Time for more

Well I can honestly say nothing's happened since my last entry, but there comes a time when things stop outside, and you feel it's time to write in the blog. And something always comes from it, so this is one of those times.

In the last few days I have been fairly busy doing little things like going for tea and shopping, though as usual it was when I wasn't intending to buy anything I actually found a number of things I needed and couldn't find elsewhere, though the one item I wanted and didn't expect to find having discovered the original firm stopped making them was actually just where it always was (though the shop had moved a mile or so) but just with a different label, and wasn't even too expensive.

Having got all that banality out of the way, what else? More banality I expect, but this is just a soap, only in real life with all the boring bits left in. At the moment it's a good time to accept things as they are in the Buddhist sense, as whatever action I'd like in my fantasies based on possibilities, this is what's real and there was nothing I could do about that. So whatever I'd prefer now this is what is here and I can only accept that which is. It's very tough when your memory reminds you what you could be missing from previous action, but really you had little control over what and when that was just as you do now. So it sets up a preference but doesn't allow you to satisfy it directly (or often indirectly either). The presents life has to offer are given by either random chance or God (the answer to that I can't say) but not by our own action based on choice. We make the starts but not the finishes.

As this is turning into a philosophy essay I'll do the academic thing I'm so used to and give examples (but no references!). If you join a dating agency, you have no say who's there and who replies or sends you a message. That has already narrowed down your choice by well over a half. Then the compatibility factor between you and whoever may meet you is going to depend both on how well you fit and what both of you want at that time, narrowing down your say again. Finally, if it works out, do you think if you'd chosen anyone else in that agency you could have engineered the same result? Come on, the bit you did was join the agency and use the facilities in full, the rest is out of your hands. You may increase your overall chances of success in any field by improving your skill levels, but as we all know, success is rarely from talent alone, it's only the top few in any field of equal ability who make it. We only make the starts, the finishes are not our department. It's very demoralising at first to realise this (as I have) as it means every ambition we ever wanted is outside our control besides starting off the process. But at least it save us the effort of trying to make things happen once we realise it's not in our power.

Well, I said if I started something would come out. And you should see the stuff I had to edit out!