Miss Prefect Chapter One

It seemed to Jessica there were two types of people at school. Most were the first type, ambitious, people who seemed they had a grand vision of how their future lives would be. They had a plan. Jessica counted herself in the second group, people who had no idea. Even though academically she did very well, and perhaps others thought she would go on to achieve some success, she herself secretly had no great ambitions, and only hoped that life would not be too difficult.

It was somewhat of a mystery, even to Jessica herself, how her life had ended up as it had. By the age of seventeen, she had already lived in three countries, gained a stepmother and a stepfather, and known friends in her early childhood whom she realized she would probably never see again. Though she had no real conception of her future self when she was younger, she did not expect so much to have changed, that life would be so unpredictable.

Sometimes she envied other girls at school, whose parents hadn’t divorced, who seemed they came from happy, stable families. She felt her own parents’ unhappy marriages had killed any notions of romantic love she might have had. Unfairly or not, she often judged other girls as hopelessly naive when they talked of boys and love and marriage.

However, she had become good friends with Michael, who was now Head Boy, the year before. She herself had been made a school prefect, much to her own surprise, for she wasn’t good at games and didn’t really participate in many extracurricular activities, which seemed to be prerequisites.

The school was originally a boys’ boarding school in Victorian times. As it had expanded, it had come to admit day pupils, and finally, girls. Her father had thought it best, as the family disintegrated, that she become a boarder and that school would provide a stability he could not give her.

It was the first night back. Now early September, it still seemed summer but the beech leaves outside were already beginning to change to golden brown. Classes did not start until the next day but boarders were due back early. Jessica had arrived around three in the afternoon. Her father was a maniac about always being early and therefore Jessica was always one of the first to arrive back at school. She had walked to her new room and felt the usual sadness. This would pass once everyone had arrived.

As a House Prefect, she was expected to attend the new juniors’ tea at the Housemistress’s house at half past four. These were the Year 9 girls who would be entering the House this year. Jessica had finished unpacking and was about to make her way to the Housemistress’s wing when there was a rapid knocking on the door and it burst open.

RAINFEEDER

The Path Untaken

“”So I don’t think I’ll do it.  I’m not going ahead with it.  I guess one day I may regret it, but, you know, I’m scared.”

“It doesn’t feel quite right?”

“No.  It’s not like I’m sure it won’t work out.  I mean it could.  I could be missing an opportunity.  I know that.  But I’m afraid it will become too complicated, it won’t be what I expected, or it could just go wrong, simply.  Then how would I get myself out of what could be a huge mess?”

“You think it sounds too good to be true?  In theory, if all went well…”

“That’s exactly it.  Everything, A, B and C, et cetera, would all have to work out, for it to happen, for it to be successful, for it to be a truly good idea for me to do!  I don’t have that confidence.  And anyway, it’s not a big deal if I don’t do it.”

“Well, you’re right.  It’s always more complicated than you think at first.  One thing leads to another.  If you get into a mess, it’s not always easy to get out of it.  This could be the right move.”

“The right non-move!  A correct decision not to act.  The right omission even.”

“Nobody would blame you.  There will be other choices.  You have options.”

“Right.  Case closed.  But I will wonder what would have happened.  Do you know what I mean?  It’s like there are these huge potentials that exist, these possibilities, at certain moments.  Not all the time but every once in a while.  And it could really go, like, either way, or one of three ways maybe.  It’s completely real that any one of these possibilities that you’re actually thinking of could happen.  You can sort of feel it, if you know what I mean.”

“That’s intense.  But yeah, I know what you mean.  I think it’s only been like that, or seemed like that, a few times in my life.  It’s not easy, I know.  The flip side is that sometimes it seems you have no real choice how your life goes.  I guess it’s because you try to stay on an even keel.”

“That’s because you’re scared, like me.”

“Well, I think as you get older you’re more aware of how things work, you know, risk…”

“Right!  Better risk assessment!  Better at gauging the process.”

“Something like that.  What I thought as a teenager wasn’t quite accurate.  In some ways, I was kind of overly pessimistic, but you know it didn’t turn out that bad.  Which is a relief!”

“I don’t think fate has finished dealing its hand yet.  I get this overriding sense that because things were such a way in the beginning, and like nobody knew what was going on, everything was happening so fast, certain things had to happen and there was no control.  But as we get older and wiser, we get more control.”

