Euan Semple's Blog, page 34

Becoming peaceful

I always remember a story about Mother Theresa being asked why she didn’t join anti-war rallies during the Vietnam war. Her response was that she was not anti-war, she was pro peace.

But how do you do that? How can you be pro peace without setting yourself up in opposition to those who are pro war, and therefore creating another source of antagonism and conflict?

You can become peaceful. And in doing so you show other people that it is possible to be calm and gentle in the face of challenges.

So how do you become peaceful?

You can’t force yourself to become peaceful. That in itself causes inner conflict and tension.

All you can do is notice the thoughts that are obscuring your underlying peaceful nature. When you notice them, rather than grabbing hold of them and ruminating on them, they pass. They are fleeting. They dissolve like morning mist.

And then you are left feeling peaceful.

Doing this around other people shows them what is possible.

This is all we can do.

What if we all did it?

Perspective

I took my Dad for a drive down to Bridport and Lyme Regis yesterday. He is pretty good at getting out for little trips in his Mercedes sports car, but at 91 he is only confident going short distances and on routes that he knows well.

When we got home from our drive he used the phrase “broadened my horizons” and it got me thinking how much we narrow our horizons all the time. We narrow our field of vision and our focus to the thing that is currently obsessing us and in the process miss 90% of the world around us.

At his age he’s got an excuse. The rest of us don’t.

Enjoyed chatting to these two yesterday.

Nice spot for dinner.

I’m on my way down to see my dad in Dorset and stopped off at Fontmell Down for dinner.

Labels

There are no such things as Russians, or Ukrainians, or Brits or Americans for that matter. There are just people. And they are way more alike than they are different

What you resist…

My post last week expressing frustration at militarism, bloodlust, and macho characters, will not have helped anyone. Dismissing people as broken or flawed leaves no room for growth or change. It slaps a label on them and puts them in a closed box.

While this might briefly make me feel superior it simply reveals my own frustrations and insecurities and closes down the very conversations which are our only hope going forwards.

Falling out with Alby

We don’t have a cat flap and Alby is normally really good about coming when we call and whistle at the back door. He’s got his routines and is often waiting for us when we open the door.

Not last night however. He’d been in a skittish mood all evening, usually the sign that something is up. We reckon it’s probably other cats coming onto his territory but he definitely wasn’t himself.

So after everyone else had gone to bed I waited up until I could no longer keep my eyes open and then I left a bedroom window open for him. Goodness knows when he eventually came back, waking me up in the process, but I was not happy.

There’s been an uneasy silence since we got up. I’m not saying hello to him and he is wisely keeping his distance. I know, I know, he’s just a cat and his instincts drive his behaviours. But hey, I’m just human, and my instinct is to go in the huff and not speak to him for a bit until he’s at least shown some contrition.

Bloody fools and wankers

I always found people who joined the cadets at school worrying. An interest in dressing up and cheap camping holidays seemed flimsy excuses for signing up for a game whose logical conclusion was killing fellow human beings.

I always found people who took up hunting suspect. Indulging in blood lust as a way of passing your days off seemed a small step away from being a psychopath albeit concealed behind a veneer of landed gentry aspiration.

We should trust our gut instincts and say something. Call them out on their aberrations. Draw them back to their inherent but forgotten peacefulness.

I keep thinking that someone, sometime, at a very early stage, should have taken Putin aside and introduced him to the possibility of not being such a wanker.

I do miss London

As I drove in to pick up Mollie, coming off the Marylebone flyover, I realised that I had once delivered a keynote in The London Metropole on one side of the road and steel piping to the new building on the other side.

In fact there are few parts of the city to which I haven’t delivered speeches or steel or concrete. I know it like the back of my hand and have walked or driven all over it for nearly forty years.

But my reasons to visit are scarce these days and it is like losing an old friend. I might just take the van in to show it around then park it and go for a wander.

Alby was supervising my cleaning of the van…

…and I wondered where he’d gone…