Accepting suffering

Posted on December 19, 2008 | Leave a comment

I had spent a few days, maybe a week, at Lara’s house and they were driving me back to Maija’s place. Hal would have been two at the time and he was becoming a little impatient with the long drive. To pacify him, Lara said, ‘We’ll stop at McDonalds soon and get something to eat.’

At the time McDonalds was still five minutes drive away and that was not good enough for Hal. He wanted it NOW!!! He started screaming and worked himself into a real frenzy. When we got to McD he didn’t stop and of course they weren’t taking him in like that so they asked if I would mind him. That was fine. I was chuckling inside because here is this kid who gets everything he wants and it still isn’t enough.

For me, the pain that I do still carry (at least till now) is the pain of my childhood. You could say my childhood was the opposite to Hal’s. We got very little in a material sense but that is not an issue as there was very little money. But we got very little affection in any sense and we were often beaten cruelly and unfairly. I have carried the scars of that with me all my life (as have my siblings). In recent years I have discussed this with Mother. She didn’t appreciate this but it got it off my chest and moved things along a little for me. She still wields power over the others but I feel she has lost her power over me. And yet, some of the pain is still there.

I’ve come to realise that we all suffer. One might think that Hal does not suffer at all but he does. He believes he should be in control of all aspects of his life. When he can’t have his way he suffers perhaps as much as I did after receiving a severe beating. My suffering is mine just as Hal’s suffering is Hal’s. Mother was only the instrument through which I received the suffering. If she’d never given me a beating but had done everything in her power to make me happy, as Lara has done for Hal, I would still have suffered. The suffering is mine. And now (hopefully) I can let it go and truly forgive her.

As I said, so far this still feels good. I’m not feeling angry towards Mother any more. I’m not predicting the future. Let’s see what happens.

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Are some words bad Daddy?

Posted on June 20, 2008 | 1 comment

Idelle was on holidays and we were housesitting. They lived in a cul-de-sac and most of the houses there had kids. It seemed a fairly safe environment to allow four-year-old Maija to wander a little through the day so long as Raakel was keeping an eye and ear out.

I came home from work and sat on the sofa. Maija came and sat with me and said, ‘Are some words bad Daddy?’

‘No darling. Words aren’t bad.’

‘What about bum?’

Now I don’t know what bum means where you live but to us the word bum is synonymous with posterior, buttocks, arse or ass. I said, ‘No darling, you know what a bum is. You have one. I have one. Everyone has one. So how could it be rude?’

‘What about dickie?’

‘Well, that’s a word for what a boy or a man pees out of. All boys and men have one and it’s not rude.’

This was only the start. It seemed that one of the neighbour kids had taken it on his or her self to give my little girl a lesson in swearwords. One by one she went through just about every swear word you could think of. My reply was much the same each time.

And eventually, ‘What about cunt Daddy?’

‘Well, cunt is just a name for what you pee out of. All girls and women have one. How could that be rude?’

Just one more to go. ‘Daddy, what about fuck?’ At this time Raakel was pregnant with Denny. We’d told Maija that a little brother or sister was on the way. She’d asked a few questions and we had explained openly and honestly but at a level we’d expect a four-year-old to understand.

‘Darling, fuck is a word for how people make babies. It is something people do when they love each other. It’s how we made you and it’s how we made your little brother or sister. It’s not a bad word. It’s about something that is very beautiful.’

While we were having this conversation my mind was thinking ahead to possibilities of where this could lead so I decided to add an extra explanation. ‘Darling, words are never bad. But sometimes you have to be careful about who you say them to because some people think they’re bad.’

‘Like Nanny?’

Right on kid. ‘So maybe it’s best if you don’t say these words when you talk to Nanny or anyone else who might think they’re bad.’

‘OK, but can I say them to you?’

‘Sure, anytime you like.’

Over the next few weeks whenever we were alone together Maija would quietly say to me, ‘I can say fuck to you, can’t I Daddy.’

‘Yep. You sure can.’

And then the novelty wore off. She never bothered after that. She’s 36 now. If she has something she needs to say, she has no hangups about the language she uses but nor does she indulge in gratuitous swearing.

If you’re still reading, you’re probably OK with this. I will keep a similar policy on language in this blog. If you have been offended by any of the language in this post, perhaps you should avoid coming back.