“So accidents don’t have to happen.  I’m hopeful.”

“So am I.  Me too.”

RAINFEEDER

An Idea Lost?

“So I was thinking about something, having these urgent thoughts, and suddenly I had this idea.  But then it’s like I don’t know what happened.  I probably thought something like I’ll think about it later, or something.  Anyway, my thoughts got sidetracked.  And a minute later, I’m thinking to myself, well, what was that idea?  I had forgotten it.  You know then I tried to go back to what I was thinking before that hoping that the idea would follow in a logical sequence.  But it didn’t.”

“I know.  It happens to me too.  I think it happens to everyone.  I’m sure it does.  It’s frustrating.”

“It’s very frustrating.  It’s almost scary, that you could lose what was a part of your mind at one moment, what you were completely focused on for a split second, and then, like less than twenty seconds later, it’s gone.  It’s died on you!”

“It happens when you think too much, I think.  Have you been pulling allnighters again?  Like when you’re up all night, thinking about this and that, or everything, really.  You must have some idea of what the idea was about?”

“I do, I guess… actually no, not really.  It’s like waking up from a dream.  The memory fades rapidly and all you’re left with is an impression of what it was about, or almost nothing.  I know I was thinking about some kind of solution to a problem.  I think the idea was something specific.”

“Thoughts float up and down, up into the consciousness and then back down to the subconscious or unconscious.  They come back, and you think, ah, I recognize that thought, I’ve had it before, it’s come back to me!  Maybe the idea came back to you but you didn’t recognize it as the idea?”

“I don’t know, not for sure.  I don’t think it came back.  I have the sad feeling it’s lost forever.”

“Well, I’m not sure about that.  Maybe the particular context is gone, of that time and place, when and where you had that thought, but perhaps it will come up again in another form.  Whether it ever occurs to you, if it repeats, that that was the idea you forgot is another question.”

“But it’s like, what if the idea was a great idea?  And even if I remember what it was, eventually, I’ve lost all this time!  What if I can never have it again?”

“That’s pessimistic.  Usually, an idea like that is something you suddenly think of that maybe you want to look up, something you don’t know much about perhaps.  You have a curious mind, obviously.  I bet you’re always looking things up.”

“Yeah, maybe, but it feels like it was important, you know, but maybe I’ve exaggerated it, it’s true.”

“I don’t think thinking is that random, not really.  There are things you definitely want to think about and any urgency must logically be about that, things that you feel you need to think about even.  I know it seems like some stray thought came into your mind, which could have been about anything, and then just blew away.  Imagine, if you will, a deterministic flow chart of your thinking.  There must be a certain cause and effect going on.”

“Wow.  I don’t think anyone could monitor their thinking completely.  There just isn’t enough time, for a start.  Thinking about your thinking.”

“And anyway, maybe it was a really bad idea?  By forgetting it, you did yourself a favour!  Maybe, the odds are, it wasn’t that important.”

RAINFEEDER

What Does That Mean?

“I have these dreams where I’m back at school.  It’s like I have an alternate life in that world, where I never left school.  And you know how you know what’s going on in the dream or you think you do?”

“Yes.  I’ve never understood it.  Sometimes you have false memories too, as though such and such had happened, but it never did.  It’s only when you wake up you realize it was false.”

“I know.  The nightmare part is when I keep thinking I’m about to have exams and I don’t remember any of the subjects because obviously I haven’t really been studying any of them anymore.”

“You keep dreaming about school.  What does that mean?”

“Somehow school must have impressed itself on my mind.  I haven’t escaped yet.  But it wasn’t as if I weren’t happy at school.  I was.  University was different.  I’d never felt so alone.  Then I had my solipsistic moment there.  I freaked out at the thought of being totally alone.”

“You’re not.”

“Thank you.  But later on, I mean more recently, I’ve read a lot more, I’ve done a lot more thinking.  I mean, how do you define yourself, what alone is, what a person is?  If someone were very different to all the other people, I could see how they could still be alone, how a lesser version of solipsism could still technically hold.”

“It’s true, if you categorize them as a different set completely.  But it’s false, if you make your definition of what a person is wide enough.  There’s a problem with language.  How you define words depends on your world view, everything that’s happened to you.  I think that’s how a lot of arguments start, over a disagreement on what a word means.  Words and ideas have their own space.  I believe they are something tangible, something material even.  It’s funny how language changes though.  How did words pick up their meaning?  Did something happen or was there a thought and the words that are now used to describe it were just present at the time?”

