Yeninko of the Umlaut

Monday, March 21, 2005

Faster Igor, FASTER!

Are you feeling fat? Worried that you mind is turning to jelly staring at pixels all day long? Worried that the cubicles are affecting you social skills? Long to see the out doors, soar with eagles? Sick of leading questions and waiting for me to get to the point?

Well you aren’t alone, there are people like you, people who long to make the change, and this is the story of one such person.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Book Readin'

Love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness.


I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb.

So this book was really very good. I'm sure each individual will get something different for a book of this length but for me it was the Christian concept of forgiveness. I am not a religious person, I find it all rather unlikely, but religion, as by brother stated, is one of the last refuges for the discussion of ethics. Not that atheist (I prefer Ethical Humanist) like me is amoral but rather there seems no real place for the discussion of ethics in the atheist world. But I digress.

Back to the Christian version of forgiveness. Basically the idea is that you just forgive the offender. It doesn’t matter whether they do penance or not, where they are punished, whether they absolve themselves of blame, whether they are alive or dead, you just have to take the wrong, hold it in you mind, and let the person off.

Obviously this kind of crap is going to be easy for some stuff (short changing me, peeing on my house) and more difficult for other things (shooting my liver, cutting me off) but the premise I think is sound. Which is by letting go, by letting the other person off the hook, you sort of let yourself go to, you allow yourself to move on. What is the point in carrying a grudge, why add that burden to the slings and arrows of daily life.

I’ve found it easier to basically look back on my life and see if I’ve ever done the same thing (I have invariably), and if that is the case just see where I was and maybe where they are now and just let it slide. And now I will remove myself from this high horse and find some grub.

Sunday, March 06, 2005

They’re all rhetorical.

It’s funny how something as fundamental as a things size can be so subjective. A package is large, or small, or perhaps middling. And yet, large in comparison to what? How do we assign a value to a thing. Is this gift large when measured against other gifts. Is this walrus large for walrus’? Is it small in comparison to other marine mammals? Is losing a parking spot really a big issue, is it worth crying over? Is my sorrow really measurable compared to another’s? Is my joy greater than yours? And what if we both look at something and see it differently? Can your small walrus be my huge one? Can that parking spot be a trifle to you but an issue of epic proportions to others?