You Will Be Visited by Three Ghosts

When I was a child, I remember attending many different birthday parties.   They were generally low-key affairs, focused on a homemade sheet cake, some balloons, and most importantly friends and relatives.   Oh, and presents!   Everyone loves presents!  In my case it was board games, comic books, and books in general!

After my tenth birthday, I started attending parties that were a bit more “dark”, both literally and figuratively.   They were the “Over-the-Hill” or “Look Who’s 40!” black balloon and variety.    I used to look on with a great deal of interest as various members of my mother’s family would start to tease the “newly turned” as some of the more senior members of the clan would regale them with stories about the wonders of having a very brief wait for retirement.   My mother’s Uncle, a man I remember as being rather cantankerous and always at odds with my father (Rick), would spit vile about how now that he was in retirement at 54, it was not a happy time.  

So, I began to infer that we would reach our peak at the age of 40, and as popular home-spun wisdom would have it, “it was all down-hill” from here.  As if you were somehow now in the final run down the valley, hearing the gallop of the horseman and feel the hot breath of the hounds as they gained on you.

I was to have my belief reinforced as I would grow into a young man as I would watch Rick, Betty, and a few others I knew create a vortex that would then begin to intricately and elaborately eat away at them as if they had a cancer.  Slowly rotting, or pulling themselves apart, for different reasons, and buckling under pressures that to this day I still do not fully understand.    It would culminate in their untimely, and really rather sad deaths at 56 and 57 respectively.  I say sad, not in the way many people might use it, but rather in the way where it was sad that they chose to allow themselves to become the people that they were, and sad that they continued to see the world as they did; Life and relationships as something immutable unless it was on their terms. 

Now, in fairness, I was a very lucky and privileged child.  For all the things I can say about Betty and Rick, they also really did they best the could (and then some) for me- even when I later fought them.   I was also surrounded by many examples of people who were well beyond the age of 40, and even seemed to be happy, healthy, and all the better for it.   My paternal Grandmother was one such example, and that is perhaps in hindsight why I clung to her in the way I did.   Another was my mother’s older sister her husband, and my cousins, who were to come to play a pivotal role in my life.

So you might imagine that while my 40^th birthday approached I was not quite sure what to expect.  I was not even entirely sure what I was feeling.   In the background of my life there were a number of nagging thoughts about “what have you done lately”, or “what if you are just like them, and you are three years away from losing it; seventeen away from it ending.”    Fair thoughts, but then the other side weighed in.  I had up until this moment, despite whatever conditioning and experience, come to experience more success and beauty in life.    

I had my successes.   I have already fulfilled many of my dreams.

I have learned, thrived, and yes even failed in many serious "dating relationships" with other people.  I was open to what the world and people had on offer regardless of place, race, belief, gender, or many other factors.   I will always be proud of that.  I am not ashamed, but rather proud, that I followed my heart (or okay sometimes just my hormones) and was open to what this wide world had on offer.  It was a part of a path that lead me to where it is I am now. 

I got married- and stayed married.   Let us be brutally honest, that was going to have to be some spectacular person to be brave enough to take me as I was- and it was going to take some work if it were going to take root.   This year is ten years of care, feeding, and pruning. Not to mix too many metaphors, but like rocks caught in a rapids, we are tumbling through life together in such a way where we polish each other while also taking off some of the rough edges.  We try to celebrate what we are together, what we are separately, and what we can or could be in future.     

I have survived letting go of things that had run their course. From deeply ingrained beliefs, some would even say ways of life, to the simple logic and prejudices that come with life where we started out.   Some left by my choice, some left behind by circumstance, and some things completely beyond my ability to influence.    In their place a is fertile land where now delicate things will grow to be bountiful if I am brave enough to make the changes; to do the hard work of living life caring for this new opportunity.

I tried to help people as a critical care tech while in school, and then later a critical care nurse. That was not going to work out so well for me, as I was to come to find out even as two year old noob.   I lacked the requisite ability to separate my emotions from my work.   No shame in that; I am just glad that there were people and mechanisms that would help guide me when I felt lost.

After health care I took a plunge into the unknown.  It was scary stuff at first being a consultant, and then would lead me to one of my most challenging and supportive bosses that I was even going to have.  