“You mean the world of events or the world of thoughts collided with the world of words?”

“Right.  Those words just appeared or were heard and used as labels or symbols to define them.”

RAINFEEDER

Somewhere in the Middle

“You know, I don’t know.  I’m not sure what the truth is.  What do you think?”

“I think the truth is almost always somewhere in the middle.  The thing is, we like to make these absolute statements when we think, then just question whether they’re true or false, as if it could only be one or the other, right?  Not only that, but we also like to think in extremes.  What I think is, is that more possibilities may apply sometimes, that life is not at the extremes of opinion or whatever, but lies somewhere in the middle.  If you drew a straight line and the two ends represented the extremes and the binary possibilities, it’s natural to assume the truth may be at one end or the other.  What I’m saying is, it’s probably in the middle of the line somewhere.  Or you could even draw a triangle and the truth would be somewhere inside the triangle not at the corners or on the lines.”

“Well give me an example, but not God.  I see how this is true what you are saying in that case, that God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent.  Or whether God exists, of course.  Another example, please!”

“Well what if someone called me a liar.  I have been called a liar before.  But I don’t lie all the time, I usually tell the truth, right?  But I’m sure in that other person’s prejudiced mind is stuck the thought that I am a liar.”

“Time makes the difference.  Everyone lies, if not to other people then to themselves, at some stage.  Hopefully you’ve become more honest!  But people are complex.  Give me another example!”

“Well then there’s the concept of the external world, Earth with billions of real people moving around on the planet, and the extreme alternative is that we’re living in a simulated reality, we’re brains in a vat so to speak, perhaps with very few real people or in the most extreme case only ourselves are real in the simulated worlds we live in.”

“If that were true, then we are not really talking here at all!  One of us must be the computer!  But what is the truth somewhere in the middle here?  Half computer generated, half of nature is real?  Are we all living in the same simulation if that’s true, or our own version?  Are parts of all simulations in common but we each have slightly our own version?”

“You see, the danger in making sweeping statements, what you just said?  The problem is both statements may be somewhat true even if they seem opposed at first.  If the truth were somewhat in the middle, I would hazard a guess that parts of nature, you could say, are “external world” to us, but we are still brains in a vat, that there are at least a few real people in this world but that at least some are simulated characters or non-player characters.  I’ve seen glitches in the programming.”

“I’m trying not to think which is better!  Perhaps what’s called “artificial intelligence” always existed in some basic form.”

“I know.  Very Young Earth Theory.  I’ve been thinking about it.  The computer apparatus for the simulation always existed, at least in part.  The simulation began with a date on the calendar somewhere in the mid-1800′s AD, whereas the real date was only in the late 200′s.  The first real people’s parents on Earth weren’t real, they were simulated characters.”

“That’s very shocking.  I’m afraid I can’t recall.”

RAINFEEDER

On Death, Immortality and Earth

“So I had a kind of panic attack.  You know, I hadn’t slept for days, I was having these wild mood swings, I wasn’t eating at all.  I thought I was dying!  I don’t even know what triggered it, maybe just stress.”

“Are you OK now?  How are you feeling?”

“Yeah, fine now, thanks.  But it was pretty bad.  Now I know what “existential crisis” means!  When you actually believe that death is happening, I mean, totally happening to you, in the most real, metaphysical sense, it’s extremely alarming, to say the least.”

“Hey, I don’t know if it will help, but I believe everyone goes through this, I mean, at some time in their life, their whole existence.  Why do you think there’s so much that’s been written about this, in religion, philosophy?  You’re not the only one.”

“Great!  So it’s completely normal?  I don’t think so.  Haha.  It’s the complete opposite of normal!”

“Believe it or not, it is normal.  Everyone contemplates their own potential mortality.  It’s not something anyone can avoid.”

“But you know, just a few years ago, I was very young, the future seemed… I wouldn’t say certain or assured but things seemed OK, you know?  Maybe I thought I was indestructible.”

