When we are born we come equipped with an array of feelers, they give us information about the world, and when everything is working right, also what to do with this information. You can think of “feelers” like pain receptors all over your body, or the “feeler” that senses danger and gives you anxiety. There are many more, and we share these protective systems with other animals.

We, and some other more evolved animals, can also feel anxiety, fear, arousal and other specific states of mind, when there is no apparent reason for it. Fear for a poisonous snake was and is important for animals and our ancestors, if they want to have a chance to evolve. We as humans still share that fear for snakes, and most of us still do for good reasons, but if you have lived in a city your whole life, and you come across a snake in a terrarium at your friends place, you might feel this fear and anxiety, though it is no longer necessary. These emotions are still triggered the same way as they did with our ancestors, hundred of thousands years ago. 

What about the fear of losing your job, your money or anxiety over your relationship? These are all constructs, we don’t share these kinds of “relationships” with other animals, or for that fact, with our ancient forefathers. You might say that anxiety covers all of these, but losing your job has little to no effect on the evolution of mankind, and relationships are not helping for your chances to reproduce at all.  

These kinds of fears are spoonfed when we grew up, and within certain cultures. They feel the same as the  evolved fears we share with other animals, and they are also hard to ignore or suppress. Nonetheless, we as humans have brought them on ourselves, though you might argue that we had no say in it, when evolution made us smarter. We became smarter to solve problems, and paradoxically, invent more problems too. 

The poem that inspired me today is from Day 1270.

The road

is not lit

by the light

but by the darkness

on its sides

If you look at life, history, where we all are now, and the future, you should be somber, there is no other way to look at all of this. Still, for some reason, I am positive. 

It is dark besides the road, but I can still see it, as well as where i have to go. Every little joy, good news or hope is not shining enough in daylight, but in this darkness, it’s there to find the way. 

One of the more awkward things for us to react on is when someone tells us something we didn’t know, when we just told the opposite. Depending on your character you try to save face in different ways, or you don’t care and acknowledge that their right and you are mistaken.

I is of course liberating when suddenly, your horizon is broadened. Were you before looking in that one direction, now you have the other next to it, and you can look back and forth, to the past and the future.

The poem if found today is from Day 1267, posted on my birthday in 2019.

From here

I see lines

coming together

in the future

when I wake

on my side

I am not

so sure

I can read it in different way’s, your mind can change when your perspective changes, like in the example from above. You can also see it as a prediction for what’s in store when you are in a relation and you start waking up with your backs to each other, literally and figuratively.

A note for the people that know me and might worry: when I write, I get my inspiration not only from the present but also from the past. I can write dramatically about relations and my own well being but that doesn’t necessarily say anything about my current relation or state of mind. You could say that I try to use my full horizon.

Did you know, that when you meet a person for the first time, you blend a little bit of you in the blender from where you will pour your first impression. It is hard not to start from yourself when you judge a person, or for that matter, an object. You start, from when you are born, with labeling the world, and do you have all the labels? If you see a yellow Ferrari for the first time, you don’t think: there’s, a yellow Ferrari. You probably think: there’s a yellow car. You know car, and yellow so that’s what you use to “judge” the situation.

This is also the case when you meet people for the first time. Like with colors, character traits are limitless, but in reality you use only a small amount of the available flavors you find in real life. But no matter how many flavors you know, you use the ones you…know. When you grow up, and you start looking more and more into the world you will learn the different character traits around you. When your older you will no longer be surprised that often, you’ve seen it all: you think.

It is when you move to another culture, even if it is not that different then the one you grew up in, that you realize how wrong you are in your judgments of the people you meet. That’s at least what I hope what would happen. But there are enough people that stick to their own, and don’t postpone their judgment. I don’t want to go into to much details but just take all the different hand gestures you can find around the world as proof of what I try to say. Many gestures in our own culture can mean the opposite in an other culture. Imagine the embarrassment you have when you judge someone wrongly because of a gesture they make towards you.

The poem that inspired me today is from Day 1266.

Its the inside

of a mask

what I see

when I look at

you

I like the idea of “the inside of a mask” but its hard to conceptualize it. In the context of what I have written above I would rewrite the poem and add: Its the inside of my mask, what I see, when I look at you. But the original is more mysterious.

People are capable of all kinds of deplorable things, specially when they roam around in groups, but the same groups of people miraculously behave well when they roam around in the mall, or drive their cars on the highway by the thousands. People are real herd animals and that is strange, because we can, at any moment, do what we want to do.

