This blog is for you. It inspires all individuals, who at great sacrifice to their good looks and sane disposition provide life giving sustenance to everything around them. If humour and inspiration are important then you are at the right place. This blog is also a forum to discuss and promote balanced life as a moral.
So, what is the most important thing in the world? I suppose, for many this depends entirely on the time of day the question is asked. For example, on a Friday evening in any UK city the answer is simple; to accelerate from .01 mph to .02 mph and get through the next blinking traffic light. That is if you’re not stuck on the M25.
On Saturday morning at 6 am it is turning off the alarm clock, because you forgot to do it on Friday evening. And, on Sunday afternoon, at 3 pm, exactly, every Sunday, it is to somehow annihilate the ice cream van that blasts its tinkle tune down your street while you try to have a peaceful post roast snooze in preparation for the week ahead.
For other folk, however, it is more than just the time of day that is important.
For bankers it is money, and what better way is there than forcing everyone in the country to contribute to your bonus. For dictators it is power. For rogues it is mindless nymphs, for celebs it is fame, and for many wives it is servants to do all the house chores they love to hate to love to nag to do and then not do.
I have many such servants. Mainly, as a result of my generous, though not willing, weekly offerings to government.
One of these, a man called Bruce, thinks Miss Worlds and dancing are so important, he will spend around 6 months of the year on the bop and hop with divas in a strictly dance show. He is one of the beneficiaries of my tax, though I do think someone else deserves a chance now.
Another benefactor, Jeremy, thinks cars and money are so important, he will spend all year producing reviews on the latest motor vehicles. Though rewarded a little too generously, he does provide an important service advising me on cars I will never buy.
I also have a public servant called Gordon. He manages to disorganise all these things for me. He considers his job so important that he really wants to keep it for the next few years, even though after the last 11 years he’s made our lives a misery. I want to replace him with a guy called David, not so much for change, as variety.
Anyway, all of these distinguished folk have lists of things they consider the most important.
Important things seem to keep us all going. They are like a sweet and sour sugar daddy. Entertaining us, employing us, and giving us the $’s and £’s and credit limits we need to pay for luxuries and huge concrete masses in which we claim to exist with enjoyment, freedom, democracy, 60 hour working weeks, and huge taxes of course.
And they offer a little security. For example, in the UK at least, the tax paying public are secured by the odd and occasional police person, who may walk past our house every blue moon. This makes the UK a petty criminal’s paradise. Ask the bicycle thief who stole 3 of my bicycles, and David Cameron’s. Even if caught red handed on police camera nothing happens. Both David and I have a case numbers to prove this.
When our lives are violated in some way, the police may even, possibly, make a phone call confirming that we have in fact definitely been robbed or victimised in some way. And yes someone from the constabulary is on the on the way, as soon as a vehicle is made available. And no, you can’t fetch them because your insurance does not cover the journey. The joys of the “important things” in life!
But, as any first aid recruit will learn, breathing is the first and most important thing in the life of the patient.
“Check Breathing, bleeding and then check the bones.” says the instructor in the training sessions. Here in lies the key to understanding what the really important things in life are. To breathe the patient will need oxygen, and for that you need that dodgy tree out the back you always wanted to chop down. Also the hedges and the lawn. In fact everything that is green and grows. But especially trees. People need them. Cars need them (regardless of what Jeremy says about environmentalists), and aeroplanes need them. Everything important needs green growing trees.
The illusive tree represents the single most significant item all of us in the capitalistic west take for granted; LIFE itself. Hence the tree of life.
The tree is “illusive” because we just don’t see how important they are. Like mothers, we only seem to want them when we are in pain, dying or crying out for pudding after dinner. Though the actual tree of life, as mentioned in the Bible is a controversial issue, one has to consider trees are simply our primary source of renewable oxygen. They are oxygen factories. And, because they can absorb, or “eat”, some types of carbon pollution to grow, they are the balance of the eco system we live in. We need them more than they need us!
So, to reward them Mr Capitalist sent in the woodcutters to simply “chop their heads off”. Oh, and sell the trunks to the highest bidder. Modern society seems to have a weird and wonderful way, not so much of biting the hand that feeds it but, of going straight for the jugular. Its own.
The tree represents more than just oxygen. As a defenceless life giver it has life factor. – it represents being alive!
Let me explain. Technology, for example, has progressed many students, in the UK at least, to the point where they have no real life. Students simply don’t know milk comes from a cows nipples, or eggs from chickens genitals. The legality of telling them how many minced animals their lunch burgers and sausages may come from is often questioned. When students in schools are informed exactly where their dairy products comes from, or how their medicines are tested, parents complain and children cry. And any tiny life form that crawls, on more or less than 2 or 4 legs, has to be killed to the ritual sounds of screaming, yelling and jumping up and down.
This is part of the UK’s progressive education. Formulated by intelligent, civilised, informed pedagogic leaders; enforced, regulated and now packaged in the new curriculum being introduced as “Every Child Matters!”
The stupidity is staggeringly well organised and very very expensive. The education budget runs into billions of pounds.
Now in 2008, children are being “reintroduced to farm animals”, under the strictest health and safety laws of course. These include, risk assessment, “proper supervision”, letters to parents and special business insurance.
I often wonder if animals have similar health and safety concerns about humans. How many diseases do humans pass on to animals for example?
We have successfully progressed to a point where our lives cannot (or are not allowed to) survive outside of the mechanised city.
This is perhaps why so many people, men in particular, play golf. The joys of the sand trap, the ball in the trees, the water hazard, green grass, possible fresh air, fresh fruit on trees, the sound of singing birdies and eagles, are all throwbacks to mankind’s Neanderthal gifts and talents: the ability to live!
Richard Attenborough is a well loved personality because of his links to all things living. He is the celebrity connection to life. He portrays, on TV at least, a humble respect for every living individual he has documented. He fascinates and inspires with his commentary on land animals, sea creatures, birds and plants. His theology is non existent. A cacophony of nothing. I say this with authority because he does not believe in God or creation. But whether religious or not, we love him because he lives a life we all used to live – one in respect and harmony with nature itself. His connection with the environment is one that was shared by such respected tribes as bushmen and aborigines. These only took what was needed. They believed in the balance of life and nature. They respected animals, trees and life itself. They lived a wonderful life without the 60 hour working week, taxes and no police.
So, if you want to be successful, then like trees, learn to give your apples and oranges to whoever tickles them. Give life. It will make you “be alive”. Many ancient people had life factor not X factor. They respected the flowers and the trees. They spoke to them, and sang about them. They looked after the birds and the bees protecting many animals they considered sacred. They were responsible with life, and had an admiration for all the crawly things, like rats and mice, which make many modern school kids yell so ritualistically and wives call 999 on their mobile phones while stood on a chair in the middle of the dinning room floor. They lived in what David Livingstone described as the Garden of Eden.
In Mozambique, where Dr Livingstone helped stop the slavery trade, I was fascinated by the similarity of the young men folk to young americans. They all had huge ghetto blasters on their shoulders and sunglasses that made them look like mirage F16 fighter pilots. So, I once asked a group, when the volume had been turned down, to name the one thing that they really wanted in life. The first said he wanted a big business. Another wanted a wife. However, the younger men wanted more trivial things like a digital watch. It is all very sad. Because they have chopped down all their trees.