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What is love?

Posted on June 8, 2008 | Leave a comment

When we say ‘I love you’ what do we mean? The meaning of love is so nebulous. How can we be sure that the person we say this to understands it in the way we intend and vice versa?

Listening to love songs or watching romantic movies might lead us to believe that love means ‘I cannot live without you’. Perhaps many practise this kind of love towards their partners and children. When I married 39 years ago, I think that was the kind of love my wife and I felt towards each other.

At some time during the 22 years of that marriage I abandoned that definition. Perhaps I’m still looking for the right one. I’ve found two that I like, one with reservations.

From a Buddhist dharma master I have learned: ‘Love is giving without expecting anything in return’. I am quite attracted to this definition. Perhaps it is the way I would like to be loved but I have to admit that when I try to love in this way I fall short. To put this kind of love into practise one has to accept any kind of abuse the other is dishing out and continue to give (or so the master said). Sorry, I’m not prepared to do that.

A few years back Mother reached an age when she could no longer look after herself. She’d lived alone for many years and had been fairly independent right up to her late eighties. Around this time she found she could no longer look after her garden and was losing the ability to do many things she’d been able to do not so long before. Her doctor advised that she should not live alone. Her spirits were low. Everyone thought she did not have long to live.

Some of my siblings had her come to stay for a while but the longest any could cope with her was one month. By that time there was invariably acrimony between them. It was suggested that as I had no commitments I could return from Asia and stay in her house with her until she died.

I saw this as an opportunity to practise the kind of love I’d learned about in Asia but there was another challenge, to do this I also needed to confront one of my lifelong demons—the abuse my siblings and I had received from Mother during our childhood. I saw this as an opportunity, albeit a scary one.

I returned home and moved in with Mother. The fact that I was there was enough to lift her spirits immensely. After two weeks she was a changed person. I realised that she was not on death’s door as I’d been led to believe but had been suffering from depression.

We got on well for three months. I had freedom to come and go through the day. I bought myself a small car, though the main reason I needed it was to get her to and from the doctor’s surgery. But I wasn’t trapped with her. She wasn’t completely helpless. She could look after herself for a few hours provided I prepared meals in advance. And if I wanted to spend a night or two away from the house, I arranged for one of my siblings to come and stay. It was working well. Regularly I listened to her talk about the abuse she’d received from her mother. All those years and she’d still not come to terms with it. Nor had it occurred to her that she had repeated the pattern with us. Her mother had beaten her with a sewing-machine cable. She beat us with a broad strap. To her mind by doing so she was a humanitarian. She occasionally told stories related to her abuse of us but never acknowledging that’s what it was. I always let the matter pass.

During those three months I never raised the issue. I gave my love expecting nothing. I got more than nothing, in fact my life was quite pleasant. Most of the time we enjoyed each others company. Then my daughter, Maija, and grandson, Ilya, came to visit. There was a part of me that didn’t want them to come because I knew this would raise challenges for Mother. But I dearly wanted to spend time with them and they with me.

Since my siblings and I have grown up Mother has not stopped abusing us but the nature of the abuse has changed. She can’t beat us anymore so now when we’re in the bad books she gossips and 99% of the gossip is lies. She never tells us she has a problem with us. But the stories come back from a sibling. This gossip is not limited to her offspring. She also tells dreadful lies about some of the neighbours and anyone else who annoys her.

A few years before, Maija, her husband and the infant Ilya had spent about a month with Mother when they were in transition between homes. My son-in-law has black skin and Mother has never coped well with this. My son-in-law was not coming this time but the fact of the others coming was enough to trigger her to gossip about him. I was subjected to many stories designed to enlighten me about my terrible son-in-law.

When Maija arrived I asked for her truth in relation to the stories. Her explanations were logical. As I suspected 99% of the stories had come from Mother’s fertile imagination.

My grandson, Ilya, is a very lively young man. He enjoys life and won’t let anyone get him down. How I wish I could be more like him. But he was a bit much for mother to cope with. I tried to keep them apart as much as possible but this was too much of a challenge.

When she started telling stories about Maija and Ilya perhaps you could say I lost it. No, I didn’t lose control. But in some sense the gloves came off.

