God, Assessyphus and Determinism

I dont know how you feel but sometimes I cant help feeling that my life is just an uphill climb. Everytime something goes right, there is something or someone else that brings you down. Im starting to feel like Assessyphus in the greek fable, who tried to push his rock to the top of the hill.

As you may know, I am in love. She is a wonderful lady, funny, charming, intellegent. We live 4800 miles apart but I've never felt so close to another spirit. Our romance started in our heads at first, and we became close friends. We spent hours talking to each other every day both on the phone and online, laughing and crying, arguing and playing.  Soon we found our relationship blossoming into a special cerebral love. A close important understanding as to what we wanted, what our dreams were, what we believed in. We worked through our relationship with the distance acting like our own chaperone.

We finally met around Easter. All our lingering doubts and concerns as to whether what we were thinking was actually real vanished in the first moments of our meeting. As I walked towards her the lady on customs told me "shes been waiting over there for a while, and shes very nervous!", I barely heard her. I knew as my heart exploded with love that this was the woman I would marry. Over the next few weeks I met her family, all of which seemed to like me well enough and all of which knew by the way we were together that this was the real thing. Its odd how it seems so obvious to them having seen us together, and how difficult it is for people over here who havent.

By the end of the trip we were both planning our big day, but since that day I find myself constantly facing brick walls. Most appear to be just plain bad luck, but you cant help but wonder if god himself isnt trying to say something.

Firstly, since I returned back home from the states, I have had car trouble. Not little bits of car trouble, but great mountains of car trouble. I have had to fork out over £1000 on it since Easter. Now this is on a car, that if I were to sell right now, would only go for about £1000. If it wasnt a taxi, and if I wasnt planning to leave the country next year, i might just think to hell with it, and get another job.

In fact, that is exactly what I would have done this time last year, when the car I bought for £4k the year previously decided to cough and splutter on me. I took it to my Vauxhall Dealership who told me it was a problem that would cost me £800. Ok, i thought, thats expensive, but its just about worth it. I got a cab and paid my hard earned cash over to their desk. The VERY next day the same mechanic told me they had spotted another problem and this one would cost another £1000. If I had known the repairs would cost £1800, i wouldnt have bothered. So now im stuck... pay £1000 and get my repaired car, or lose my £800, AND my car.

So now to have yet ANOTHER massive expense is pushing me towards despair.

Then there is me... I gave up smoking in October because my girl is asthmatic. I loved smoking, and not a day goes by without me wanting a cigarette, but despite this I knew I could save money, and I wouldnt kill my girl when I finally get to be with her. I started to take regular exercise in June. I swam two sometimes three times a week, and I took up Badminton. Now I have snapped my achilles tendon, and I cannot work for two months minimum.

It was only the second time I went.

You may say that I tried to do too much too early, you may say that if she really loved you she wouldnt make you do these things. She didnt make me. I made me... I made a decision.  I have always been overweight, and happy with it too. I have never found a skinny body very attractive, and so never really aspired to be like that. I was also not very talented in sports and so rarely strived to get fit. I have always been happy enough.

The one time I decided that I would lose weight was when I lived with my best friend Steven. I had broken up with my first important love and was very depressed. We lived on the edge of town, and I found that I could run at night when no-one saw me, or heard me more importantly. I decided I would go a certain distance, and if I got tired I would walk a little, but the distance would be covered... twice a week. It took me aound 45 mins at first, but I got it down to 30. I found myself changing diet automatically. I just didnt want the sandwich or the chips, instead I had more energy overall. I went out more and was much more confident and friendly. I enjoyed it, but things change. Work got busier, we moved out of the flat, and I found a new girlfriend. Times change, and I had lost all inclination.

I never felt so inclined to improve my health until now. And just like the smoking, I just did it. When I make a decision to change for the rest of your life, you want it to start straight away, so I started swimming. I knew the weight loss would come eventually, but week after week of not getting anywhere made me want to step things up a gear. So I started playing badminton, a sport I love. The first session nearly killed me, I was stiff from head to toe for 5 days! I was walking around like Frankenstein, but I loved it... I knew it had made a real difference and I also knew that I wouldnot give in, never give in. The second session, my tendon goes.

It felt like something snapped. It popped like bubble wrap, and I was on the floor. I expected more pain, in fact at first I had in my head one of those pictures you see of footballers with broken legs, but after the initial shock... i nearly fainted thinking I had ruined any chance of being with my girl... I was able to get up and hobble to my car. It was after a week that I finally decided I ought to see a doc. Since then its been plaster for two weeks, and now this stupid boot for what may be another 8 weeks.

In the states, my girl has had trouble herself. I wont tell you about it on here as its not my place to mention it, but I can guarantee you, you would consider it very unlucky also. Thank god her health isnt suffering (i am knocking on wood as I say that)

We had planned to marry in May next year. All things had to do was to stay the same.

Now we discuss things with such sadness, as we havent got a clue how to plan anything when you simply dont know where the next disaster is going to come from. She tells me all the time that I should just pack up my stuff and go, but I just cant. And just when you need the person who you love by your side, both of us find ourselves alone.

I dont know what to do for the best. For someone who has always had a plan, Im lost and for the first time scared that we may never get to be with eachother.

As I think about it. About how easy it would be to give up. How everything and everyone is telling me not to be hasty, to reconsider, to take my time. I think about God, and I think about determinism. We often get the two mixed up. If you believe in God, a christian god, then you believe we all have choices. The choice to do good, the choice to follow Jesus, the choice to believe, by the same reasoning we have the choice to turn our backs on God. God gave us his son so the christians say, to show us the way. So we know there is no extra help coming from him.