If you drive a car you can turn left or right or stop at any moment. When your in the mall, you can start running, scream, undress yourself whenever you want. We off course know, that this is not what your suppose to do. We know this somehow, but that doesn’t negate the fact that we could do it. We have this freedom in us but we hardly ever use it because of the herd, the group pressures, the values and norms we have.

The poem from today, its just four words so I don’t know what it is, but it still has a message, so it is something. It is from Day 1249. The picture that you can see if you click on the link, will give an alternate explanation.

A current

is waiting

The word current is a nice word to use in a poem. It has several meaning that can bounce of each other. You can read it as now or actual, a flow like in a stream or in electricity.

You can say that “a now is waiting” for you. At any moment you can alter the direction of your life. You can pack a bag and walk out of the door. You can stand up and tell everybody at work what you think of them. You can forget your contraception and get pregnant. You can finally tell your parents who you are.

You can change your life in many directions, you probably thought about it, and all the reasons why you shouldn’t. The point is that there is probably nothing physically stopping you from doing any of the examples I mentioned above. We have this enormous freedom to do everything with our bodies, if you can walk, you can walk out of the door.

There is a part of our physical body that seems to prevents us from doing these “radical” things, it is our brain. Most people don’t “feel” the brain as the source of their “I”, their personality, but if you take away the brain from your body, your gone, and there is no way you can prove otherwise. Other “proof” of this is that people on certain drugs or with specific mental illnesses can loose access to parts of the brain that prevents us “healthy” people from taking our cloths of in the mall.

Because we are heard animals, live in a group, and have a brain that is a physical part of us and is “programmed” to keep us on the straight path, we are most certainly doomed to stay within the lines that are drawn around us. Sure, you can force yourself over the line, but do you?

A part of who we are is a gift from our parents, from when we where made. It is written I our genes and besides our looks we also inherit parts of our personality. This all makes sense, we all know it, its a part of life.

The poem I found today was from Day 1215.

The roots

lay bare

reaching

up.

Or down?

Part of our roots are our parents, they pass on their genes passively to us, but the question I ask in this poem is: do they also pass on, when raising us, their interpretation of their genes?

Let me elaborate: if you inherit a gene that “stimulates” curiosity from one of your parents, but that parent was discouraged in using this genes potential in them self. Would that parent then use these experiences, or roots, to counteract that genes potential in you, while raising you?

There are obvious traits we inherit, we learn new ones when we grow up, and later when we live our life. It is true that finding the roots of all your traits is not necessary for living to the end of your life, but if you have ever looked at your parents, or even your grandparents, and you see a suppressed trait, you might want to look inside yourself, because if by chance you inherited a gene with an unknown potential, hidden out of sight, you might want to revive it.

We humans are not that great in living to our potential. We lean to far to a side where we shouldn’t lean to, or lean back and live a “half life”.

As Socrates said over 2000 years ago: “an unexamined life is not worth living”.

A chain is a welcome metaphor, for the connection you have with the past, willingly or not. The chain can pull on you directly when you just lost, or indirectly if you find a reminder of a memory, an old sweater that is not yours on the bottom of the drawer.

Chains you drag behind you, can also catch memory’s from others. Drag them long enough behind you, and they will get heavy, and weight feels reliable as in your truth.

There are also people that don’t know how, or want to, look back. If they do, they might see that their chain is caught, by for instance, an old anchor. Maybe then they notice that they have dug a hole while they believe to walk forwards.

We can also get caught by a chain, dragged by an other. This happens if you look to much, backwards.

The best thing I can do now, for the real world, is to find the equivalent, of what in this metaphor a hacksaw or grinder does to the chain.

I was inspired by Day 1200.

The chain drags

dead weeds

from the bottom

–

in the sea

I go to

Like other people that ask a lot of questions, I also wonder where the answers come from, specially when I get different answers, and sometimes even from different people. I am often amazed how people tell me, with full confidence, how I should handle things or behave in social situations. They don’t always tell me, I see them doing it, and then I wonder: where did they learn that? I know that you learn most things in life when you are young, and live with the tall people that feed you, and later, by copying and trial and error.

I found out early that when you copy someones behavior you might find out that it is not smart to do it that way. So why is that person still doing it? Should I copy the next person, when I am in a situation where I don’t know what to do? Am I gonna do something that I later regret, or do I do nothing out of doubt? This is in short the dilemma when you ask to many questions, you grind to a halt in a world full of contradictions mixed with confidence.

I have the confidence to go out and live my life, despite walking blindfolded on a tightrope and the feeling that my mask will be torn off any minute. I am in fact a hero…

No, when I am in a jolly mood I always ask people where they have their book with all the answers that they got when they were young, because I lost mine… just want to know why they are so sure.