Later when she was reminiscing, as she did so often, if she ever raised a subject related to her abuse of us I no longer let the matter pass. I put my thoughts to her quietly, calmly and honestly, not with bitterness or anger, but to let her know how I saw the issue.

It wasn’t long before the stories started about me. I was no longer the golden-haired boy I’d been the previous three months. It was obvious that there was no way we could stay together until she died. I called a meeting of my siblings. It was amazing really. There is so much bitterness in my family. We are rarely able to get together like that without anger arising but somehow we did. My siblings allowed me to chair the meeting and we reached consensus about what should be done with Mother. Prior to this, because of family rivalries, we’d not been able to agree. Since then she’s been living with my brother Naldo whose wife takes care of her. Not everyone remains content with this arrangement but from Mother’s perspective I think it is the best one.

Leaving my goal to love without expecting anything in return aside, I think I did well. I survived longer with her than any of my siblings had done previously. Naldo has still not achieved that. While she’s been in his house for a couple of years, he’s often not there. He is at work every day. It’s his wife who takes care of her.

So, how did I go with the goal to love without expecting anything in return? Depending on how you look at it, either I failed or the goal is near impossible to achieve. Even the Christian god does not live up to this goal. If you aspire to enter his heaven, you have to live up to his expectation that you accept Jesus Christ as your saviour.

Where I do find this definition useful is when I have challenges in my relationship (of any kind) with someone. It is helpful if I ask myself ‘what am I expecting that I am not receiving?’. Often I able to see that the other person is not the problem. My expectation is and I challenge myself to let go of it.

Is there a more realistic definition of love? I think so. The one I like most is to want what is best for someone. A friend once challenged me about this saying ‘How do you know what is best for someone else?’

I don’t. I don’t even know what is best for me. But I can want that without knowing how to achieve it. Likewise it doesn’t mean I can or will be the means of that person getting their needs met. I simply want what is best for them.

I also qualify this definition by saying that first I must love myself. If I want what is best for me, I won’t allow you to do something to me that is not in my best interests. Having set that qualifier I feel that by this definition, I should be capable of loving all living beings. Yeah, I’m human, I get angry sometimes but when it subsides it’s time to remind myself of this goal.

Returning to the definition of ‘I can’t live without you’. Those who hold to this definition don’t want what is best for the other. They want what they believe is best for themselves and they believe the other is their means of achieving that. I don’t call this love. I call it selfish attachment.

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What is abuse?

Posted on April 12, 2008 | Leave a comment

It is my belief that abuse usually involves an abuse of trust. I’m sure there are exceptions but I feel that abuse must have a greater impact on the life of the abused when trust is involved.

When a child comes into the world it is extremely vulnerable. The world is a potentially dangerous place and could be quite scary. Fortunately most of us are given two people to look after us—people who take care of our needs and protect us from danger—two people we can trust. They are called parents.

Hajna and Bahija were twin sisters born into a farming family in 1913. They had four older brothers. While Bahija was considered to be a good baby by her mother, Hajna cried a lot. The mother made Bahija her favourite. As they grew Bahija was treated as a little lady but Hajna was treated as one of the boys. Beatings were common. The mother’s weapon of choice was a leather sewing-machine strap.

Hajna was a good student at school. She would have liked to go on and become a teacher herself or perhaps a nurse. After finishing primary school Hajna received no encouragement to continue. She was needed to work on the farm. On the other hand Bahija was sent to a secretarial school where she learned office skills.

Hajna managed to escape from her oppressive mother when her favourite brother, Eachann, started his own dairy farm. He needed someone to cook and to help milk the cows. The farm must have been doing well because Eachann also put on a farm hand, a young migrant, Hadad.

Hadad often had to work with Hajna and they became friends. One day he asked Eachann if it was OK to take his sister to the pictures. Eachann approved. A romance developed and eventually Hajna and Hadad were married.

Hadad and Hajna moved off the farm and into their own home. And Bahija came to live with them. People counted the months on their fingers when Hajna was seen to be pregnant but apparently it was all above board. The baby, Idelle, was born just on nine months after the wedding.