Through one amazingly cathartic event with two other friends, so began a change in me.  I was thrown out of my orbit, and found some strength, tapped into a new inner gravity that just belonged to me.    I started in earnest to move with more focus.   I found and applied for my dream job instead of the one I had.  I got it.   I ended up fulfilling my childhood love of working for an airline, three of them in fact.  I got to play a key role in merging two large ones.  I even got to help build and maintain an airline from nothing- and nearly anything you volunteered for could be part of your job.   Hell, at one point I even got to help buy the wine and train Crew Members on how to taste wines at ground level as well as in the air, discover top notes, flavours, and discuss the wine with passengers.  Wine, one of my passions, was suddenly being shared with others. Some of my favourite afternoons were spent with crew, the wine suppliers, 20 wines, and cabin services staff laden with new seasonal menus.   It was a party I will soon never forget.  Sure it was not paradise- and it failed in the end- but I also learned valuable lessons on how not to let some people press my buttons.

Somehow, in the turmoil that was post my last airline, I got the burning desire to open my own business.   What a ride, I tell you.    I never thought I had the balls for it.   It turns out, I did.  However that plays out, it was the day I opened that will matter the most.  Taking the first step, and just doing it.  Now I am even on the board of two other companies.  Even I scratch my head.  

I am still learning languages, and I am not planning to stop.  I am in the middle of penning some horror novels.  I am teaching English.  I am filling in for tutors in a wide range of subjects in my fields of study.   Me teaching?  “I don’t have anything to teach…well except maybe that.  Oh, and that.  Oh!  I guess I do have something to share after all.”

So as my birthday approached I began to believe that times had indeed changed.   Forty doesn’t mean anything, and retirement is for better-or-worse becoming an out-dated idea from another time. 

Somehow, though some mix of things I need not understand, I can celebrate life now instead of waiting for retirement.   My biggest problem is not grieving never having reaching my childhood dreams, but rather a fear over what to do for my next big dream.    That is a fine place to be, if you can pull it off.      

In the background of this, I still have fears about the old tapes and ghosts of Betty and Rick.   I still could give in and become them.    But like Dickens’s Scrooge, I have had before my very eyes the ghosts from my life past, my life now, and my life yet to come.     Luckily, “I like life; life likes me.” So most mornings I try to remember that. Like everyone, some days I do that better than others.

I was honoured that some very dear people helped my sister and me celebrate our birthdays.   Some came across town, some across the pond, but all of you gave a little bit of your time to help me celebrate a memorable birthday.  Memorable for what the sum of life is today, and for the people I will be able to lucky enough to share it with in years to come!

What do we really know?

Last October someone close to me asked what I thought at the time to be a relatively simple question:  “What are the ten things in life that you know for certain?”   That was deceptively simple question for me.  Eventually I have been able to articulate my top ten, and I thought why not share them.

1. No matter where you go there you are.  There are few things more unpleasant that being on a long journey with people whom you do not particularly care for.  Yet for a long time I never realised that keeping you own company, if you shut up long enough, is essential.  You can run, but you cannot hide from who you are, what you have done, or what you perceive has happened to you.    Identify and make peace with yourself, and your demons.  Then stay where you are, or go 6,000 miles away, and you’ll enjoy the company.

2. Don’t waste time being scared of life.    Some of you who know me today may be surprised to know that I was a quiet, introspective, and thoughtful little boy.  I was also a little bit scared of experiencing the normal rough-and-tumble of childhood.  One of my dearest Aunts shared with only a few years ago that she had noticed that about me from an early age:    

“It was as if you would not go down the slide because I could see behind your eyes the little wheels turning about the ten things that could go wrong if you did.   Then you would make the line of kids behind you on the ladder clear the way for you to come back down.   I always felt a little sad for you, as if the innocent part of not knowing about consequence, or the potential for the small thrill of going down the slide, was somehow missing for you.” 

She was spot on.  I did have a way of looking at life as though things were too risky when I could have been experiencing things that may have brought me some joy.   While I never fully lost that “look ahead” mentality, I did learn to tell it to shut up and just throw myself into situations and have fun- or fall flat on my arse.  Now, I fully embrace living in the comfortable chaos of many directions, come what may.  

