8.8.24 - The simple things

A week has passed - and it has been thus: I go to school, I come home and I am done. I have not played the piano... since school began... BUT i have gone for a run every day, bar the last two. Which has been great. I also went for a swim on Thursday. For half an hour. 

My wrist is still sore and my ankle still not great. I have NOT had an alcohol, although there was an opportunity on Friday night, but I just thought what exactly will this benefit me and how?

School has been great. Most children have able to read, and many able to still do maths. They have their tables and they are great at the four operations. I think we can do the Norse myths for another three weeks and then get into Fractions as soon as possible.

Then we will have the whole year to get Fractions done. I need to get the year's curriculum done and ready for Thursday.

Yesterday I realised that Oisin and I are so similar that it isn't funny. The same complaints, the same ideals, the same wish to be away and doing things... I completely understood where he was coming from. What I didn't understand was just how sensitive things can be and also most importantly how I really really REALLY need to let him go. Oisin has always been my best teacher. The one to always challenge me in such a way that I do learn. He so seldom gets annoyed so when he does I pay attention.

And what I got from it was, well mom, it's over now. I am now an adult and you are not to try and make me think the way in which you think. So, that was that, and I just thought to myself, unless he is standing on a precipice, I am not yanking him back at all. He is going to have to fly... and I am going to have to watch, no matter how nerve wrecking it is. It is what it is.

After, we had dinner at McDonalds and he thankfully said this will be the last McDonalds we have for the rest of the year. I said, well I am down with that cos McDonalds is a genocidal entity and I only eat here cos you boys want to eat here.

So we said goodbye to our last McNugget which truth be told tastes awful. Even the blandest hawker food is better than McDonalds so I don't understand why Singaporeans love it so much. Unfathomable. 

I am back at the laptop again after an entire week. I have had enough to do and I need to get back here. There were all these good intentions to clean the house yesterday and I did get the laundry done, but that was it. I will get the hoovering done today. And then I MUST start getting all those OTHER things done. From Admin to planning.

I do love my life. I do, but I also feel so exhausted by everything despite my wonderful holiday. I really have no excuse. My diet is great. Very little processed food and sugar - well, that's not true, I will cut out sugar now for the next two weeks. I am fit though. Fitter than I've been in years. But I need to keep it up everyday. So I will go for a run after this. 

I was watching Snowpiercer. There are so many Eat the Rich shows now that you sort of wonder if people are doing this to laugh at the poor who watch this. I have really had enough of these stupid shows. Parasite I suppose started it... then there was the Triangle of Sadness and then it just went on endlessly. It's very strange. We know that the rich are miserable. The rich know that they are miserable, and yet there is something about the life of excess which still seems very attractive. In their moronic private jets and their in house cinemas and swimming pools and fleets of motorbikes and cars... they need constant reassurance that they have money and that they have more. It is very bizarre. I do not understand it. Already being born on this planet is a lottery. 

It is a lottery - a lottery which we have won and for some UNKNOWN REASON we have chosen to tell ourselves the story that we were kicked out of paradise as if this wasn't paradise. OK we get sick and ill and we have heartbreak and we suffer a long and exhausting childrearing phase, but we do not need to add to the sum totals of our hardships by doing idiotic things like actually trashing the paradise we have. Oisin was also telling me that these tech and finance bros do biohacking. What is biohacking you may ask? Well, it is taking health and skin care to a new obsession.

I was educated in how much men now care for their skin when my sons spent almost half an hour in Superdrug looking for skin care products. It was quite something.

But biohacking is when people who have TOO MUCH MONEY do utterly pointless things like try to find ways to live to 200. Who wants to live to 200? Or eat dozens of pills a day in order to 'stay healthy'. Or get facial renewal treatment to 'look young'. Look young... have you seen Nicole Kidman's face? I was watching her in The Perfect Couple  recently and I could not focus on the plot whenever she appeared because she looked to unnatural that it was distracting. I understand she wants to continue acting, but people like Maggie Smith and Helen Mirren and Judi Dench still manage to keep acting after they turn 60 without having to resort to such weird measures. But essentially these tech and finance bros, who ironically are intent on blowing up the planet, so our collective health, are focusing on their own personal health. It's insane. 

The solution is very simple. ENJOY being a human being. Change the story. That death is something which, when the time is right, we will return to. Live a life knowing that everyday. Everything we need is generally already here. We just need to stop and appreciate it. And having so so so much more really doesn't make you any happier. Happiness is what happens when you go inward, not outward. Having depths just make your branches stronger.