Life, or something close to it.

John Terry has been in the news lately courtesy of his misdemeanors and such. But why is it that we are so quick to point our fingers at him for doing what he did. He is a human being like any of us, susceptible to mistakes, enticed by temptations. And to put it simply, he can do what he wants in his private life. That is why it is called a private life. What business is it of ours? Is he a celibate monk who forgot his religion? No, he is not. He is a footballer. And the only thing we can condemn him for is if he screws up things in football. A horrendous tackle to break an opponent’s leg, we could chastise him for that. But no, not for this. Sensationalizing things at the expense of the peace of mind of another human being is simply wrong. Okay yes, in our eyes what he did was wrong. But it was not us he wronged. The matter at hand is for the people, who are involved in it directly, to solve. He owes us nothing but a good performance in the football field. And nobody can question John Terry’s performance. Every time he steps in the hallowed turf, he is captain fantastic. A captain has to be a leader and John Terry is a leader. The relationship we share with footballers begins in the field and ends in the field. His affairs, his transgressions, his mistakes, it’s not for us to judge. We are football fans not some gossip mongers. We are interested the 90 minutes he spends with us every weekend. What he does for the rest of the week is his life. The media will do what it has to get readers. And we being human beings are always more interested in the fall of a hero than the rise of a pauper. We feel good to see the black smears across the previously impeccable colors that decorated a champion’s character. But this is not the right way.
Of course, John Terry is a role model. He is an idol for children. And obviously we are worried about how children would react when they understand the lapse of their hero. But aren’t we the immediate role models of the children around us? What will they understand when they see their elders praise and worship someone for his admirable determination, and in the next moment they leave his side and point fingers at him and condemn him? Such swift changes of opinions swayed by a few printed words in the gossip columns of a hungry newspaper. Is that who we are?
I am not a big supporter of John Terry but that’s because he plays for a rival team. And I will denounce him and scream my lungs out, for every tackle he gets wrong. But never for what he does in his non-football life. I know him as a footballer. A proper footballer. And I respect his commitment for his team. His private life is his private life. We only share the blissful realm of the football world and I will not lose my respect because of some stupid things he did. We are all vulnerable to stupidity. And this is after all a world cup year.
If you don’t agree with all of this and still chastise Terry for what he did, I have one question to ask. Its hypothetical but with possibilities of turning into a very real scenario. In July the 11th, the World Cup Final, when England are playing Argentina and Lionel Messi is racing through the ‘D’ area and there is only one chance for a defender to make a last ditch tackle, which England defender would you want to make that tackle?

Do you remember the music of the falling rain,
The freedom as the drops hit your face,
The cold winter breeze that excited your heart
And made you lose track of all time and space?

How did this rain became a disheartening nuisance?
Under the safety of the umbrella, when did we get so old?
Where did we lose our freedom for joy?
Why did the cool exciting breeze become the wind so cold?

The world spun so fast, it left me behind,
Stranded in an ocean of pain. I was too weak to cope.
Dreams and disappointments became the past and the future
And I couldn’t find a word more cruel than ‘Hope’.

Hope. So ruthless, depraved, evil yet so addictive.
It makes me forget the lessons life has taught.
It gets me high, so when I fall, I fall hard
And when I’m down, it points and laughs without a thought.

Happiness is a cheat, a betrayer, a hypocrite.
It pretends to be borne from my crematory ash.
It laughs and jumps and flies with me, but
Just watches as alone I burn and crash.

Sorrow is a true friend, he knows no pretence.
For my self-pity and masochism he doesn’t care.
When I shed my tears he’s by my side and
He’ll be with me when I drown in despair.

Can you show me how my thoughts are untrue
Tell me my life is colorful and bright.
That I have a share of happiness too
And even I deserve good dreams at night.

Will you try and keep me from getting lost?
Embraced in your arms, I will my soul confide.
Will you hear my tear drops fall?
And save me before my breaths subside.

No, why should you fight a battle to lose?
How can anything change the way I think and see?
I could’ve felt all that want me to feel
If just for a moment I could get away from me.


So, from the top of this mountain, I bid you farewell.
Will you or anyone save me from my freedom dive?
I was born more than a hundred years ago.
How much longer could I have waited to be alive?