As the little girl grew, Bahija doted on her niece. Perhaps she even spoiled her a little. Hajna was jealous of her sister’s relationship with her daughter. The child would not do as the mother told her. Only Bahija was able to persuade her. Hajna was also concerned that Bahija was becoming too friendly with Hadad.

When the child became defiant Hajna didn’t know what to do. She remembered the cruelty of the beatings she received with the sewing-machine cable. No, she couldn’t inflict that on her daughter. She couldn’t be that cruel. But she knew no other way and at times she couldn’t control her temper. A broad leather strap was at hand. Surely that couldn’t be as bad as a sewing-machine cable. The pattern was set.

The second child, a boy, Saku was even more defiant than Idelle. Even the strap could not control him.

Hajna didn’t want more children but they kept coming. There was no contraceptive pill in those days and whatever they were using was not reliable. Next came another boy, Naldo, followed by a girl, Eadan. Bahija had left the scene well before yours truly, Joe, arrived. I was the fifth-born and followed three years later by twin boys, Aaron and Hadley. After the birth of the twins a doctor advised Hajna to have a hysterectomy which she did.

We were all raised with the control of the strap. Yes, there is much that I have to thank Mother for. She studied nutrition and although we were poor we were always well fed. But whatever good there was in my childhood is overshadowed by the terror of those beatings. They were all the worse for being inconsistent. One day a certain behaviour was fine. The next day it would get you a beating. Bath time was dangerous. We were naked. The door would be locked. And we couldn’t escape. She would lose her temper. She didn’t know when to stop. If you tried to not cry she would hit all the harder to make you cry. And when you started she would hit all the more to make you stop.

She was stronger both physically and emotionally than Father. All he could do was turn a blind eye. Abuse by neglect.

In recent years I have confronted Mother about the abuse. She considers there was no abuse as she used a belt in preference to the sewing-machine cable. However, she did keep a sewing-machine cable which she threatened us with at times. Whether it was actually used I cannot remember.

But it’s not about whether it was a sewing-machine cable or a belt. It is about trust. When parents abuse their children in one way or another there is often no one that child can turn to. If they can’t trust their parents who can they trust?

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An atheist at eight

Posted on April 10, 2008 | 1 comment

From Mother I learned a few things including work ethic, frugality and cynicism.

We are a large family who regularly attended the local Methodist church. We grew up with the usual mythology of our society: Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy.

I think perhaps Santa was the first one to go. One of my older brothers put me in the picture. ‘Don’t believe that rubbish. They only say that to get you to be good. It’s our parents who give us the presents.’

‘You mean there isn’t really an old guy who travels all over the world in his sleigh in one night delivering toys to all good children? But I’ve seen him. I’ve seen him at the store. He comes to our Sunday School Christmas party.’

‘Nah, stupid. That’s just someone dressed up. That was Mr D at the Sunday School party.’

‘Oh.’

‘But don’t tell ’em ya know. Pretend you still believe. Otherwise they might not give you anything.’

I was good at keeping secrets. In my family I found the best way to stay out of trouble was to be invisible.

So, Christmas Eve I still went to bed early and in the morning there were still toys in the pillow case. It took quite a few years before mother stopped using this as a control mechanism—’Now you be a good boy or Santa won’t come.’

The Easter Bunny was used in much the same way. And the Tooth Fairy too. Cripes, isn’t it enough that I lost a tooth? Do I actually have to be good as well to get a few lousy pennies? Sooner or later my older siblings set me straight.

There was one more myth being used in our family as a means of control. I didn’t need an older sibling to help me figure this one. I could do it myself. At the age of eight I relegated God, Heaven and Hell to the control-mechanism basket.

This one was too big to talk about with my siblings. Mother wielded a pretty mean strap. I wasn’t prepared to risk her finding out. Keep silent. Stay invisible. Which meant, of course, I had to continue going to Sunday School every week. I wasn’t a very good student. I feel sorry for those teachers having to put up with this little atheist. Though, of course, they didn’t know what was behind his lack of interest.

Somehow, despite this I was taking in all that stuff. I can still recite many passages from the King James Bible and I’m no longer a young man. I think that much of the moral stuff was worthwhile. It’s stuck and I’ve lived by it. And even the stuff that I challenge on an intellectual level, it’s much harder to challenge in practice. I remember many of the stories too. I enjoyed them just as I did the fairy stories from my childhood.

