Bleeargh. I'm not going to bother apologizing for the lollybloggery this time. Suffice it to say that I've found a spare moment to update my weblog: I'm in the passenger lounge of the Saskatchewan airport at the punchy end of 24 hours more-or-less straight work time interrupted by 3-ish hours of sleep and my flight's just been delayed. So hey, spare time, woo.
There is a light on the horizon, though. More staff for my little underworked crew of printer gurus is nigh, and this farking project - the working, travelling part at least - is almost over.
I envy american airports. The kind with actual amenities beyond a coke machine in the passenger lounge.
Update: What do you get if you give internet access to people with low blood sugar? Lousy math, that's what. That 24 up there ought to be about 37. But I'm on the other side of coffee and food and two more airports - I was thankfully not so delayed as to miss my connecting flight - and about 30 seconds from my bed.
James
Yeah, apologies for the lollybloggery and all that. First an update, and then some profundity.
The last week or two have been busy and a touch on the stressful side. Work is occupying my time to the extent that on most days I don't have time to even think about checking blogs and newsgroups; I'm woefully behind on my newsgroupery, although I have been keeping up on blog-reading in the evenings. I'm also, probably driven by work, going into one of my "productive" phases, so when I have spare time, I'm doing things, which cuts into internet leisure time. I've learned, in the last few years, that when I get into one of these productive moods to take advantage of it - because it
will go away. Kids are sick again, which never helps with domestic tranquility.
(inspired by Der Matermax) There are few things that feel as desolate as unrequited love. I certainly recall that feeling as a Young Teenager In Love (capitals required). But isn't all love unrequited? When we love, we don't attach strings - or rather, we shouldn't. Because it's the attaching of strings that makes the pain. Consider the central tragedy to the classic unrequited love scenario. Is it "I love her!"? No, although ironically that's the part we often blame or try to change. It's the followup "...but she doesn't love me!"
Hunh. Look at that string, or more often and accurately, that high-test steel cable. The expectation of reciprication is the single most common condition we attach to our love. Love is, simply put, placing the well-being of a person (or thing) above all other considerations. So if you truly love someone, you will not let your desires and wants place those strings on them - because that is restricting their freedom, which modern philosophy links rather intrinsically to well-being - you will simply let them follow their own path until and unless that path becomes destructive.
So where does that feeling of desolation come from? My christian roots bring me back to that old biblical command "Love your neighbor as yourself" and my modern education makes me take a closer look at that statement than is often given. It's an equation, and as mathematics has taught us, both sides of an equation must be equal. So you may well be loving your neighbor - but are you loving yourself?
James
