Peace and Humptiness

It's fair to say that I find myself with a lot of time on my hands. And it's not the first time in my life I've had this luxury - which by the way you shouldn't be fooled into thinking is all good news.


In many ways I think it's a unique opportunity as I - like many others - easily get tied up in the daily workings of life. It's something I've noticed and written about before. Walking to work in Edinburgh particularly comes to mind where the people I looked at seemed like machines. I couldn't help but think that they probably walked exactly the same path and even the exact same footfalls the day before.


Historically when I've had too much time to ruminate I've spent the time stressing about how my life isn't what I want it to be and how it's the people around me who have caused it to be so.  Thus isn't not been a terribly rewarding experience.


These days it has a better groove to it. Whilst it still has a philosophical slant, my thoughts tend to move into some of the bigger questions. Questions like: Why? or to give you a bit more to work with Why are we here?


It seems funny to me how we humans approach things. I can't help but think we must be among the dumbest creatures on the planet. 


In essence life really is quite easy. What's it all about? Well in my view we are little different from any other animal be it 2 or 4 legs. We go throughout our day providing for our basic daily needs: food and shelter. 


Along the way we have some other things going on too. Say for example Not the rudimentary ones like visiting the latrine but the inbuilt desire for a partner. Whether this is to satisfy our social or sexual needs isn't so relevant. The desire is still there. And I'd even throw into the hat the idea that those who don't have these needs are only convincing themselves of such because they've become somewhat disillusioned with the world and people in it (or like all thoughts this is maybe just a reflection of my mind).


When I was younger (as I'm so old now) I put together a phrase I particularly like:

Peace and humptiness forever

The peace part relates to the obvious - let's live peacefully with one another. Humptiness comes from a theme in a Fresh Prince (Will Smith) song. In the song doing the "Humpty dance" refers to having sex/making love with/to someone.


At the time I was firmly of the belief that we are on this planet for one reason and that is simply to reproduce. Built into our systems like every other animal is the desire to produce more of ourselves. In Darwinian terms without this trait we'd become extinct right?


Dang I've lost track of why I went down this path. Even going back and reading the blurb doesn't help. So I'll assume it was all about the simplicity of our existence and it's meaning. Hmm … or… perhaps about humans being stupid. Yeah let's continue on the latter.


So if our basic reason for existence is to eat and sleep then why-oh-why do we spend so much time making our life so complex?


Just take a quick look around you and count the number of people who are complaining about something (like I am now lol).


Wouldn't it be so much easier to focus on what's going right and let bygones be bygones? Apparently not. 


I suspect this has something to do with taking responsibility for our lives. If we can lay the blame at someone else's door then we can happily go forward thinking that our ills are someone else's fault. I mean we're perfect aren't we? It surely can't be my fault if I'm unhappy.


And please don't be fooled into thinking that my life is glorious. Because like my perception of others lives it has it's good and bad moments. In addition I feel my pendulum swings are quite large and think it would be nicer if they were a little smaller but have since realised that this isn't the way it works for me.


Hmm .. I've run out of momentum … so where to leave this?


Well I think it's best to leave you with this idea:

Life is simple...

Thanks to Cool Cookie & Life for this quote