“Well, put it this way, you’re a real person, whatever you are made up of, whether it be matter or some immaterial mental substance, it can’t cease to exist.  You can’t make something real become not real, something that exists not exist.  Maybe that sentiment doesn’t deliver the reassurance of immortality and all that that word implies, but there you go…”

“So we live forever, but life may suck sometimes?  What I was thinking at the time when I was having this panic attack, was that there was no God out there that could save me, you know, maybe it’s just me, I am all that I have, and I’m going down.  But what you were saying… if there is no, like, total death, in any case, what room is there for immortality and what does that mean?”

“I think it means more than just living forever, in whatever shape or form.  The word conveys a certain quality in living, in any case.  The ancient Greek gods, if they existed, you know, they had their delicious nectar and ambrosia, their comfy homes probably, their fine dresses and what have you, all decked out in the finest raiment, no doubt!  And you know, they didn’t really have to work…”

“Was the world really like that once?”

“Well I don’t know if it was in this world, if they even lived, or are still living in, maybe in an alternate dimension, I don’t know.  You know, you have the believers in evolution that the Earth, in this dimension, is billions of years old perhaps and on the other side, you have the creationists saying it’s thousands of years old only.  You want to know what I think?  I think they both may be far too secure that the world, and the universe, and this even links back to your being scared of death, that everything is old and established now, by at least thousands of years, right?  Well, it occurred to me, what if, speaking as someone who is at least mildly schizo at the best of times, what if the world, I mean Earth, is actually to some extent, in parts maybe, born out of a whole group schizophrenic hallucination, and that the universe is actually only, I don’t know, only like 440 years old, Earth really began in the 1800′s suddenly, and everyone is still really young?  Of course, that’s just a theory, I could be completely delusional, but there it is.  Maybe if someone really knew, they could tell me, it would be good to know.”

“Very, very young Earth theory.  I’m just glad you didn’t say it began with my birth on Earth and you’re not real and I’m living in a solipsistic nightmare!”

“No.  Definitely, you are not alone.  I guarantee that.”

RAINFEEDER

The Crisis of Free Will

“I made a decision finally.”

“Good.  Use what free will you have!”

“Well, it wasn’t easy.  I drew up a whole list of reasons for and against, you know, pros and cons.  I couldn’t make up my mind.  All this thinking, all night!”

“You didn’t get any sleep?”

“A little, but even when I was asleep, you know, it seemed I was still thinking about it.”

“Were there a lot of reasons for?”

“Yes, but without going into detail it’s kind of they all depend on something happening, which hopefully will happen, but I can’t control.  If it happens, then great, all the other reasons come into play and it means certain things must be true and it’s maybe a wonderful idea.  But I’m depending on other people, so I still have to wait.”

“Yeah.  You’ve got some kind of logic going on there.  But it’s all predicated on the one condition being true?”

“Yes.  If it’s false, if it doesn’t happen, then my whole argument fails, and back to the drawing board.  You mentioned free will.  I don’t feel as though I have a lot of free will.  There are only so many possibilities, they’re quite limited.”

“Well, who does have much choice?  I mean, did I choose to be born?  My options are just as limited, but I like to think I have a certain amount of free will, even if it’s just a tiny bit.”

“Define free will!”

“OK.  I’ll use the words ‘could’ and ‘can’.  Out of all the things that could happen, I, as a person of free will, can do any one of them.  I have the choice.”

“All right, but you say ‘person’.  What’s a person?  You haven’t defined what a person is.”

“That’s pedantic.  I don’t know.  It’s the sum total of what makes me, I guess, here in this space of mine.  Anyway, as the professor says, if an academic doesn’t really understand a relationship, he just adds another variable to the formula.  So I’ve added another word.”

“Anyway, whether we have free will or not, you know, whether a person is more than the product of some mechanical process, maybe it’s not even relevant.  We all have to make decisions.  So maybe the emphasis is misplaced.”

“What does that mean?”

“What I mean is, it can’t be argued against that we don’t make any decisions.  Even if some deterministic universe existed, the decision is still real.  What’s important is that we make the right decisions, don’t you think?  That’s why I get so stressed out.”

“Perhaps a decision is some kind of electronic act?  If you could see it all happen, like on a screen, three, maybe four possible choices branching out, and the electricity or whatever it is, flows towards the one with least resistance, something like that?”

“Maybe.  Like a whole navigation display in a science fiction ship.  You’re the ship.  It’s weaving through a network of tunnels or an asteroid field on autopilot.  Every turn is another decision.  Hope it doesn’t crash and explode.”