3. Physics is a bitch, and there are no more insidious variety than “emotional physics”  From my first physics class I was hooked.  While I was rubbish with the maths, the concepts somehow made sense.   You can defer energy, usually by exerting and equal or greater force, however, sooner or later energy/inertia must always be paid back.   That gave rise to my philosophy of emotional physics.   You can defer the emotional reaction to any situation, your childhood, your parental relations, your relationships etc.   Usually, however, the energy that it takes you subconscious to keep it all together is equal to or greater than the force of just experiencing the feelings.   In the long term this manifests in some very unpleasant ways.    So after years of practice, I am on the lookout for these little deferrals. I still have a few to go, but I spend less energy on keeping it bottled up and more energy on living life.

4. Self Sabotage is one of life’s real hazards.    Things going too well?  Things not going well enough?  Are you too happy?   Time to fuck all that up?   These are the old tapes from my past that I played on a loop for a long while.   Some of them have faded away as I became aware of them, and decided they were wrong.  Others I will likely take to my grave.  What I do know is that we can find the root of these messages once we know that they are in the background whispering in our ear.  Who needs a deity, or it's opposing force,  when you can have these insidious little logic loops to govern or colour your behavioural choices?  

5. In love, especially Eros, there is no halfway.  Halfway is bullshit.  From my first bumbling and passionate teen affairs, my Shakespearian “Two Houses Tragedy” that levelled me, an engagement ring thrown back in my face, and the litany of my other healthy (and not-so healthy) love affairs of my life- to finally my marriage- I have learned to go all in.  All of these past loves offered me a unique experience, usually completely different from what I had known before.   I do not know how I got that lucky!  What I learned is that if I feel it, I have to go all in.  When I tried to hide part of myself away to protect it- or hide some less-than-desireable trait,  I would have a string of miserable failures.  I failed because I thought you could love in a way that kept me safe.  Some people can.  For me, you have to go all in.  Otherwise the good stuff does not feel as good, and the bad stuff- well it is too easy to make relationships seem common.  Real love or passion is noble.

6. Sometimes the people that are supposed to love you the most cannot or will not love you the way they wish that they would have    When I rocked up into my parents life, two years into their marriage, I now understand that I did not come with an instruction booklet.  Nor did my siblings.   One of the most sobering moments of my life occurred in the Kansas City airport when I turned 30.  I was on my way back to Cairo, and the counter agent said “Happy Birthday”, a fact that had slipped my mind.  For reasons I do not understand my mind wandered at the boarding gate to the idea that when my parents were my age they had an 8 and 4 year old, and were battling the same adult issues I was.   It was at that single moment of enlightenment that all the earnest work to lighten the hell up and forgive myself and others  fell into place.  It was if it were I had just completed my first puzzle cube, and it all just fell into place. They were making shit up as they went along, and despite it all, they loved me in their own ways.   The fact that it was not the way I wanted was immaterial, and actually a bit selfish.   Sometimes, the people who are "supposed to love you" just cannot. That does not mean you cannot love them back. 

7. There is no greater gift in life that vitality, and this is impossible without health.    I was not the healthiest child in the world, nor the healthiest adult.    Some by chance, some by genetics, and some by choice.   Choose health when you can.  Deny yourself the momentary pleasures when the bigger picture demands your discipline.   If you doubt this, may I suggest you find the nearest Cancer or Intensive Care Unit- and count your lucky bloody stars!

8. Sometimes it is better to be just human than to be smart. (Also read as never use intellect or etiquette as a weapon)    I observed that my father always had to be the smartest man in the room.   It was just his way.   I lived with that shadow for a long time.  That fact that my some aspects of my raw intellect are a statistical outlier does not make me a better human being.   Sometimes it makes me a miserable one.    So shine at what you can, but don’t blind people.   Look for the same light in others, and let them show you what you think you erroneously believe you already know.   The more I travel, the more I realise I know fuck all.  