-who cares? The world spins on.

We are a culture of carbonated beverages, alcoholic happiness and high speed internet. Pursuers of evenings at restaurants on weekends after a week of sitting behind a desk in a chair that doesn't feel right. Followers of work hard (at jobs you hate) and party harder (so for one night you can forget that the job you'll struggle through for the rest of your life, exists). We are slaves to the dismal stories on the picture tube and the three hour long love affairs of people that pretend to understand the meaning of happiness. Slaves of caffeine infested eyes and head phoned ears. Ours is the time of droughts on earth and water on moon. Of greenhouse gases, boisterous hurricanes and unforgiving tsunamis. Starless nights and receding coastlines, pet boa constrictors and endangered eagles. We live in an age of Facebook friends and online romance, diminishing distances and increasing cyberspace, youtube wedding tapes and flixter family albums. High definition celebrities, satellite locations, flat screen TVs and expansive greed. Miniature cellular phones and touch-screen music. Nuclear warheads but infuriating power cuts. Advancing technology but diminishing humanity. Freshly spawned religions but the same good old racism. Ritalin induced concentration and anti-depressant smiles. Of eternal love that last for a month, of poetry that has now become cheesy and web-cam meetings. Of short message services and captured memories. Of teen pregnancy and swift abortions. Split personalities and bipolar disorders. Silicone implants and diabetic amputation. Flying wizards and vegetarian vampires. Mayan predictions, disappearing oil and exponential population. An age of glorious pasts and doomed future. A epoch of changing languages, where vowels have become superfluous and spellings are unnecessary. So welcome to 2010 where if u dnt undrstand wht u r readin' rght now, u're in a plce where u dnt belong n da ppl u want to be wid u, r alrdy chnging dere convictions to be part of dis new age. Where eider u r 1 of dem, or a hopeless old bore. We are victims of our prejudice and perpetrators of our own misery. And it’ll be a long time before these things change. Have a very happy new bloody year.
But, after all of these arguments there is one reason why you should celebrate the commencement of 2010. It is after all, a World Cup year. GO WAZZA!

I am not against god. I quite like the idea of someone watching over us all. It’s like a fairy tale a lot of grownups believe. It’s a way to shift the blames of our inherent shortcomings, because as all of us know, we would have surely succeeded if god had wanted it. The idea of heaven makes us easier to tell children why their grandparents are dead and why snowflakes wont be coming back. And we should embrace everything that makes life a bit easier. What I am against is how God can look down from his throne and do nothing about everything that's happening down here. The people that are born with defects, the deaf, the blind and the dumb, the mentally retarded and the people with missing appendages. How does god allow that? It’s to show us how lucky we are to have all of this, that's what we've been told. Yes, and I do feel lucky to be born with all my senses intact, and the victim, well he's screwed. He just drew the shortest straw. If only he'd been more holy when he was a zygote, he would have had a better life. And how does anyone explain the thousands of innocent lives lost in natural calamities? I know, we are to blame for all the climate change and everything that happens in the future is the result of our past. But god is god. He can do anything he wants. Is it too much to ask for a small wave of his hands that would save thousands of lives. And they all say, god works in mysterious ways. What mystery can there be behind all of this? So many lives lost, while the people who should die, live, and the people who deserve to live, die young. I don’t have the authority to judge whose life is worth extending and whose should be terminated. But god does. And well, he's not really good at his job. And I understand life and death are part of the existence in earth. And people have to die one way or another. And some people lead good lives and some lead horrible ones. This is not my problem with the existence of God.
The problem I have is how he allows everything people are doing, claiming it's his will they are following. Animal sacrifices, religious segregations and terrorism, they do it all in his name. Terrorism has existed long enough in this world for even god to take notice from the proud height of his heavenly abode. How does God allow all these people, to use his name to do the things they do. But can you really blame them? They are doing what they have to do to recruit people and if they can take advantage of a name that everyone thinks is right, then why shouldn’t they? Apparently he has no problems with it. And a promise of heaven for an eternity is a pretty sweet deal. And what makes it even better, is that they think they're doing God's work, that’s what they’ve been told, which leads to a clear conscience. Who are we to question god? If he wants hundreds of innocent people dead, from a device he made someone invent for this very purpose, I am but a medium of his wish, and enforcer his whimsical orders. Either the people who use this pitch are genius or the people who believe in it are idiots. You don’t have to be Einstein to make a fool of fools and even Hitler would be a saint among the demons of hell. And god just allows this to happen. Day after day, he looks down and watches and waits. For what? And I figure there can only be two reasons behind it all.
1. He’s given up hope on us human beings and can’t wait for the apocalypse so he can start it all over again and get it right this time.
2. He agrees with the terrorist and what they are doing is actually god’s work
If I were to believe in god, I’d have to believe that either he's asleep or he's a part of everything that's going on. I’d have to believe that he has empathy for those who take lives in his name. And any god who stays quiet while all of this happens. Who looks down and does nothing except sit in his comfortable cushion of fluffy clouds listening to angels play harp, while lives burn from the flames of hatred raging among the creatures he created in his image, cannot be my god. If this is the image of god that I’ll have been given, that he's a lazy deserter whose mysterious ways are too difficult for me to understand while millions become victim for the satisfaction of his vanity, I’d rather look away. I’d rather not believe he exists than to face the reality of things if he did. So, no, I don’t have a problem with god, but that's probably because I don’t believe he exists. Have a very merry Christmas.

