Saturday, June 12, 2004
The Simple Joys in Life


Sometimes I'm afraid of posting deeply personal (but non self-incriminatory) thoughts on the web. I feel that if I share it online, it diminishes its value and meaning - doesn't an event/memory/feeling/revelation seem so infintiely special when it stays inside your own head? What I'm saying is that you risk rendering a thought (that you hold dear) useless when you actually put it into words rather than keep it in your heart. For instance, take this piece of dialogue from the movie Gladiator:

MAXIMUS: They fought for YOU and for Rome.

MARCUS: And what is Rome, Maximus?

MAXIMUS: I have seen much of the rest of the world. It is brutal and cruel and dark. Rome is the light.

MARCUS: Yet you have never been there. You have not seen what it has become. I am dying, Maximus. When a man sees his end he wants to know that there has been some purpose to his life. How will the world speak my name in years to come? Will I be known as the philosopher, the warrior, the tyrant. Or will I be the Emperor who gave Rome back her true self? There was once a dream that was Rome, you could only whisper it. [With a snap of his finger.] Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish. It was so fragile and I fear that it will not survive the winter.


The mind can be such a wondeful place to keep your thoughts in - it has no boundaries or limits in which you can replay it over and over; and it remains forever pure and unscathed from crticism or scrutiny by others.

Here's one of the simple things in life that make me happy: Watching (and singing along to) Dora the Explorer with Pauline beside me and Dan (our precious pudgy bundle of happiness) sitting on my lap.

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