At the age of 12 I was asking my Sunday School teacher questions like, ‘If Jesus and God are one, why did he have to pray to God?’ I could answer that now but the best my teacher could do was ‘There are some things you have to accept you can’t understand.’

‘Yeah,’ this cynical kid thought (but didn’t say) ‘there are some things that you don’t understand. That’s why you can’t answer me.’

At around that time I found a way out of going to Sunday School. Even though Sunday was the Sabbath, it seemed in our family the work ethic was stronger. I could go caddying at the golf course and earn myself some pocket money. I was expected to go to the evening church service instead. I was still seen to be worshipping the Lord.

Church was easier. It wasn’t so interactive. I could drift off in a world of my own. Just had to remember to stand up for the hymns.

I also learned that I could sometimes get away with being forgetful. Remember, I was very good at remaining invisible. Sometimes I would be noticed. ‘Joe. Quick. Hurry up and get ready for church.’

‘Oh, look. It’s seven o’clock already. I won’t make it. Too bad.’ I’m sure I looked appropriately disappointed.

Mother had stopped going to church herself some years before. Like I said we are a big family. Father had no particular skills nor was he a physically strong man. Work wasn’t always easy to come by. When he found a job serving beer at the golf club some of the ladies at the church snubbed Mother. She was pretty pissed off by this. She felt God wouldn’t judge someone who was prepared to work to feed their children even if the church ladies did. She still kept up her duties on the flower roster and of course attended at Easter and Christmas. When it was her turn to decorate the church she’d go down in the morning and set up the flowers and return for the evening service so she could bring them home again after the service. Father had never been a regular church attender, just the special occasions, but he felt it was important for us to be given a good Christian upbringing.

At one stage I started going to the Plymouth Brethren church that had opened a few hundred yards from our place in the opposite direction to our church. Why did I go there? It was closer. Why walk the best part of a mile when you could get away with a much shorter walk?

On my first night no one really noticed me. I slipped out after the service and back home. ‘Why are you home so early?’ Father asked.

‘I went to the other church.’ Father didn’t object. So long as I went to church. (But of course, not the Catholics which was also close.)

On my second night one of the brethren said hello and asked my name. ‘Trusting in the Lord, Joe?’ he went on.

I was gutless. After so many beatings from Mother there was no way I could reveal to this stranger who I really was. ‘Yes.’ I answered feebly.

After that I was accepted by the Brethren. They were very friendly. They didn’t know Father’s work history and perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered to them if they did. There was a bonus too. There were two pretty girls I’d noticed at my high school who attended this church. I even got to visit the home of one of them. I was an extremely shy kid but we became friends at a fairly superficial level.

Father was the one who would tend to remember that I should be going to church. Perhaps Mother had given up on me a few years before or perhaps as part of her displeasure with the other women she gave up on the church. One night when Mother was doing the flower duties I decided it was time to confront Father. I would never had done this if Mother was home but Father didn’t have her cruel streak. He was an easier target.

‘Shouldn’t you be getting ready for church?’ he asked.

‘I’m not going.’

‘What do you mean? Why not?’

‘I don’t believe what they teach.’

‘Well, you can go to the other church. I don’t mind.’

‘I don’t believe them either.’

‘What do you mean you don’t believe?’

‘I don’t believe in God.’

We had a long man to man discussion. Perhaps our first.

‘So, if God doesn’t exist where do we come from?’

‘Where did God come from?’

‘Well, it had to start somewhere.’

‘Then why not with us?’

He couldn’t answer that one. Stumped by a 14-year-old kid.

I learned to admire Father on that night. ‘OK. I’ll never make you go to church again. But don’t ever tell Mother. It would break her heart.’

Yeah. And she’d set about breaking me too.

For the first time in my life, I felt I’d been treated with respect. I love Father for that.

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Contentious myths

Posted on April 9, 2008 | Leave a comment

While looking for information on Unitarian Universalism, I came across some Christian sites that devoted pages to putting the UUs down. It’s unfortunate that these people can’t approach religious discussion with a more open mind. Actually, the more such people put the UUs down, the more I like the UUs. The Christian argument falls down because it is based on a premise that does not allow any challenge to the claim that the Bible is 100% true.