I am always reminded of the bible story about the prodigal son. In the story a farmer has two sons, the younger of which demands to have his inheritance early. The farmer reluctantly gives it and the son travels into the city where he wastes his money on "riotous living"... my fathers favourite phrase... eventually he returns home to his dad who greets him with open arms.

The story is specifically a parable about returning to the faith, but its also about choices. In it the son has clearly chosen to live his own life and make his own decisions, a theme often reitterated in the bible. He eventually returns home, having chosen that life working for his father as a slave is preferable to living on the streets. As I look around in my life though, I wonder where my choices are, when so much goes wrong, and so many things get in your way to stop you from making the one choice you have decided upon.

I have heard it said so many times that God works in mysterious ways. Its why he takes innocent children in volcanos and earthquakes they say. It why he allows so many to die in Africa through drought and disease, and maybe its why he is stopping me from being with my true love.

Alternatively, we sometimes call this fate, determinism or destiny. It basically says that what will be will be, after all... if this is so hard then surely it cant be right. That just like the water that finds the path of least resistance to maintain the optimum efficiency of energy usage, so we should find the path thats easiest for us. When I fell in love with this wonderful woman I found it to be the easiest thing I had ever done. Doesnt that count for anything? isnt that my fate?

I feel desperate and defeated right now. I feel lost and alone and confused. And the only thing I know is that I am happiest when I am with her. I cannot believe that God conspires against me like an evil jealous zealot. If that is who God is then I dont want to know him, and likewise I cant believe we are destined to be apart like some shakespearian tragedy. We must find a way, have to find a way.

Because tomorrow, I will get up, and I will go downstairs and I will face my day knowing that the only chance, the only reason for me to be there at all is because of her.

And no God, and no Fate is going to stop me. You wanna see determinism. Its right here, facing you down and telling you "I will never give up"

Generation Chasm

The other day my parents asked me for a little help. They are not very computer lierate, and doing the simplest things like opening an attachment seems to be beyond them. I would teach them properly but like all people who really wish they didnt HAVE to learn these things, they got impatient and just wanted to get on and do their thing.

Anyhow, whilst playing around with their post I noticed my father had sent an email to ebay. They recently bought an item online, and my father replied to their payment confirmation letter with a thank you for your prompt response note. Let me re-itterate that, My Father sent a thank you note, to e-bay automatic response website address.

It occurs to me that the generation gap is more of a chasm, and its getting wider.

My Father just believes that when someone is polite enough to tell him something is all taken care of, he should have the decency to say thank you. Its a simple and obvious mistake, and its also the explanation for why my mother has a nightmare everytime she turns MSN on. Within minutes she has a plethora of friends saying hello, and despite me telling her over and over again to ignore them, that the etiquette of IM-ing is different to seeing your friends in the street say, she still insists on writing over and over again... "Hello, I cant talk, Im late for an appointment", before turning the computer off in disgust.

When I think about it though, I realise that my frustration at their dogmatic approach to procedure is just as bad as my reluctance to wear my trousers down by my bottom, listen to hip hop and use txt spk.

To me, there is nothing so distressing than seeing the language I know and love being corrupted by lazy kids that cant be bothered to learn how to spell. To me they are the same kids that go 'happy slapping', that paint our streets with grafitti, and throw rubbish without care into our streets.

I know it makes me sound like a grumpy old man saying these things (and lumping kids together as "the youth of today"), but I just cant help it. I find them all so annoying. After all, what is it about kids that forces them to draw a giant penis whenever they see an empty wall. Do they really think its never been done before? Is it really a statement from a disassociated youth against a tyrannical society? Or is it more to do with a fascination with sex and a desire to look hard to their peers (is that not slightly homoerotic too? drawing penises on walls infront of your male friends?)

Im not saying kids didnt draw grafitti when I was younger, but even the "Wot No..."  cartoons which you saw everywhere in the 80's occasionally got hi-jacked by a political cause... Wot No Jobs, Wot No Bombs... What political message can you subvert the penis drawing to mean? Rights for Fathers perhaps... or Lewinski for president?

What is it about our society that makes our younger kids so careful about the environment, telling us off when we dont recycle, and makes our teenagers so carefree and dirty throwing wrappers on the floor even though they are next to a bin. What do we do to them to change them so dramatically? Did we as young boys and girls really spend so little effort trying to get along with the society we live in.

And how did we ever allow 'happy slapping' to permeate through our streets. In case you dont know what happy slapping is, it is the trend of filming your frined slapping a random stranger on the street, and posting it on the internet. Why have we become so scared that we turn away from a happy slapping incident now, rather than confronting the youngsters. When I was a kid I used to get confronted just for swearing! Now as a kid you can physically abuse someone and nobody bats an eyelid!

Instead of facing up to these problems we turn away, we hide in our 3 bedroom homes, with its security cameras and door alarms, we watch 'crimewatch' and 'cops' and phone in to our local radio programmes about knife crime. We complain from on high, declaring someone ought to do something about this, but it cant be us, because they are minors and will probably cry rape if we go near them. After all, in our society, there is nothing so feared, so loathed, so hated as a paedophile.

In the end though, how do we ever expect to teach our children how to behave, how do we ever expect to show them the difference between right and wrong, how can we ensure the next generation will continue in our footsteps to strive for a caring society when we have not shown them how to interact with the world we have created, and when we are too frightened to leave our own doors.

If we are running scared from children, is it not surprising they feel disassociated?

The leap is too large for me. Stuck in my ways, too old to change. A million different ways to say "I dont want to", but just as I get frustrated at my father refusing to use a mobile phone, so I have to bite the bullet and accept things as they are and not as they once were.

With that in mind, I have decided to take the bull by the horns and face up to my own personal pet hates head on. Im off towalk the streets with my trousers belted around my arse whilst listening to Snoopy Doggs on my iPoddy thing.

L8rs !