The world is not what you thought

One of those conversations where, in a moment of awareness, the world suddenly turns and you realise that every memory of who you are, what you did, and why you did it, is now going to have to be re-written...

...again.

My Journey to a Parallel Universe

A true story...

When I was in my mid to late 20s, I drove a Lada.

Not the most fashionable of cars - in fact it was about as fashionable as my mullet - but it got us from A to B, most of the time.

Mine was light brown in colour.

I always knew it was light brown, so when I went to Halfords to buy some paint to cover up some of the scratches and dents, I bought the light brown Lada paint.

Then when I got home and went to apply the paint, my Lada was inexplicably cream, and had always been cream coloured.



The only explanation I have ever been able to come up with is, in that moment I slipped into a parallel universe where everything was the same except the colour of my Lada.

I sometimes wonder how the life of the Kim from the parallel universe I swapped places with, who bought cream paint at Halfords and suddenly found his Lada was brown, has turned out...

Gritty Realism...

Once there was a man who lived in a small hut on the edge of the village.

If asked, he could tell people exactly how they could achieve anything they wanted.

Now if this was an epic saga, it would tell of heroes who asked all the right questions and went on to achieve their hearts’ desires.

Instead, this is a tale based in gritty social realism, which means very few people ever got round to asking him anything.

And those that did always had a good excuse for not acting on his advice, so continued to live their lives unfulfilled.

The Price of Immortality

What they never tell you about immortality is it doesn't come with increased intelligence.

For sure, the extra decades and centuries of life bestow a certain amount of experience, perhaps even wisdom, but now I get to spend all of eternity aware of my limitations.

After a while dreams and ambitions become pretty pointless.

And I have to accept I will always need to find a teenager to help me with the latest technology...

Look to the future...

When we stop looking to the future,
when we stop imagining what could be,
when we stop fighting for possibilities,
when we become obsessed with nostalgia,
when we live in the past,
when we no longer look ahead, only behind,
that is when we become old,
that is when we are only treading water until we die.

Sometimes a line hits you so deeply, so profoundly...

I'm the one that's going to have to die
When it's time for me to die
So let me live my life the way I want to
- Jimi Hendrix

Lost and Found

I found things I'd forgotten I'd lost 

Brexit and Democracy

The essential problem with Brexit has come about because we use a version of "democracy" to govern the country.

Democracy is a system that inherently makes big changes as difficult as possible.

As soon as you stick a handful of people together – from any cross section of any society – there will be disagreements.

Disagreements lead to heated discussions, arguments, and eventually a level of compromise that doesn't really satisfy anyone and has usually not moved too far from the original starting point.

In terms of making real changes to people's lives, it's a useless system.

The two major benefits, however, are:
1) it prevents tyrants from getting a strong foothold for any length of time, and
2) while the politicians spend all their time endlessly arguing, the rest of us can get on with our lives in relative peace.

Which, by and large, is what most people want.

The problems really pile up though when real change is needed. The democratic system just isn't designed for it.

There is no solution to Brexit that is not going to horrify and anger at least 20 million people.

The wrong room

"If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room."

The heavy weight of responsibility

If I found myself trapped in the body of a snail, ambitions or a heavy sense of responsibility to make the world a better place would be utterly pointless.

As it would if I was trapped in the body of a seagull.

Or a monkey.

In each case, if I knew I was there for the rest of my life, I would just have to make the most of it and enjoy whatever I could, within the parameters of my existence.

Is it so different if I'm trapped in the body of a human?