The rising fuel price and how it really impacts us

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Being animals, the horse and the chicken don’t learn their lesson and continue to play in the same area. A few days later the chicken falls into the quicksand. Faced with the prospect of dying, the chicken requests the horse to run to the farmer and fetch him for help. But the horse refuses. He says, “I think I can stand by the edge of the quicksand and pull you over. So he stretches over the edge and says, “Grab my ‘thingy’ and pull yourself up.” And the chicken does precisely that and gets pulled to safety.

My two cents on the metter and the moral of the story: “If you are hung like a horse, you don’t need a Mercedes to pick up chicks.” That's my two cents, keep the change.

In the last ten years, the fuel prices have really gone up. One would have thought with Iraq under US control (well, almost) and all other parts of the World where fuel is found under US influence, the World would be a better place to live in. But no.

I have a few thoughts on why we are where we are today, and how we can laugh it over….so let us start with a joke I read sometime back. Here goes:

A horse and a chicken were playing in a farm. Suddenly, the horse falls into the quicksand and starts sinking. He quickly shouts out to the chicken to go and get the farmer so that he could help in pulling out the horse. The chicken goes out …tries her best but is not able to find the farmer. Desperate to help her friend, she drives back in the farmer’s Mercedes Benz C Class bought on Mercedes Star Lease Plan. The chicken then ties a rope to the car’s bumper and throws the rope for the horse to latch on to. She then drives the car fast out…and the horse gets out on land, safe.

The sound of one hand clapping

When I heard the title of this post for the first time, my mind was racing with numerous images. Once the obvious image came and went (get your mind out of the gutter, pervs!) more images came to mind. Images like graduation, weddings, promotion, the whole lot. I decided to work backwards and started to think of the importance of clapping with both hands. The actual motion of clapping, if you think about it, has a Lion King-ness to it. You raise your hands to the heavens, grabbing all the good energy of the world you can muster, culminating in the transformation of those feelings into a load clapping sound which is then directly sent to the person intended like a sniper’s bullet. The motion you make is a circle.

Imagine trying to this wonder of natural expression with one hand. It’s really hard. Now the image of a war veteran with one hand or the infamous one-armed man is running through your mind. I figured that the clapping has now transformed from gathering emotion to directing it. This is like the pounding on a door or slapping someone in the face. I see a parallel to this and domestic violence, but that’s for another time.

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But then I remembered one of the most beautiful things in the world. I saw two guys sharing a bromance moment by giving each other a high 5. It hit me, both men using only one hand to clap. That’s it! It wasn’t just a simple sound but what that sound represents. Anyone can clap by themselves, but the experience of joining another person in a tandem feeling that is so wonderful, that the two of you need to express it by uniting for a split second.

My two cent’s on the matter: the sound of one hand clapping is the sound of a moment in time where people are connecting in the many celebrations of life. We need to do this more often instead of celebrating alone on our own little island clapping with two hands, hoping someone will hear us. That’s my two cents, keep the change. 

All who wander are not lost

If there has ever been a mind that wandered so purposefully and productively, it was the mind of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, scholar and professor of Old and Middle English and writer of “high fantasy” stories and novels, such as The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.
              

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The quote, “Not all those who wander are lost”, is part of a poem originally written by Bilbo, the main character from The Hobbit. Bilbo is describing Aragorn, the descendant of kings, and a king by birthright himself, who wanders unknown, unrecognized and unacknowledged, waiting for the right time to claim his throne;

“All that is gold does not glitter

Not all those who wander are lost

The tree that is old does not wither

Deep roots are not touched by the frost

From the ashes a fire shall be woken

A light from the shadows shall spring

Renewed will be blade that was broken

Crownless again shall be king.”

My two cents on the matter: The message here is clear – even though our purpose isn’t obvious and to others we seem adrift and without direction; it doesn’t mean we’re lost, or off track. Our lack of direction may very well be our deeper, more meaningful search or quest in this maze we call life. That's my two cents, keep the change.



The power of (doing) nothing

The value of waiting is overly despised and wholly underrated. We all, at one time or another, will be forced to wait either because we have to or because we are forced too. The delayed plane, the doctor’s surgery or waiting on the boss. It happens and as frustrating as this may be there is either the option to pace and complain and to worry. Or we can watch the world float by, see the myriad of different people drift across our paths and see them in our own light. The young men with ill-fitting suits and crooked ties, the ladies older enough to know better in knee high boots and short skirts, harassed mothers dragging children in their wake. This is the picture of life as it really, often lost now as we gaze franticly into our mobile devices and wait for the next tweet or status update.

So engrained has this online social connection become we often spend time with our faces lit by the eerie glow of the smart phone whilst in the company of real people, in real situations.

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It may seem strange for an author of a blog to suggest logging out.  On the other hand, there are plenty who advocate a day off from social media and I can see the attraction. But I wholeheartedly support the value of just being whilst waiting. You’ll learn more about life than any social network can ever provide and without the associated anxiety that can bring!

My two cents on the matter: log out and just be. Something that you could never have thought possible could occur and you were lucky enough not to have your vision distorted by the screen on your smartphone or the glowing “red eye” of a Blackberry. That’s my two cents. Keep the change.