13th August 2007

I got to play tennis with Chas and his friend on Sunday. I cant tell
how much fun I find this sort of male bonding. I just don't get
enough of it. I have tried to organise regular things with male friends
and it has never worked out. Part of me wants the kind of friends like
in American sitcoms where they are always doing stuff together. But
then I remember how I like my own time as well. What a conundrum! I had
not played tennis in about 10 years and yet I was able to hold my own
and actually win quite a few games, against two of them! That's your
papa. A papa who can hardly move today. Even my ears hurt.

Not sure what to talk about today. No memory is coming to mind. You
have been squirming around like crazy in the middle of the night. You
go to sleep when Mum is on the move, its all that rocking. Then at
night its your time to shine.

I keep wondering how the hell I am going to raise you. I don't want
to hide you from bad experiences because this generation of parents is
making that mistake. Kids are growing up like eggs that have not been
hatched, totally protected and ignorent. Then they are expected to go
out there on their own and cope with no mechanisms and no experience in
how to deal with stress. My lesson to you will be that there is no
guarantee of having a trouble free life. This will probably really
annoy you when I start asking you for the contract that states you were
to have an easy time of it. I guess the best thing I can do is open you
to new experiences with people who are really struggling. Get some
perspective on things as that is one of the worst qualities as humans.
Thinking they are so hard done by when there are people with real
problems out there. That is a great 'root' rule to apply and one that I
live by. I do not believe we are presented anything in our life that we
are not able to handle. I even go as far to believing that before we
are born we choose the kind of life we are going to have, the degree of
difficulty and a general sense of what we need to learn. Remember that
nobody on the planet knows the absolute truth of how this universe
works. Religions most certainly don't, they are too caught up in
their own versions of truth which contradict each other. Therefore it
is reasonable to apply your own set of guidelines to live by, grabbing
ideas from your experiences and knowledge acquisition. It is all
illusion anyway so why not create your own that will work for you.
People don't seem to get that your mind is a ghost, its not tangible.
It is just a series of interconnected nodes in the brain that shoot
little messages to each other. The mind is therefore not something you
can trust or count on as the definition of what makes you you. These
connections constantly change based on your experiences. This is how
habits are formed. Imagine this - you meet someone for the first time
and soon discover you hate them. Each time you see them from that time
on you inevitably go back to that same reaction don't you. Theres
that person I hate again. So why not use this to a positive, start
reacting to things in a way that will not make you feel like crap. This
is going to hurt you - but think of the film Waterboy. The coach fixes
his fear of that opposing coach by starting to picture him as a baby.
All of a sudden he is not afraid any more. It's a brilliant
philosophy that I will try my best to instil into you at an early age.


Im just enjoying the third book in the John Marsden Tomorrow series.
Its riveting stuff. Im sure we have read this.