One such site, Contender Ministries, also provides a rundown on other popular religions. They receive some mail in relation to this and they respond by praying for the misguided person who has got it so wrong as to disagree with them. I don’t want or need their prayers so I’ll make my comments here instead.

They mustn’t get too many comments about Buddhism because they only show one and that was written way back in 2003. The writer said the sections on Buddhism and Hinduism are grossly misleading. I didn’t read the one on Hinduism, nor do I feel qualified to comment, but the one on Buddhism I feel is almost right. There are a few generalisations, a few subtle putdowns and some minor misinterpretations but on the whole they got it right. I give them 9 out of 10.

Contender rightly point out that ‘there has been much debate by historians on where to draw the line between history and legend, the history probably contains much myth’. I agree. Anyone who seriously follows the teachings of the Buddha goes through a process of demythologising.

Pity Contender can’t see that their comment applies equally to their own religion.

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UU for me?

Posted on April 8, 2008 | 2 comments

Now I’m starting to wonder about this Tickle quiz. What is it’s real purpose? Unitarian Universalism is a relatively small religion. Why is it one of the ten religions listed in the Tickle quiz? Branches of several of the other religions would have more adherents than Unitarian Universalism.

I notice that among Tickle members many have come up as being compatible with UU. It is possible that the questions could have been slanted that way. Who designed the quiz? Is its purpose to bring more members to UU?

If so, it’s not working for me. What I read about UU on Wikipedia was fine by me. I have no disagreements with them. But then I went to their own websites. What I found was that the articles often referred to ‘God’ or ‘the divine’. I’m afraid this puts me off. Having been raised in a Christian family where God or the fear of God was used as a means of control, the word has limited meaning for me. I know that the UU people use it differently but I can’t separate it from the anthropomorphic creator-punisher god that I was brought up with. If they want to get me onside they’ll have to change their language.

BTW, I don’t recommend you try that Tickle test or any other on their site. You have to give them your email address. I don’t think Joe’s address has been given out elsewhere and already spam has started to arrive. So, who’s been sharing the address around?

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Who’s winning the spam war?

Posted on April 7, 2008 | Leave a comment

I have long been an admirer of Google and their success in keeping spam out of gmail. But I’m starting to wonder if the spammers are getting on top of them.

Google’s filters are still working fine. The email that comes through my paid ISP account includes more spam than genuine messages. Their filters catch only a small percentage of the spam that comes to my account. Not so gmail. I have perhaps received only one piece of spam that got through the gmail filters in over a year. There’s plenty reaching my account but it’s being filtered into the spam file. Occasionally a real message gets in there too so I realise I have to check that box occasionally but it is rare.

What I am noticing is that much of the spam reaching both accounts originates from gmail addresses. Google appears to be addressing this but perhaps not so successfully. I mentioned in my previous post that my Blogger account had been closed as a potential spam blog. Blogger gave me 20 days in which to respond before they deleted the account completely. I responded over a week ago. My account was to be assessed by a person within four days but so far nothing. I’m not sure what that means. Are they having trouble telling the difference between a spam blog and a real one?

One of my gmail accounts (not connected to that blog) was having difficulties sending, particularly to groups. It got to the point where even individual emails were bouncing. It seemed that if I didn’t send an email as a reply it would bounce. As a test I sent one to myself at my ISP-based address. It bounced too. Now it’s possible that everyone else has had enough of me and is rejecting my mail but me??? I don’t bounce my own mail back.

So I sent that one to gmail with an enquiry. I haven’t had an answer but I don’t seem to be getting so many rejections now. I guess that means they’ve done something about it. But why are they in this situation where they are so cautious that they are rejecting legitimate mail—and yet on the other hand the real spam emanating from gmail addresses is still getting through?

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Why I’m here

Posted on March 29, 2008 | 1 comment

Perhaps it was karma, if you like.

My sister was having trouble with too much friendly junkmail on her ISP’s server. By friendly junkmail I mean the stuff your friends forward to you that’s been forwarded a hundred times already including twice to you. Have you noticed? This stuff comes with bigger and bigger files these days. Whoever creates it assumes you have unlimited email storage. Or perhaps doesn’t care.