9. Life is more about how we respond to stimulus than fair or unfair.   We can choose to be a victim, or sometimes we just plain are an innocent victim.  Likewise, I believe we can choose to be a winner and we will still lose.   I never dreamed as a little boy that ultimately I would achieve what I have. I can be that and respond to life’s challenges the way I think that they should be.  I have already chosen many different paths.

10. If you like who you are at this moment, then you cannot alter one little stitch of your past.  It is the physics conundrum again.   If you were to go back in time, you change the outcome.    So rather than regretting or lamenting, it is better to accept the past as a whole tapestry that tells the story of you as you are now than to frantically wish that this or that were different.  Of course, there are things that come up. Was my father correct that if I never did another thing in my life that that shining moment of bravery for someone I love was enough to change our world forever?   Should we have never left Des Moines?   None of it matters now, honestly it does not.  I think of it.  I talk about it.  Ultimately thought I talk about it with the person I love most in this world, and we deepen our own understanding of each other.  We both agree, that whatever horrors there were, we love who and what we are now.

Anger, Loathing, and Hope in London

From the Cover of my favourite mag, the UK version of "The Week" - 13 Aug 2011- Issue 830

In the U.K. we pride ourselves on a number of things.   Little known among those is the concept of “policing by consent”- whereby we the citizens of this nation give our consent to the police as a figure of authority, and in return they use this authority to protect our property and personages “for the public good”.  

Last week a loud and angry minority withdrew that consent from police forces from around the country, and set about what we are learning was a loosely organised orgy of random violence, thuggery, theft, assault, and murder.  

As I write this on Friday, order may have been restored to London but the air is still charged with the smell of fear and anger.  I liken it to that “thick”, humid, feeling that comes upon us just as a summer weather front is about to move through.  You are just waiting for the first clap of thunder, but also hoping that the storm will simply blow over.

Much is now being made of both of how and why this sort of event can occur.    What is wrong with our society that parts of our body politic are, as the Prime Minister describes them, “sick”?  

Upon recalling Parliament to sit yesterday, there was a rare show of unity among the major parties condemning the violence.   This was, in my view, only after a series of high profile television appearances by high ranking members of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition made the nearly fatal mistake of directly linking current budget cuts to the events that were unfolding.    Harriet Harman and Diane Abbot (both MPs for severely affected constituencies of Camberwell and Peckham and Hackney respectively) were rightly on the front line of this issue, but only served to draw ire for what I see as their political partisanship.    (This clip below is 7 min long, however, gives you a taste for how badly things went for the politicians this week).

The Met Police have had their own issues as of late.   Losing a great number of leading officers- including the Met Commissioner- to the Hacking Scandal only a month ago- it was perhaps the worst time for something like this to happen.   The Police now quite forthrightly admit that they “got it wrong” in the first few days of this crisis.    Commanders admit they focused on maintaining the public order in an attempt to protect people and property instead of policing criminal behaviour.   I, for one, welcome their admission.   

So what went wrong?  How did this happen?    I, like most of the Londoners I know, were taken by utter surprise.    We were shocked and had no clue that these feelings of bedlam were harboured by large enough numbers of our neighbours to perpetrate such meaningless large-scale mayhem.

A few other of my friends were surprised, but somehow seemed to know that there was the potential for such a thing.   A younger friend of mine, who had his own very valid reasons to participate peacefully in the Student Riots earlier in the year, said this:

“I don't think this is about racial or economic tensions any more. I think it's more to do with the media creating unrealistic expectations of life. Video games are more exciting than going to school and work. Causing chaos is inherently more enjoyable than long term gratification. The media tells us there is no prosperous future for our generation any time soon, so what else is there to do except blow it all to hell?”

I vigorously debated his point, and even unkindly said that such excuses were utter self-indulgent nonsense.  He helped calrify the point he was making, and in his usual intelligent way brought it into sharper relief for me. In hindsight, as a man in his early twenties, he was ever so much closer to the beating heart of the issue.   His answer is perhaps as good as any…that was until we found out that while the majority of the London rioters and looters were in their teens, there was a large number of middle-class professionals who are also standing in the dock.   Graphic Designers, Law Students, Primary School Mentors, an Olympic hopeful, and even the daughter of a wealthy entrepreneur stood accused of serious offences. 

