Month: August 2014

Re-calibrating success / copping out?

~ monkeywithgun ~ Leave a comment

Maturing or selling out? I’m not sure. It feels like a bit of both. But here I am at 41 and it’s finally dawning on me that I’m probably not going to be the groupie-shagging, multi-platinum selling rock star (especially as I don’t play an instrument or sing…minor details.), and I’m unlikely to be a famous actor (can’t act) or a captain of industry (stuck in a middle management’ish role in a small’ish company)…these have been the lofty “ambitions” that I’ve pegged my measure of personal success to. You’ll see ‘ambitions’ in parentheses as if they’d been ambitions (without parentheses) I would have at least taken the relevant lessons at a minimum, but regardless fortune and fame are what I’ve wanted…and failed to find…and it’s been like a fat retarded monkey on my back poking me with a blunt knife for years, until recently. You see recently, and I mean in the last 12 months, the weight of that fat retarded monkey and the vigour with which he’s been poking me has gradually reduced and it’s an awesome feeling, but an ‘awesome feeling’ that comes with it’s own nagging demon – the ‘you’re selling out’ demon.

What’s deflating the monkey? I think it’s the pleasure that I’m learning to get out of the little things in life (largely because I’ve now got two amazing kids that force me to wonder at things like worms, flowers, clouds and muddy puddles). But I think it’s also because I finally have this growing realisation that I’m not immortal and that each day spent brings me a day closer to the end of the line, so it may as well be spent feeling grateful for what I’ve got and not feeding an already obese baboon with a desire to inflict maximum pain on my soul (that’s where he poke me with his knife).

That’s nice and fluffy I hear you say, but what does success look like to you now – now that you’ve finally pulled your head out of your rectum and taken a sniff of the reality finger? What does it look like now then? Well since you ask so nicely I’ll tell you. Success is now about being the best parent I can be to my girls. It’s about refusing to give in to what is threatening to become an ‘ever so slightly more than recreational use of cocaine’. It’s about choosing kindness over being right all the time, and it’s about trying hard to fix my relationship with my wife…oh, and making a comfortable living in the background.

The pressure of this re-calibrated view on success is quite daunting, but it’s all within my control. I’m not reliant of ‘right time, right place’, elusive ideas and even more elusive capital, record contracts and break out films…I’ve got everything I need to make this new success a reality and that’s a cool feeling….but it still feels like a cop out some days.

I guess there’s nothing to say that I can’t be a great father who happens to be a rock star, oscar winning captain of industry, but I can, for now, be totally happy just being the first bit.

 

Watching death rain down…from your sofa.

~ monkeywithgun ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been toying with this post, trying not to take sides and wondering if I should even publish. It feels raw and unpolished but it’s a dirty topic…so have hit the button regardless

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This is not about politics. This is not about history. This is not about religion. This is about is ‘how do humans get to the point where they will drag and set up furniture outside at vantage points to watch death rain down on their neighbours?’ Forget ‘neighbours’, substitute this with ‘other humans’, or even ‘enemies’…at what point do you get to thinking that this is OK?

The Romans used to do it in the name of sport. Get a few slaves and throw them to the gladiators and / or lions, and that ladies and gentlemen was entertainment and it was nearly 2,000 years ago. Surely nearly 20 centuries worth of civilisation should have bred that blood lust out of us? I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think in either of the World Wars that people at any point took it upon themselves to seek out front row seats to watch massacres unfold. It wasn’t done. And keep in mind we are discussing civilians here and not active soldiers. No matter how much you might have been told that the Germans / Brits / Americans / Japanese were the devil coming for you, there was still the understanding that there were German / British / American / Japanese soldiers and that yes they were sent to kill your soldiers, and that as civilians you might very well end up dying. But was it only inconvenient geography that prevented groups of English pulling their sofas out, getting tea and scones served whilst they watched bombs drop on German civilians, in the hope that some soldiers would die too? I might be wrong, but it seems improbable. 

The recent pictures beamed round the world of Israelis chatting, laughing, cheering and kicking back watching missiles pummel Gaza shocked and disgusted the world. They shocked and disgusted me…but then it got me thinking, the only real difference between what the Israelis have been doing and what the world at large did when the Americans went in and bombed the shit out of Bagdad, is that they don’t have a screen between them and the action. With Gaza being a stone’s throw away maybe they figured a TV wasn’t required.

You could argue that watching it on the news at least kept you informed…but it only gave you a single view and hand on heart would you have listened to it if there weren’t any pictures?

When the campaign kicked off and Bagdad lit up like some ‘goddamn 4th of July show’ we were all glued to our screens. We all watched 1,000s of innocent Iraqis get blown apart (collateral damage) in the shock and awe blitz. We weren’t outside on a hill, we were in the warmth of our lounges and we watched and watched and watched until it got a little boring. Some morons probably cheered, got a little rowdy and felt a swell of pride…who knows, but what’s the difference? Is there one? I don’t know. Does dragging yourself out into the action vs having the action beamed into your environment change anything?

There’s no judgement here on race or religion, all I’m pointing out is that as human beings we’re in a pretty sorry place right now. Tit-for-tat wars all over the planet, generally to do with defending one improbable god over another, or this bit of dirt from those people over there on that bit of dirt. We seem to be regressing on all fronts. If we spent a 1/10th of the time and effort and money on trying to feed the world, rather than trying to wipe each other out the world would be a very different place, but I don’t think that it is in our nature to do so. Or it could be in our personal nature but that counts for little when it’s governments and corporations calling the shots.