“Well you’ve depersonalized it all completely.  But a person wants certain things from life, right?  Maybe that’s determined right from the get go and that’s fixed even.  If they had the opportunity, they would do it.  But I’m not someone who wants, like everything, so technically that limits what free will I have.”

“You’re saying if you wanted a lot your choices would be more?  There would be more free will?  But there’s also the number of opportunities.”

“But opportunity is a factor, yes.”

“I think in the end, it all depends on how you define free will, how you define your terms, and we don’t know everything, so everything is a little vague, poorly defined.”

RAINFEEDER

Began in a Dream

“I was three years old.  It was summer.  I was in a plane with my father and sister beside me.  That was my first memory of this lifetime.  Before that there were just dreams.  I guess you could say that’s how my life began here.  It’s questioned why is it people don’t remember anything of the first few years.  This may sound a little crazy, because I don’t see it anywhere, but I think the simple answer may be because those years as a baby, before I was three, before I was in that plane, they just didn’t happen!  I wasn’t really born when it says on my passport, that actually my true birth here on Earth was in that plane!”

“Well, maybe, but that’s a little… what’s the word, unconventional, unorthodox opinion?”

“Right.”

“Did you wake up in the plane?”

“Not exactly wake up as you usually do.  I think the dream before just became more and more vivid.  I woke up in the dream.”

“But what does that mean?  All those soulless babies being born!”

“Yeah.  I mean, nobody’s that helpless or unable to talk right?”

“Are we actually living in the dream world, all the time?  A more awake version?”

“I don’t know.  I can only guess that is how it will probably end though, in another dream.  Dreams are the paths to other worlds.”

RAINFEEDER

A Conversation on Life

“So I think the novelty of life wears off sometime in your late thirties.  You become a little jaded.  I mean, when I was in my twenties, life still seemed new to me, anything could happen, in the sense there were a lot of possibilities, I guess.  I wasn’t sure which way things were going to go.”

“I know.  Too many choices to make.”

“I think one of the problems is I didn’t question things enough.  It’s like you accept so much information from others when you are young, without giving it a lot of thought.  Now I’m older and hopefully wiser, I find myself questioning a lot of things, like what’s real and what’s not, what might be real.”

“Yes.  It’s a shock when something you thought was real when you were a kid turns out to be completely false, like Santa Claus.  I think a lot of people are not prepared to be totally disillusioned as they get older.  It’s a loss of innocence.”

“It’s about perception and how it changes.  You can’t go back to what you thought when you were a kid, because some of that was just crazy.”

“Like Earth is such a confusing place.  I mean never mind it might be just a virtual world and I’m talking to a computer program here, real or not, it is so complicated.  I can only see so far ahead, since my life has always been unpredictable.  I’m not one of these people who has a plan and is so confident about life.”

“I think that’s what a midlife crisis is, it’s a form of hubris, pride before the fall.”

“It’s strange.  When you’re a little kid, you only know your parents and siblings, your teachers and the other kids at school.  When you’re grown up though, somehow that’s still going on but life has a whole other context.”

“Hopefully, when I die and leave this Earth, I will have done all the things I wanted to do and figured out what wasn’t for me all along.”

RAINFEEDER

A Conversation on Enough

“…So I really think we’re at a crossroads of some kind, I mean, humanity, the world.  I mean, we know a lot already, right?  Science, the arts, culture.  But we don’t know everything about reality or the universe even.  There’s still a lot more to come hopefully, right?”

“Well, I think there is a feeling, it’s not really me, but it’s a common one perhaps, somehow that almost everything useful or desirable is known already, maybe not concentrated in a single person perhaps, but in sum total, yes.  You know, we know everything we need to know, the universe is doing great, maybe even the universe is immortal, who knows?  We’re all gonna be OK!  There’s no need to worry!”

“What about health, medicine?  We don’t know it all there.  We still have colds, you know, there are serious diseases.”

“I know.  When I was last really ill, I was so dizzy, I thought I was going to die!”

“I mean, and I hope it’s unjustified paranoia, sometimes I still have a dread fear it’s all going to go horribly wrong, not just for me personally but the whole universe is going to end cataclysmically.”

“I hope not.  It would be atrocious.  But sure, I know there’s more.  But do you think we will ever know everything?  I mean, isn’t that being a little too optimistic?  Too fantastical?”