My sister didn’t have unlimited email storage. All she had was what was given by her ISP and considering she pays them money, it’s pretty poor. When it’s full the mail bounces. ‘What can I do?’ she asked. ‘I’m not getting any emails.’

I said she should open a free account with gmail that would give her virtually unlimited storage. Her friends could send their junk to that address and her mail would never bounce. And a huge bonus—she’d get almost no real junkmail through that account. We both waste heaps of time deleting the stuff that comes through the ISP account she pays for.

My sister is almost seventy and over the years she’s become moderately computer literate. We had this conversation over skype because we live on different continents. I gave her the gmail address and left her to it.

The next day she was back on skype. Something had gone wrong. She tried to explain it to me and it wasn’t quite making sense. I figured I had to do it myself to see what was happening. And that’s how I opened my third gmail account. On the spur of the moment I resurrected Joe. I didn’t really need another address in my real name. But sometimes it’s handy to have an anonymous alias.

A few years ago I participated in a blogging community as Joe. Because it wasn’t my real name I had no reservations about being totally honest about what was happening in my life—except for names of people and places. If my life was shit, I blogged it. If I felt on top of the world, I blogged that too. Writing it down gave me the opportunity to analyse what was happening.

This was a fairly interactive community. I got lots of comments mostly from nice people. But often people would notice you were down and that would give them the opportunity to feel superior. I mean, I’m well into middle age, bordering on being old. I was a teenager in the sixties. I’ve lived man. I don’t need no 20 year old who thinks he’s just figured out what life is all about giving me advice.

So, I decided to let Joe die. Joe just stopped blogging. Didn’t even read his mail. I wonder if they noticed.

Since then I’ve been doing a few things. Did I mention that I’m a Westerner living in Asia, on a path to find what life’s truths are, if there are any? I’ve lived in some pretty basic communities among people suffering from severe poverty. I didn’t live in a big house and go talk to these people. I lived among them, living almost their lifestyle. Sometimes it was great. And sometimes it got to me.

I got myself out of that situation and am living in relative prosperity now. That is, I’ve got a room about the size of a small Western bedroom, a hard bed, I’ve even got a wardrobe. Don’t have to store my stuff on the floor now. Stuff? I don’t got much stuff. But at least what I have is off the floor. This is luxury man. And I’ve got a balcony. And when I want water I just turn the tap on. Wow! OK. So, I have a choice of cold or cold but the air temperature only drops below 20 c for two months of the year. And this is a great community. There are tables and chairs underneath the building and in the cool of the evening there is usually someone there ready for a chat—so long as we can speak the same language.

But best of all is that I have an internet connection. 24 hours a day. 2.5 gig download speed. Well, from the local server anyway.

I don’t work. Spend most of my time trying to learn the local language. So I get to spend a bit of time online. And since the shit I was going through before I’ve been reassessing myself and life. I’m open to all sorts of things. I’d been thinking of resurrecting Joe. Bring him back to life. Rebirthing.

Somehow I found myself on a site called Tickle doing a quiz designed to show my religious leanings. I think I know what my religious ideas are but I was rethinking it all. Perhaps Tickle might give me some direction. I figure they assessed me pretty well and I thought, if I do resurrect Joe, I could use this assessment to introduce myself. I felt inspired.

I was already blogging with Blogger under my real name. Had no complaints. So, Joe opened a Blogger account. Did some copying and pasting from Tickle and there was his first post. Now I’m wondering if perhaps Tickle use this stuff to bring traffic to their site. Because after the second post, the blog was closed as a potential spam blog.

Tickle had suggested that the best religion for me is Unitarian Universalism. And frankly, I’d never heard of them. OK, so I’ve heard of Unity and apparently there’s a connection there. But UU? No, not me. So, I did a bit of searching and that led me to WordPress. They have a whole heap of UU blogs. Forgot about UU, started exploring WP. Hey, they even give you stats. I put Sitemeter on my Blogger blogs and the free version doesn’t give me as much info as I get from WP right along with the blog. Hey, that’s pretty cool.

Blogger still haven’t advised me if Joe can stay or not. But I’m gonna give it a try here. I hope you’ll come back sometime.

You might have noticed there were a number of coincidences in this story. Take one out and I wouldn’t be here. You might think otherwise and that’s your prerogative but to me, that’s karma.

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