How to be normal
How to be normal
On the occasions I am invited into other people's homes I always find it interesting to peruse the bookshelves. You can tell a lot about a person by the books they have read or aspire to read.
One of the most interesting people I met last year lived in a town house in Islington and as I climbed the stairs to an upper floor there was a book on each step. He explained that he placed each of the books as a reminder to himself to either read or re-read each of them. Had I been locked in that house for a year I could never had been bored as this escalating library was as rich and diverse as this guy's character.
So, when I received two books this Christmas, I enthusiastically placed them on my stairs.
So, what did the books say about me?
Quite a bit as it turns out.
The first, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius "offers a remarkable series of spiritual reflections and exercises developed as the emperor struggled to understand himself and make sense of the universe."
It appears I am neither the first nor am I alone in trying to make sense of "all this". It turns out the questions we are currently wrestling with are the same as those posed 2000 years ago, although perhaps with a little less emphasis on empire management. I was particularly struck by one short passage which reads:
Failure to read what is happening in another's soul is not easily seen as a cause of unhappiness: but those who fail to attend to the motions of their own soul are necessarily unhappy.
This particular quote has particular relevance to the second passage of this, my first blog of 2019. I had little knowledge of Marcus Aurelius before reading this book and found myself having to re-assess my opinions of the Romans. I felt a little like Reg in the scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian "What have the Romans ever done for us?"
The second book was given to me by the person who probably feels what it is like to be me more than anyone else in the world. The title says it all. How to Appear Normal at Social Events. Apparently my usual tactics of drink heavily or visit the toilet four times an hour (or almost inevitably a combination of both) are not the answer. Marcus Aurelius may have disagreed with the first piece of advice in this book but it gives you a sense of its contents:
Wear a hat. Do not wear a helmet. No helmets.
It is kind of reassuring to know that there are at least two books out there to help me navigate this wonderful, crazy, fucked up, loved up planet we all call home and that the universe managed to co-ordinate the near infinite permutations and probabilities to deliver them both on the same day. Perhaps that was the whole and only point of the universe. Who knows?
So having placed both books on my stairs and taken off my helmet I am now going to venture into a place I have spent so much time studiously avoiding....THE FUTURE...or at least the immediate future....2019.
This may be a long one so to those of you with better things to do, like social events, may I just take this opportunity to wish you a wonderful 2019 and hope you join me in thanking 2018 for the many, often heavily disguised, gifts it brought us all
Go easy, tread lightly, stay free,
Bill