Martin, I am not complaining! Some things that happened to me, I had no control over, sure, but many things I did, so if it happened to me, I must have been at least susceptible to the event, and consider myself responsible, I could have done other things. If things didn't go the way I want them to go, I have myself to blame in good part. If someone else is to blame, there's nothing I can do myself, other than perhaps take them out. If I am to blame, I have the choice of doing something different. I don't regret anything much, OK some things I regret, but I don't regret very much.
I don't want to be part of any "movement" other than what I create myself, I just want to live my life the way I choose to live it, regardless of what other people happen to think about my interests. My life went really well, until I got a mass of people interfering with my life. I got robbed of twenty years of my life, and all I want to do now most of all, is just do my own things, you know. Often I feel like the song says, "whatever gets you through your life, it's OK". They can rob me much more than I have been, because there is little left to steal. Plus, I become lethal myself. You can't "make" social change or revolutions. They just happen, and often they happen at the moment when nobody was expecting them. Just read a lot of spy stories about revolutions, and you will get the idea. What you can do, is defend certain needs, concerns or interests, or you can unite people in some way around certain needs, concerns and interests. You can try to be in the vanguard (or the rearguard) of the society in which you live. You can try to live the way you want to live, no matter what, and that can be a big challenge already. You can build very extensive social networks around the world. You can try to set a good example in your own area of expertise or competency. You can try writing something new and original about topics of theory, or provide a good summary of them etc. The problem with a lot of Leftists is that they think they are the authority who will define what the answer is, what the problem is, how you should look at things, what it all means. According to them, you have to see it this way, or you have to see it that way. They want to make you feel like you have a christian duty, a obligation, to be a footsoldier in their socialist army. But I am not really interested in that, I am not interested in "having answers in search of a question to which they are an answer". That is a monologue, not a dialogue. I am interested in discovering new and different things, and looking at the same sort of things from a different angle. I am interested in solving my own problems, finding answers to my own questions, studying and writing about my own topics. No doubt this doesn't sound spectacular, but I don't aim to be spectacular. I could have been spectacular I suppose, but I just got too many people blocking my path to achievement. Who knows, though, you can still achieve a lot even if you are in your fifties. You might not be the best, but you can be good. It's just that it's best not to talk about what you are going to do, but do it. Jurriaan _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
