To be or not to be...

To be or not to be… that may be the question, but to me the answer to that is quite simple. I much prefer being. I’ve been lucky in so many ways, but occasionally I wish being wasn’t quite the emotional roller coaster it some times is. There’s the blues, the mean reds, the sunny yellows, the green-eyed monster moments, the silly pinks, the furious blacks (though I very rarely have the furious blacks), nary an emotion without a corresponding colour.

I was talking with a friend yesterday, and I have to admit I was having a bout of some blues, mixed with some mean reds, and we started talking about how often we suppress those feelings. How wonderful it is to have someone in your life who will let you express the blues, and the reds, and the pinks and all the others without judging you. And of course we talked about how wonderful it would be to have someone in your day to day life who allowed you to do that. Somehow I get a feeling it’s not as common as we wish.

Many years ago I was going through a rough time, and my train of thought at the time was that I couldn’t share that with anyone. Not because I was embarrassed, but just because I didn’t want to burden the people I cared about. Things changed, I worked through it, and I understood that it was quite the opposite. People who love you want to be there for you, even when you’re not at your Mae West. I sort of thought that was a lesson learned by now, and that it had been for years. Yesterday however I found myself in a situation where I felt like I had to hold back and pretend that everything was hunkydory with someone because I didn’t want to make them feel bad. I guess it’s back to the drawing board.. or at least time to remind myself of lessons previously learned.

This is about to become a bit incoherent, mainly because I can’t think of a clever segue onto the topic. That’s my brain though… it saunters about at will, and seems to serve me up digressions with indecent frequency.

Looking at the political landscape in the world today, it’s easy to feel hopeless. Personally I despair when I read polls and the percentages of people who still think Iraq was behind 9/11. The fact that Bush won the last presidential election is still something that makes my skin crawl. The fact that Le Pen was in round two of the last presidential election here in France is a disgrace. People are starving to death, freezing to death, and I get depressed just thinking about it. And where was I going with this little tirade?

Right, hope. As an individual it’s so easy to feel impotent and irrelevant. And recently I discovered a cure for this… at least a temporary one. The Nobel Peace Prize center in Oslo. I went there with my sister, and it is truly inspirational. I love the way the committee rewards intention and effort rather than just actual results. The recepients of the award are incredible people, and their work is… well, inspirational. I have to admit some of the past winners were relatively unknown to me, especially the winners from the earlier part of the 20th century, but I’m hoping someone, somewhere has published a book about all the past winners. Such a book would definitely be great to keep around for those days when you feel like all the change around you is for the worse. It’s good to remember the accomplishments of the Gandhis, Dr. Kings and Dalai Lamas of the world.

(I should mention that the picture is a painting by my favourite painter, Frans Widerberg)

(Jan 5, 2006)