We are fallible creatures, easily tempted, easily subdued. With unimaginable desires for things we don't need. We are pretenders. We are cheaters. We are liars. We do things, things which, were they done by others we would chastise them, burn them, stone them. Our sins are always meager when compared. We are capable of astonishing horrors. Our vocabulary describes us. We have needs for words that shouldn’t exist, but they do because we put them in practice with our actions. Why do we have words like pedophilia, genocide, massacre, rape, patricide, holocaust, annihilation, apartheid? These are all testaments of our capabilities and how we have fulfilled them. We are quick to punish, slow to heal, slower to forgive. We are frail, easily betrayed. We revel in false hopes and futile dreams. We are cowards, doing things that are acceptable in everyone else’s eyes. We are pompous, ignorant and we think they can’t possibly be right if they’re against us. We assassinate. We fight. We stab. We kill. We murder. We war. We shake with the right hand and stab with the left. We betray. We endure. We torture. We hate. We are cruel. We are unforgiving. We make the Devil proud, we shout God’s name. We abandon reason. We terrorize. We bomb. We conspire. We differentiate. We are racists. We take advantage. We get richer. We lust. We indulge. We admonish. We preach and we don’t follow. We walk past. We accept. We flatter. We mock. We criticize. We humiliate. We envy. We wait for them to fall and when they do, we laugh at them. We blame. We deflect responsibility. We point our fingers. We judge. Without mercy we judge. Without understanding we judge. Without constraint we judge. With absolute disregard we judge but we fear judgment. We condemn. We do not do unto others, as we wish done unto us. We are despicable. We are appalling. We are lamentable. We are but mere human beings. We are hypocrites.
It’s a good thing god doesn’t exist. If he did he would be burning in shame looking down upon the abhorrent digression of his beloved creatures. Or maybe he does exist and he is.

"We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write 'fuck' on their airplanes because it's obscene! "- Walter E. Kurtz (excerpt from Apocalypse Now)

Yes, what Henry did was wrong and yes, it really is unfair that the French have gotten away with it and the Irish have to suffer the punishment for a crime committed against them. But, it’s time now to move on. What's done, is done. And all that happened, happened. There's but one definite truth in life: Shit happens. The Irish FA can't keep up these complaints every time they get up to make a statement. Bad unfair things happen. All the time. You can't keep putting all the blame on one decision that went wrong. Had the goal been disallowed, it still didn’t guarantee a place in the world cup, the scores would've been tied then. And why don't they look at themselves for failing to win in Dublin? And they're asking for a 33rd place in the world cup. I know it was cruel on the Irish, I know it’s horrible to be on the wrong end of a bad decision but a 33rd place????They want the football governing body to not only bend the rules, but make a ridiculous exception, for being on the wrong end of a single handball decision and after failing to win on their home ground. I have sympathy for the Irish FA but this is bordering on becoming a joke. When the time comes one has to do what one must, Henry did it. Maradona did it. The hand of god... well the french have Gods too. Wrong? Most definitely. But it got his team to the World Cup draw in Cape Town on the 4th of December, which is what matters. Everyone may think what happened on that fateful day on the past was wrong. But that's the thing about the past, it just doesn’t change. We should be looking forward to the draw and hoping for well balanced groups for all the THIRTY-TWO teams. Football, truly is brilliant.