So where does this leave us?   Personally, I don’t think we should bother with a public enquiry into why this happened in our society.   The real reasons may never be known, and sometimes senseless mobs do senseless things.

As with all sorts of polarity, we have also seen some of the best of London.  People by the hundreds and thousands helping their neighbourhoods recover from the physical aftermath by riding their brooms.   We have seen people who have lost loved ones act with grace as they speak of peace and forgiveness.   Money and sympathy pours in to an 87 year-old barber in Tottenham who lost his shop.  People made homeless by fire have been embraced by strangers and helping hands extended.

Jake Humprey (F1 Presenter and Ealing Resident) shares his literal view

For my part, I am reminded that now more than ever what we need is personal responsibility.   At my core I believe that we can do anything we desire, as long as when the cheque comes that we are willing to pay the price.    I have learned through experience that we cannot prevaricate, we cannot negotiate, and we cannot obfuscate from this simple fact.    If you want to exchange your liberty for a night of mayhem and looting, then so be it.    If you want to take a life, then do not be surprised when others bay for your blood.    We all make choices based on our experience.   Our experience, however hopeless, does not excuse us from personal responsibility.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go out into my city and find one thing that I can do to show another Londoner that I care about them- and by extension that I care about all of us.

When did we learn to say that?

I have always had an interest in where words themselves come from, particularly in my native English. As a teen when I found that this whole area of linguistics was called Etymology, the study of the history and origin of words. I was hooked.

It was only recently, however, that I started to really focus on the historical evolution and influences of the English language. My curiosity was ignited by my recent study of Icelandic, which is in theory one of the least influenced languages on the planet. Historical texts in in Old Norse, and even older forms of English, can easily be understood by a speaker of modern Icelandic. This aspect of the language fascinates me.

So, I set off on a journey to better understand not only how some languages had a great influence on our Island Nation, but exactly what the context of those influences were. I wanted to know when new words likely began to enter the language, not just from whence they came. What surprised me most about this particular journey was the duration of some of these influences, which in nearly all cases exceed the sum total of U.S. History itself.

The highlights of external English Influences are roughly in line with the history of Britain on the whole:

• In the range of 4000 BC to 40 AD the British Isles had a host of Proto-Celtic languages which were influenced to some extent by tribal interactions themselves. However, there was no lingua-franca, or unifying language, of the time.


• With the Roman Invasion of Britain in AD 43, came one of the largest ever occupying forces in all of Roman history. Naturally, what also came with it was Latin as a common language, along with some Greek[1]. What was so striking to me, is that the Roman influence endured for nearly 400 years in Britain. It is little wonder that Latin is an integral part of our linguistic heritage.


• The next signifigant change to our Island Language came in AD 1066, better known as the time of challenge to The Throne, and a fight ensued. The victors came in the form of William the Conquerer, the first of the Norman Kings. Their linguistic heritage was a bit muddled as well. They spoke a dialect of French called Frankish. This dialect was influenced a great deal by Norse and Danish, and then evolved. Just as the Romans had given our island its first modern name “Britannia”, so the Normans later gave us the name England (Angel’s Land in Frankish).


• With the establishment of Norman Britain came a stronger feudal society, and the language both the King’s Court and commerce became French. Now we began to see French make its mark on our Island for just over 300 years.

The rest is easier to follow, but what I had never appreciated before was that buried in these important historical events were the roadmap of our language and identity, both here and eventually in the United States. Who knew?

---

[1] I had suffered for a long time under the common misconception that in Ancient Rome Latin was the most commonly spoken language. It turns out that Greek was commonly spoken in pre-Imperial Rome, and that Latin has evolved to fit the needs of a lingua franca for the Empire.

Drawing blood from News 'Corpse' International

Over the past fortnight, we in the U.K. have been witness to the our third major political scandal in as many years.   Our “hat-trick” is made up of:

1. The “Cash-for-Honours” scandal- where it became evident that some political parties would en-noble major party contributors.    Links were proven, and it was no end of embarrassment for the establishment.
2. The “MP Expenses” scandal, where some MP’s from both Houses, as well as both sides of the aisle, have been convicted of systematically claiming for expenses that they were not entitled to.   One of the more common fiddles appeared to have been for travel and second home expenses.