The poem that inspired me today is from Day 1161.

The memo

with the rules

I think

It

was hanging here

Have you seen it?

Do you

my friend

know how to live?

Are we all hypocrites? Two thousand twenty will always be the year of Corona. You hear it everywhere, and it seems that a lot of people have a hard time with it. It is difficult for me to fully understand it because here in Norway not much happened. I lived in a little village of 3000 people before and Corona was something you hear about on the news, and we noticed that there where almost no foreign tourists in the museum where I worked. When it all started we did, and still do the 1 meter thing a hand sanitizers were placed everywhere, but their were no cases and there still aren’t to my knowledge. I moved to a bigger city in October and besides the normal precautions, life was normal. Cafe’s where and are open and we visited a lot of museums. Last week they decided that we had to where masks inside stores because here in Trondheim the people tested with Corona went up in a month time from around 1 or 2 to 30 per day, in a population of around 180 000 people. I am not the one to say that it is a little unnecessary, I guess they like to play it safe, and I have to say that it has worked, specially compared to our neighbor Sweden. I know from my family in Holland that it is a little rougher there and my girlfriend is from America and it’s a big mess over there.

I think I have read a little bit to much Noam Chomsky in the past because I have an immediate, and specific reaction when I hear people complain about lock-downs and how hard it all is. I have this reaction specially when it comes from Americans or the British. Off course it is bad that people die from this disease, specially because some of those deaths could have been prevented if people followed the rules better. It is tragic, when you think of the people that died all alone in a hospital with their families in tears behind a window.

My immediate reaction to the complaining and whining is: Iraq war 2003. A decision made by a few men in a room…boom…between 100,000 and a 1,000,000 people unnecessary died. Children, grandfathers and mothers, pregnant woman, fathers…all dead because of… I cant speak for the people that lived in Iraq under the regime of Saddam Hussein, it is not what we are used to but from what I learned, even when you live in such an oppressed society, life and family life goes on. You morn as much over the death of a loved one in prison as you do in freedom. That unnecessary war was like a diseased that hit that country, far worse then Corona will ever do. According to corona-tracker sites there are around a 1000 deaths total in Iraq as per December 2020.

Maybe I am wrong thinking like this, maybe it is only allowed to look at data like this when you are a historian a hundred years in the future.

The following poem gave me the chance to vent my frustration, that I had bottled up till now. Day 1160.

The luxury of pain

In my world

with so little

real

problems

A few quotes from Noam Chomsky. I can recommend to everyone to read some of his work if you want to see contemporary history through other lenses then the ones we usually wear in the west.

The quotes:

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum….”

“Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way: Stop participating in it.”

“All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.”

“The number of people killed by the sanctions in Iraq is greater than the total number of people killed by all weapons of mass destruction in all of history.”

If there is one thing that bothers me…I wanted to put the next few words in quotation marks, but I will elaborate it now. I wanted to say Western society but I realize that i don’t know enough about other societies around the world to exclude them from my observation. I also think that “Western society” can be replaced by “the Hollywood society” as in the spreader of a worldview that by now is so adopted that Stalin and Mao would be jealous at their effectiveness and hypnotic power.

Ok, one more time. If there is one thing that bothers me then it is the individualism preached by the church of Hollywood. If you observe modern culture or just talk to people you notice that a lot of people see themselves as unique, one of a kind. We are of course all unique, as in the combination of molecules stacked together to form you as a person. What most people mean with that is that they can not be treated as other people. Their perceived history and qualities are so unique that they know best how to handle themselves.

I can give an example that might clarify what I mean. I’ve been around a lot of people with mental problems. One thing that often happened is that someone took their medicine for a while but then decided that not the doctors knew what was best for them but they where the ones that knew what was best. They stopped with the medicine and awhile later they are back at square one. It is the idea that our own judgment has more value than that of others, even if you know that the other know better. People don’t like authority.

I don’t think that there where better times in the past, or that other cultures do a better job raising their kids. First of all, I only know the past through stories and books and I have lived in countries with other cultures, but I didn’t “live” that culture, at the most I was an distant observer.

Before 2016 I always thought that the culture that was prevalent before world war two was the cause for that war and the death camps. In those day’s most people didn’t decide what they would do with their life, that was decided by society and your family. People where used to obey and follow, even if it was into a grave. But after Trump was elected president, and specially now in 2020, where millions of people sheepishly follow a leader I am thoroughly confused. At the one hand everybody takes it for granted that they are an individual, an individual that can decided for themselves in what to do with their life, in a stark contrast with older generations. On the other hand they all follow a leader or an idea, this time in a stark contrast with their individualism.

