) – gastritis or some other kind of horrifically painful thing. And as I writhed around on the hospital gurney, a nurse attended to me, followed by the doziest doctor ever known to man. And at the time, through the haze of pain and general sadness and disappointment, I didn’t quite grasp the extent of the treatment that I received. However, after the pain, morphine and fatigue wore off, I realised a shocking truth: nurses and doctors don’t like sick people.

I’ll explain. As I mentioned earlier, I was a-writhing and a-moaning for quite some time, and understandably I choked out to the nurse that I would quite like some pain relief. Her response? ‘Well, I can’t magically make the pain go away. You’ll just have to hold on’. Now call me a pleb, but surely magic needn’t be considered when we were a building brimming with medication of every kind and degree. Woman screaming in pain should usually = some kind of compassion + some f-ing drugs, no?! She followed this startling rebuff with a request for me to stand up to perform some kind of demoralising thing or other. As I tried and failed to even sit up, let alone stand, my trusty friend Chloe ran to my assistance as the nurse looked on in mild boredom. As Good Friend Chloe tried to help me up, the nurse stopped her in her good-deed-tracks and assured her that I was perfectly capable of getting up on my own. Just for the record, I wasn’t.

And I won’t even go into what the doctor had to say to me. I’ll just say that he called me a drug addict and a raging slut, in about two breaths. He used different words of course, but you can only really dress up such accusations so much.

Now I’ll stop there with the doctor’s brutality and the nurse’s general unkindness, though trust me, there are several more examples. The crux of this post however is that the next morning, when the writhing and moaning had stopped, they were as sweet as punch to me! My name became ‘love’ or ‘darling’. The nurse’s face muscles remembered how to smile. Her rough handling became the touch of my very own mother. And why dear readers? Because I had transformed over night into some semblance of a healthy person. It’s messed up, but that was the only difference between the night before and the morning after. Same Pensive Buddha lying in that bed. Same Mrs Nurse on the same shift. Same dozy doctor doing his rounds.

So my advice, from me to you: next time you encounter a nurse or any kind of practitioner of medicine, I suggest you pretend to be an individual with a perfect bill of health. You act and pretend till your face falls off, because otherwise, you may well be treated like a person who secretly likes to have intercourse with cats. Yep. You heard it here first.

AND ON IT GOES

So Buddhists believe that when someone dies, that is not the end for them. Depending on the merit that that person has accumulated over the course of their life, they will be reborn in accordance with that value.

So unless you’re Buddha or some other special individual who reaches Nirvāna: the ultimate resting place and end of the cycle of death and rebirth, death is simply not the end. Just a break. A change of scene in the longest and most riveting movie imaginable.

It’s a lovely idea. It means that anybody that you have lost, if you decide to subscribe to the Buddhist way of thinking, is not forever lost. Just repackaged and redistributed. To share the wealth so to speak.

And better still. If you really loved them, and they left a huge impression on you for the better, then you can be assured that the merit that they accrued from that alone has helped in securing for them a better life the next time around. They are better for having known you. And you’re better for the time that you had with them. And on it goes.

So take your pick: “Rest in Peace” or “Live on, better and better again”

SELF - PORTRAIT

So current location: Koh Samui in Thailand. Current duration: almost 3 weeks away. Now, in this time that’s been pretty much filled with meeting new people and exchanging stories, it has occurred to me that the idea that one may have of themselves may not necessarily be on par with the truth of who and what they are. In fact, it may be wildly deviated from the actual truth of the matter.

The estimation that one may formulate of their general character, their sense of humor, their attractiveness even, is one that is built up from subjective commentary and varying circumstances governed by varying motivations. And whether this is right or wrong, this is the self portrait that we have all sketched up of ourselves. That we carry around in our proverbial wallet to whip out and show anyone new, like grandparents pull out pocket sized photo albums of the grand-kids for anyone that might care to see.

So I felt that this topic was worthy of commentary because it highlights the opacity of human perception. We may be presented with one thing, and deduce from it something else altogether. A person riddled with personal character defects and scantily equipped with the warmer qualities a person may have, may look in the mirror and see a regular Michelangelo’s David. Whereas a person that is simply too lacking in self esteem to notice all of their sterling qualities see’s The Scream when faced with their reflection.

Now I’m not saying that people should wake up and come to terms with how generally crappy they are. (I promise!). But I will say that it’s certainly worth pulling out that self portrait and putting it up beside a mirror, just to make sure that that’s what you really look like. For a work of art is never truly complete.

GONE A-TRAVELLIN'!

Hey kids,

So in case you're on your bathroom floor crying because I haven't blogged in a lil' while, wait! There's a reasonable explanation! I'm currently chillin' out in an internet cafe in Bangkok, and will be doing similar things in several countries for several months.

Yes fair readers, thepensivebuddha is a-travellin! Hitting 7 countries in total, on country 2 so far: Thailand. As the cost of going on the internet may be better spent on food in many situations, I may well not be posting very often. But fear not, full updates, pics, horror stories on my return. And that's a promise from me to you.

Until then!