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there."- Jalal ad-Din Rumi

"A question that sometimes drives me hazy:
Am I or are the others crazy"
- Albert Einstein.

Originality. Where can we go to, or what can we do to become original? We are 2009years into the A.D. calendar. Counting the years before that, our civilization has spent more than 2500 years of counted time in this planet. During which it has supported more than a billion lives. A lot more. That’s a lot of different men, women and children wanting to be something. To do something original. And since they had the benefit of being ahead in generation, they did it. Leaving us with no other choice but to redo them. We were born to be followers. Do you want to climb the Mount Everest? It’s been done. Write an epic play about unparalleled love? Been done. Free a nation from tyranny? Done. There really is nothing you can do that hasn’t already been done. Even your thoughts, that you think belong to you, someone's already thought them before. It has already stirred up someone else's grey matter before it did yours. There is no being original in the true sense of the word, but like everything else in life, or like everything else in the world, the meaning we give to originality is also tainted.
To be original, means you should be able to break free from the chains of society and severe the shackles of normalcy. Think for yourself. Everyone has an inspiration. Even following on his/her path, can be considered original, though it itself argues with the definition of being original. Leave conformity. Embrace your inner insanity. Listen to the voice that tells you it’s stupid to do such things, but you should do them anyway. Forget the need to rationalize things. The things we consider normal, are only normal because we've been told they're normal. Who has the right to decide what's normal and what is not? They can tell us what is normal or not, because they have the majority of the votes. But we all know their victory is not unanimous. Be a part of the minority. Enjoy being different, imperfect, crazy. Don’t worry about the world. The only they care about results and outcomes. They will mock you for your stupidity, spit on your endeavors and ridicule your thoughts, till you reach success, and then they'll praise you for your bravery. They are fickle minded morons who can only think what they've been told think, to do what's always been done, and they’ll live and die within the security of their four walls. They are rational, secure, safe, sheltered but a bit too sane. There's a very thin line between insanity and genius. Imagine you have a beautiful wife, a castle for a home, a healthy smart kid for a son, a garage of spectacular vehicles, and a job that has the whole population of the area working under you. All in all, a pretty sweet life. Now imagine leaving all of that, to go live in a jungle! Crazy, right? But turn the clock back a couple of years. Okay, a bit more than a couple of years, the same chain of thoughts weren’t crazy or stupid to Siddhartha Gautama. He left all his possessions and went on a search for answers to questions he couldn't understand. He became Gautama Buddha, the enlightened one, eventually. Stupid, crazy and insane to a genius. The same path that made everyone think he wasn’t all that great in the head, made the same people come to him looking for advice. George Bernard Shaw wrote, “The rational man adapts to fit his environment. The irrational man adapts his environment to fit him. Therefore all progress depends upon the irrational man.”
Shaw also said, “All great truths begin as blasphemies.” Let’s say that the world is not flat, that the earth revolves round the sun. Let’s travel South America on an old motorbike. Let’s say time doesn’t move the same for everyone, that energy and mass are interchangeable. Let’s abolish slavery. Let’s make a metal machine fly in the air while carrying us in it. Let’s fly a kite in a thunderstorm with a metal key attached to the string. Let’s fight a well equipped, well armed British army with nothing but non-violence. Let’s die for the sins of everyone else. These are just some of the insane thoughts that cropped up in a few brilliant minds. And the moral of the story is stay away from conformity and think for yourself. Break free from all things normal. And let the people brand you the they wish. You know who you are, better than them. Decide what you want. And chase it.
I myself am no adventurer, and this piece of writing seems to be drenched in hypocrisy. But these are just thoughts. And a hypocrite or not, I love to write. Cheers.