My complaint seems odd, I don’t like the out of control individualism but also dislike the slavishness towards leaders/trendsetters and those trends. I prefer a more skeptical society and individual. That skepticism should not only be pointed towards society, but also towards oneself. Don’t forget that most of what we like in modern society, our medicine, computers, transportation, welfare state and so on, is born out of the skeptical minds of scientists. On of the more important rules in science is that you have to try to undermine your own conclusions, and your own thoughts.

Day 1155.

At the end

of the line

we

are all

tied

together

I assume that the people that read my work are interested in life, as something that you could study and poke at, as to see what it does. I defiantly have that, but I sometimes wonder if the people that I know have similar interest, or do they only have it when life “pokes” at them.

Fifteen years ago I moved to Norway from the Netherlands. I have been back a couple of times to see family, but what I remember of living in and with the people over there is covered in a haze. I only remember the things that stood out, maybe not when I lived there, but they clearly do now. One of those things is that people in Holland (that’s how we call it most of the times) are more of an open book, specially compared to the people here in Norway. If you meet new people or start at a new job, you will have an easier time in Holland to find out what people think, what their hobbies are, what they do in their spare time, those kind of things. In Norway that takes longer, not always off course, I generalize, but I noticed it.

People in Norway are raised to respect each others boundaries, something they have some pride in, they tell me. It is of course easier in a country with so much space per person compared to Holland. If I tell someone in Holland that I am interested in philosophy then there is a bigger chance that they start asking question to hear me out, a conversation is born. Here in Norway that hardly ever happens, they react enthusiastic but most of the time that’s all you get.

I thought about this when I red the poem I write for Day 1100 back in marsh 2019.

The road to freedom

ends

where the horizon

begins.

I would like to talk with someone face to face about the meaning of these few lines. In Holland I would have a hard time finding people that like to talk about more abstract philosophy, here in Norway I am afraid it is impossible.

I realize that there is little meaning in this poem, specially if you just read it. But I have read many philosophy books and sometimes you need a few days to digest one aphorism or a paragraph. Words put in the right order can have a lot of magic in them, and if the philosopher or writer is not known for being a charlatan you better believe that they put some meaning in it for you to find.

I like to know which interpretation you have of this little poem or aphorism, maybe you have another idea.

A. If you reach your goal (or horizon) you are bound by that goal and lose your freedom

B. If you don’t set yourself goals for the future (at the horizon) you are free, from those goals that will steer you towards them.

Am I my own imitation?

The last sentence of the poem I wrote for Day 1067.

The mirror points in two directions.

It reflects me, my outside a stranger to me.

It lets me reflect, what I, think I see.

So, what is reflected?

Am I my own imitation?

I am not a poet. I write and talk about them everyday for the last 3 years, but I never took the time to find out what a poem is and how you should or could write one. I like juggling with the words and enjoy the minutes that it takes to make one. Because I have no deliberate structure while I write, it might happen that I sometimes make a sentence that sounds deep when I reread it. One of these sentences was the “am I my own imitation” from the poem above. I can’t recall if a started with a goal of where to go with that sentence or that I first wrote it down and then decided what the meaning could be.

Writing, and speaking to, is a strange thing if you think about it. How and where do the words you say come from, and why in that particular order? If I take speaking as an example, its a little clearer with that compared to writing. If you speak you don’t think about every word you are going to say, a lot of what you say seems to come out of your mouth automatically. You don’t make your sentences like: say hi…HI, say tree..no…how..HOW, say is…are…yes are…ARE…is it you or your?…you…YOU: you just say: Hi, how are you. This simple example hopefully shows that you most of the time speak without thinking, about speaking. This process goes automatically, probably because you use it so much in your life, but more complex sentences form also as if you had spoken them before, and only when you forgot a specific word or try to explain a complex subject you might struggle. The point what I want to make is that you speak with little thought besides the direction you want to go (and even that can be guided by your habits). With writing it is most of the time the same, the difference is that you can easier go back and change the way you want to say things.

With poetry, or art in general, there is some kind of “force” that steers the process. I think it is similar to what I wrote above, your words flow in conversation but also when you write a poem or paint or take a picture. Once the first sentences are written you can of course change words and undo what came out automatically. I think that great poets and artists know how to balance that process of “inspiration” and editing. I have the inspiration, I’ve been born with it, but I lack the editing skills and deeper knowledge of the words that I can choose from a language that is not my own.

But I like that last sentence even though the words written before it don’t really clarify it.