Definitely not a life-supporting choice

Being on my traditional solitude time on an Croatian island, I decided to go for a bicycling tour, although the sky was getting darker and darker. I hoped to complete the 50 km circle that I had in mind, before the heavy rain would start. Of course the thunderstorm started just after 20 km, and in a minute I was soaking wet, as if I was cycling underwater. I decided for a short cut and started pedalling as fast as I could in order to keep my body warm, hoping to get back to my van before I would catch a cold. A few kilometres before reaching the camp the rain stopped, but I was already very cold and so I just kept cycling as crazy, since the road seemed to be already drying up.

Yeah right.

The last long and very steep descend toward the coast, Robert with a lightning speed (OK, not lightning, but it was about 50km per hour) and suddenly there was a shady part of asphalt, completely slippery. Felt like an ice.

And I went flying, with weird voices in my head and intense images. I just felt my body was really soft, not giving any resistance, just rolling and rolling on the asphalt.

Then silence, just presence and voices of Dutch tourists getting out of their van: “Do you speak English?”… It took me some time to manage first movements.

So, the result: the right knee, both elbows, both hips, the right shoulder and the right side of my back and ribs – red red red. Not bleeding anymore, but a nice German lady from the camp ( a community formed instantaneously, people taking care of me, checking out whether I was, after the treatment, just dozing off on the grass or have already fallen into coma…) who, as a nurse, came to help, told me the pain would start tomorrow.

The scary stuff is that my clothes are in a pretty bad shape, cycling gloves all torn up and helmet broken, with two huge cracks. What would my hands and head be like if I hadn’t had gloves and helmet on? What would my life be like now?

Got me thinking afterwards how our lives are completely made out of our little choices. Had I chosen to wait for the thunderstorm to pass and leave afterwards, had I chosen to take another road, had I chosen to be cautious enough to drive just a bit slower, perhaps I would have happily completed my circle and right now planning another tomorrow. Or, had I chosen to not tighten my helmet firm enough, had I chosen to go even faster, had I chosen to try to control my falling rather then just to let go…

Yes, it is all made of choices, billions of them, and there seems to be no way of knowing where the choice I am making now is going to take me. One choice helps me maintaining this arrogant self image of the master of life, the other one turns me into a bleeding helpless cyclist on the asphalt. A choice to lift up my overweight backpack the way heavy backpacks should not be lifted – while on solitude trekking in Tierra Del Fuego a few years back –  turned me into a fragile little man, alone in complete wilderness, with a badly injured knee. Yet another choice in Tierra Del Fuego, to stop climbing the glacier in the deep fog and rather find a way around the mountain, perhaps helped me live this long.

We may be resisting this existential of freedom of choice, but, oh boy, are we freely choosing all the time.

A good dream

My first night on yet another retreat-on-an-island I had a very peculiar dream.

I was 14 again and just entered the high school. After about a week or so I came home and sat down with my parents. With an utter calmness and clarity within I announced to them that I have decided to not go back to school anymore. I told them that I realized schooling system was utterly destructive to my well-being, because it was going to kill my spirit, my essence. Since it was now clear to me that the whole aim and the structure of education was directed toward training me to be obedient, flat in mind and in feelings, to adjust to the social structures that were there only to support themselves, I now knew that to continue would be the end of any sort of meaning in my life. Schooling, with its routine of looking for mistakes and imperfectness in students, with threatening and conditioning, would eradicate the creativity within me and infuse me with meaninglessness, degrade me to an ant and have me vanish away. I told them I valued my life too much to throw it away like this, just to become an obedient brick in the wall.

My parents were just listening, no objections, no reactions of any kind, just respectful acceptance. I was speaking with peace, focus, presence and a sense of clear wisdom and knowingness.

And this is also how I felt after waking up. Peaceful, complete, satisfied.

A good dream indeed.

Modern friendships

I firstly noticed something different was going on about 15 years ago. A friend that I had not seen for quite some time, called and announced he would like to come for a visit, to catch up and things like that. Not more than 15 minutes after he came he opened up his mysterious bag he had with him and started to show material of some cleaning stuff he was selling. You know, the best available on the market. Ever. After patiently listening to his presentation for half an hour, I told him I was absolutely not interested. I thought we would spend the rest of the evening in a regular friendly chat, but no, he suddenly did not have any motivation to stay and connect with me, and so he left soon after. Gone a half a year or so and he called up again: “Hey, my friend, long time no see, let’s get together and catch up, how about me dropping by for a drink…” I looked forward to seeing him, especially because I thought that it was pretty clear to him now that I was not a buyer of his stuff. How naïve of me. After 10 minutes the mysterious bag opened up again and the presentation started. Only this time to be stopped very quickly by me – and again he left soon, losing all his enthusiasm for catching up.

I thought this was just a unique event, not announcing any sort of a new Zeitgeist, but similar things started to reoccur. Like, for example, an acquaintance calling about twice a year, passionately inviting me for a drink: “Hey my friend, long time no see, we have to sit down and catch up, as soon as possible…”, just to leave me wondering what this is all about when after an hour or so this very same person had nothing to tell me, nothing to share: apart from asking me briefly about what was going on in my life, with a somewhat suspicious look. So it was such a boring drink, no spirit, no flow, nothing. Yet I was invited again in a few months, and again, and again. To be briefly checked out, as it seemed. I was puzzled – why did this person keep inviting me if there seemed to be nothing at all he would want to talk about. Especially since he seemed rather bored, and also perhaps disappointed. And this was not a lonely example.

It started to seem to me that people wanted to sit down in order to check out whether they could get anything, not to share and connect. As if their perception of friendship was not what I thought friendship was all about.

Then I was presented by a very interesting thought through a dialogue with a man of my age while in NYC who said that it seemed to him that nowadays it was really about acquiring friends, not about relating to them. And yes, this was exactly what I was starting to understand through these encounters; that it is all getting so damn goal oriented. Build a network of people, as wide as possible, so that you can get something, career and business opportunities or something of this sort. So you have to regularly check people out and see if anything new – and perhaps useful for your means – popped up recently.

Yes, this is so much the way I am understanding where it is all heading: it is about quantity, not about quality, isn’t it? For instance Facebook, LinkedIn, Blog Catalog… The number of friends some people have on Facebook is bizarre. Also in Blog Catalog: “Hey, I add you as a friend if you add me as a friend, OK?” What exactly does “friend” in this stand for?

It seems it is just about numbers nowadays. The goal is to have more, more, more of them, more of friends, a wider network. How many friends do you have? How many readers do you have? How many visitors do you have? How many people do you have? How many of them?

I really wonder whether this is just a sort of an infatuation with all the possibilities this new social structures and technological possibilities are offering, or is it really a utterly new concept of friendship that is evolving. What will friendships be for our children and our grandchildren? More or less the same or completely different? It seems to me a bit scary that perhaps a concept of having friends and friendships that I know is going to disappear from the face of the Earth in a couple of dozen years.

Anyway, progress and evolution up and down, I myself don’t want to get anything from my friends. I just want to sit with them, share, connect, laugh and cry together, enjoy this link – no matter how illusionary it may be – just share and connect our lives and our lonesome paths through this life. That is what I need out of my friends, nothing else.