Monday, December 26, 2005
Just a Minute
- Just a minute, I'm a bit confused, do you do your work and therefore you have to believe in your god or do you believe in your god and therefore you have to do your work?
- My god and my work are inseparable; I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about.
- Alright then let’s try another way; do you do your work, or believe in your god, because you are not social or are you unsocial because of your god-work or whatever.
- Eh, but I’m not unsocial. What you say implies that I have an aversion to socialising. I have no aversion to socialising. In the right context, with the right people, I have no problem. It’s hard to find the right people who believe in the same things that you do.
- There are others who believe and still manage to get out, aren't there?
- Yes but they can't be doing any interesting work can they. To me and those like me, we have no argument. And it does say that followers must not seek to be distracted from their faith.
- And what else does your god not allow you to do then?
- Well, I don’t celebrate Christmas, that’s not strictly a religious thing just my personal choice really.
Er, and um…
- And?
- let me see…I don’t participate in sports… but that’s mostly because of the dodgy leg really.
Anything else?
- Hang on! Hang on!… Well relationships can be difficult.
- Yeah, but you're safely tucked away in a steady, ongoing, potentially child rearing, public partnership aren’t you?
- Finished.
- What, completely, dead, gone, buried, finished completely?
- Yep, I'm afraid so.
- Well you didn't tell anybody.
- You didn’t ask.
- I thought you were getting on so well, since when?
- Friday, she’s moved to my mothers for training in advanced gold digging and man bating, having now been adopted, it seems, as the hoped for daughter my mother never had. She now phones me up just to let me know that it's all my entire fault, my mother that is.
- Well maybe this is the final shove you need to get out ther and mingle. You must start right away. No hesitation.
- they'll be trapping some other unsuspecting male by Monday you’ll see.
- Look you’ve got to get out and face the world. How are you ever going into another relationship if you don’t make the right steps?
- She’s after a certain kind of lifestyle; all she wants a secure and safe income, that’s the only thing that matters to her, she has never considered me and my beliefs.
- Hey, have you got any staff parties to go to. Now, you’ll need to spruce this place up a bit. Urgh…what’s all that dark stuff in there…urrgh!
- She owes me money actually, god I’m so glad I got out of that trap, oh the claustrophobia!
- Hey listen to me! Where’s the brush and pan. Have you ever thought of employing a cleaner, this place is a mess.
- Can’t afford it.
- Sure you can, with your…
- I’ve quit.
- Eh, what, quit, Nooo…?
- I’ve been thinking of doing it for some time, it's like a huge weight off my mind.
- But how are you going to survive? That's all you had left. You can’t just throw your life in the bin just because of a hiccup in relations, are you mad?
- I just feel like is a complete break, you know get back to concentrating fully on my work. Angie, that was never going anywhere, we were just wasting each others time. From now on I am going to be very careful what I get myself involved with. No messing about at all from now on, I’m going to give myself up fully to my beliefs, I think it’s time.
- But George, the way you’re going you’ll end up like that tramp guy who runs around town scribbling abstract marks on the roads. You’ll disappear off the radar, for a few principles and you’re so called religion. Look, George all that really matters in life is happiness, to achieve happiness, that’s all people really need.
- But this is happiness, I am happy, look at my smile, look, see. Well anyway happiness is overrated, if happiness requires being consigned a list of duties that have to be performed unless you are not considered officially ‘happy’ then I can’t see the attraction, and anyway you can make your own equivalents you know.
- Well society just knows now what happiness generally requires, after hundreds of years of sifting through millions of peoples lives for nuggets of joy they are now having the highest yield percentage ever. Happiness is now stamped down. I mean what do we know; we’re always messing about and changing our minds, we need the external structures to guide us.
- What if you don’t happen to fall into that percentage, what do you do then?
- Well you make believe you are happy when you’re not really. Either that or you go out there and find it, in people, things, objects, it’s amazing the things that you can buy these days.
- Yes you try and fit the pattern.
Or else you can find it in your beliefs, you can set up your own structures, after all people are only made happy if they are given a stamp of approval, well then I can invent my own stamp, with my own special mark on it, like a signature.
After all, I know when I’m happy and when I’m not.
- You might be able to get yourself into a position, you know, where there is all kinds of potential, you know, if you meet the right person, and a job using your skills you could rise from out of this precipice of anxiety and doubt. Then you will realise what life really has to offer.
- I am happy, I am happy, I'm bloody happy OK! So just stop it with the lecture will you. I like it here. What do you know anyway? Everything is going in the right direction now, I’m on the right road now with what I’m doing, I have a good feeling about all this, everything is going to be fine. All that was needed was probably the time and lack of distractions to really have a good go at it.
- You have to think of the community as a whole and not just think of yourself. Think of all those people working their fingers to the bone, toiling away on forty eight hour shifts with families to provide for and debts to pay off and here's you with your fantasy schemes not willing to do your bit. Don't you feel in the slightest bit guilty or anything.
- Enlightened is more like what I feel. People need to turn around and look about them and try to be open to alternative lifestyles. Jobs can really tie you down you know. People need to think less about acquiring money and status and more about developing spiritual wealth, something that is not so visible to the community, it is not acquired in the shops, it requires time alone with your self to open up more space for contemplation and creative thought.
- Like you, now, in here, doing this? Is this what it all comes down to? Sitting around in a room fiddling with pens in little squares?
- You just don't understand the language I'm working with. Hey, don't look to close, I haven't finished that yet, it's personal.