“Maybe not everything, but at least more than now is what I’m saying.”

“Also, don’t you think it could be dangerous?  Too much knowledge?  And is it even possible?  Can the human mind actually comprehend everything?  And words are only such rough tools, which we use, it’s like maybe we need a whole new language or ways to express ideas and truths.”

“Well I’m hopeful, and the language has got us so far, don’t you think?”

“Yes, maybe we need new words at least or something.  Matching old words together in new ways to form new concepts, maybe it’s gone as far as it can go.”

“There’s still mileage in it, I think, new ideas are being created all the time with the language we’re stuck with.  It’s not dead yet.”

“But it seems so much is recycled, it’s almost plagiarism.”

“Well if we came to know everything, eventually everything would be plagiarized, wouldn’t it?  That’s the logical conclusion of the academic cycle.”

“That’s horrible!  We wouldn’t be able to write anything original in the end.”

“That’s a down side I could accept.”

“But about languages, you know I’ve tried to learn other languages, thinking it would help, and it has.  It gives a new perspective on everything.”

“I agree, but it doesn’t have to be learning another language, even thinking about another subject or whole other complex of ideas can help with whatever you are really thinking about or trying to solve.  It keeps the can rolling.”

“The can again?!  There’s an obsession with the can!  It’s about bottlenecks, like in economics.  Everyone’s trying to burst through the bottleneck, but they are really just kicking the can down the line!”

“I don’t know.  In my more hopeful moments, I really sense that maybe it will all work out in the end.”

“I hope so too!”

RAINFEEDER

A Decision Made

Usually there are only a few upheavals in life, starting school, for example, getting a job, moving to another town or another country, getting married and so on.  Thankfully, because if these things happened all the time, we would be completely stressed out, right?  And all big changes involve a major decision, balancing the pros and cons of each possibility.  It isn’t like driving a car to a destination you have to go to, where the immediate decisions all lie in the steering and the speed, where basically there is no free will as such.  If ever there was free will, it is when a momentous life change is about to occur.

Dreading decisions, fear of the future, all stem from the lack of certainty, confusion about potential situations and a lack of good information about what might be.  However, with experience comes a measure of confidence, like a previously uncharted territory becomes familiar.

All the important decisions I’ve made are certainly unforgettable.  This is the course my life took and it’s all I know.  I don’t wonder about if I had made other choices a lot.

RAINFEEDER

The Drift Began

It was a shock to begin with.  It wasn’t being away from home the first time, I had been a boarder at school, but the whole business of having to manage your own life, with classes and studying, and with no direction from anyone else, was a big step.

I started sleeping at odd hours and eating a lot of pizza.  I bought a mini television set and started reading novels and magazines.  I watched the stock market.  I walked around town.  The days drifted by, I wasn’t applying myself to my studies.

From the start, the mathematics classes were pretty hard.  I guess I had picked it because up until now I had been good at it.  You could say it was a mistake.  I realized I wasn’t really interested in the subject.  Now it was getting tough.  The learning was no longer intuitive or easy.  I started to skip lectures and tutorials.  And at the end of the year, I had failed the exams.  I had to borrow someone else’s lecture notes for the summer to revise for the resits.  I am truly grateful he helped me out.  He took a risk.  I don’t know how I would have returned them to him if I had failed again!

If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t pick a subject I wasn’t interested in, no matter how well I did at school.

RAINFEEDER

The Impulsive Decision

Some of our decisions are well thought through and indeed rational.  We have good reasons for doing things and they are true!  However, the rash or impulsive decision may lead us into risky territory and result in regret.

There is a danger in optimism, only imagining the best consequences of our actions, ignoring the risks involved.  I might think that doing such and such a thing or going to a particular place may work out splendidly and blithely disregard the potential danger in the situation.  Sometimes, this can be blamed on a lack of foresight.  I may not know how I would feel or how I would react if I go down an impulsive path.  Sometimes, “first time lucky” may be to blame.  An initial good experience of doing something may lead us to believe it will always work out, and make us overconfident.

The aim of course is to come to a greater understanding of personality and how to counter what may be dangerous flaws in our character!

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An Awakening at Adulthood

The voices came on at twenty.  It was October in 1992, I think.  Until then everything had been normal.  I didn’t question so much or even think about these things.  What was life really on Earth?