This third scandal, of course, is simply better known as the “Phone Hacking” scandal.  The name seems far too narrow now that we have former Prime Ministers, among others, alleging that in addition to voicemail “hacking” by some reporters from News International there is also "Blagging", and allegation of outright immoral, if not criminal theft.  All of this set against a backdrop of Rupert Murdoch, and News Corps, bid to buy up the remaining 61% of BSkyB, making Murdoch 100% owner of the U.K.’s largest satellite media content provider.  

The new allegations that have been coming fast-and-furious these past few weeks are:

• That The News of the World (a now defunct “red top” weekly paper in the stable of papers owned by News International) alleged to have paid Met Police officers for information.  At worst, there are now also a wide-spread public belief  that some members of both the Met Police and possibly the Crown Prosecution Service may have conspired to pervert the course of justice by dining socially with high-level executives of News International while simultaneously holding a position of influence over open criminal investigations of their journalists.  In my opinion,  based on Andy Hayman's public comments, his taking a job with a News International title two months after retiring, his articles written in The Times, and his testimony to the House of Common's this week (a tiny- yet amusing- 2 min except below) leave me with a whiff of something rotten!

• The former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, claims to have been a victim of “blagging” by News International journalists.    Others have also come forward to claim similar intrusions.   “Blagging” consists of exactly what it sounds like- obtaining sensitive information from businesses by pretending to be the individual you are investigating.
• A formal acknowledgement that leaders of most all political parties have been chummy with the Murdoch family and their executives,  for years.  The current Prime Minister hired the one-time editor of The News of the World , Andy Coulson, as the chief press officer for the party and later for No. 10.   The Labour party fares no better by also having a former tabloid journalist in their communications department
• Finally, the latest allegations that seemed to have been a tipping point are the hacking of the telephones for young kindnap/murder victims, which resulting in voicemails being picked up and giving potentially false hope to the families of these victims, but also potentially interfering with on active police enquiry.

While all of these allegations remain as of yet un-proven, what is clear is that the blood of a media tyrant was spilled on U.K.  soil this week.  This has, at least temporarily, refreshed our political process and helped the plurality of our media process.   It is my hope that there is the political will to continue to admit that most major parties were “under undue influence” from Mr. Murdoch- and that this influence is not in the public interest.

Rupert Murdoch, and News International, have in my opinion poisoned the well of U.S. news outlets that they own by either slanting the news so far to the right, or worse, dumbing down the tone of U.S. news and offering readers or television consumers with talking heads to tell them what to think of the story, rather than allowing the facts to be simply be presented in an unbiased manner. 

While Murdoch has made some key tactical decisions such as closing down The News of the World and dropping his bid for complete ownership of BSkyB , due to what they call in their own words “the current environment”  these Media Barons are likely to re-group and come back even stronger.    I hope that in the interim we clean up our occasionally archaic laws and pass legislation that will definitively define who is a “fit and proper person” to own a U.K. media outlet, and what truly does constitute media plurality that is in the public interest.    Otherwise I fear that Murdoch will simply pull a J. Edgar Hoover- go through his files and use something to apply undue pressure until he does get a Government who will give him what he wants.

In the meantime, I will happily live without Sky, and thank my lucky stars for The BBC- which for all of its faults is perhaps one of the most valuable institutions left in British society.

Update on Saturday, July 16, 2011 at 04:21PM by Bear

This whole affair is truly how one reported descibed it: "a still moving avalance".  Since the intial post the Murdoch's have agreed, along with Rebekah Brooks to appear in front of House of Commons Select Commitee on Tuesday at 14:30.    

In addition, several key executives at News International have resigned including Rebekah Brooks.  The U.S. authorities are also said to be examining potential violations of The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by News International for paying foreign officials for information, and are also allegedly looking at other charges including the potential for U.K. victims of September 11th having their phones illegally hacked as well.

Today, News International took out full page spreads in all of the daily newspapers to offer their apologies saying "...we sought to hold others to account, and have failed to apply that same accountabilty to ourselves."

What a difference a day makes.