Were the voices real?  Were other people really talking to me?  At first they probably weren’t, but later I would accept that some of them were and it was not just the product of an inflamed mind.  After all if we can hear people the conventional way, why not as disembodied voices?

And so the world view of my childhood began to dissolve.  Just as some of the voices were real, so then, could some people not be real?  Were they just generated by some complex computer controlling my life or the product of my subconscious mind?  For the very existence of computer simulations brings it all into question.  Some things, though little in scale, tell us of what is possible on a large scale.  Do we assume the extent of the subconscious, unknown to the conscious mind ordinarily, to be great and that an almost random inflationary process of generation of information, images, sounds and even people can account for the known Earth, itself a virtual or simulated reality?

It leads to the question, how does the subconscious mind work?  Is it shared so that there is a collective subconscious?  Any thought or action not forgotten immediately has an effect on the subconscious, it may mutate, just as all forms of data subconsciously held change or mix with other data, only to resurface to sight and sound or manifest later in some other form.  A simulated reality that is the product of the subconscious mind, is it in any way controllable or even programmable?

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As It Was but No Longer

It was a time much frequented by shock.  I remember thinking on my very first day at university, what am I doing here?  I felt very alone.  Out of place.  Everything was strange to me.  I still have nightmares that I’m still at university and I am truly failing.

According to the lady who had taught me chemistry briefly at school, I was arrogant and thought I knew it all.  She even wrote to that effect in my one of my reports!  Well, as my time at university went on, even if her opinion of me were true, any conviction in my abilities and sense of what I was doing was right, was rapidly withering.  There was a constant haze of fear in me.  And as always, fear leads to anger, a drive to succeed and not fail, except I didn’t know how to succeed exactly.

Disagreements with parents lead to a failure in the parent-child relationship, as everyone knows from watching TV, but surely that is true in any relationship, dismissive behaviour and diverging aims in life and so on wreck everything.  That wasn’t exactly the case with my parents and me, perhaps we were all lacking in knowing what to do, and I watched too much television.

I felt immense pressure at this final stage of school – academic, financial, parental and social.  It’s never been more.  Eventually, you could say I collapsed under it, I guess.  What I learnt in my time there was more about myself than anything else.

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Perspective from an Older Me

At the age of nineteen, I already felt old.  Although to my adolescent mind it was unknown what the future held for me exactly, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to avoid, at any rate.  But glamour is a potent thing.  It certainly brings in the crowd.  That and excitement.  I wanted to travel, to experience things and generally have a good time.

You could say I was impressionable.  I would get excited about something and immediately want to do it, and had a tendency to overlook the risk in anything, always hoping for the best outcome.  I had no idea of the dangers of an addictive personality.  Perhaps I was too easily led and still am, being basically an impulsive creature at heart.

Not to say anything bad has happened or I’ve become too jaded.  I was told balance is important in life, and have found this to be very true.  To the nineteen year old in me, who worried a lot actually, I would say that it all seemed to work out OK in the end, but that life is nothing if not unpredictable.

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What Does that Mean Do People Really Change?

In the sense that you as a person are ever evolving, moving further away from your source at birth, testing the infinity of space and personality so to speak, perhaps not.  Like an elastic band, it is stretched and contorted, but resumes an equilibrium state eventually.  We might hope.  But the question is oft asked and what does that mean?

For outwardly, some people, if not all, really do seem to change.  From animated to depressed, or the reverse, coming out of her shell is heard.  Loss of interest in activities that once fascinated.  A sudden passion for something new.  People are led chiefly by what they think about most and what they do most of the time.  It would be a mistake to assume that someone’s transient obsessions are indeed typical of their true personality.

It may be, if only you could precisely check these things, that there is a core of immutable personality to the soul, immortal vessel that it is, while layers of more changeable aspects exist.  Even allowing for minor variations, there is a basic personality as constant, which means that responses are the same, certain events provoke certain emotional reactions: fear, anger, hate, love, happy, want.  Recognizing tendency is important.

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The Long Embrace

It was a while ago.  I guess back then life was a lot simpler in many ways.  For example, there were less things to do.  For a start, I couldn’t really go anywhere.  I certainly couldn’t drive.  It seemed time had inflated choice beyond what even I could imagine then.  There certainly was no internet then, there were fewer books and so on.  But that doesn’t necessarily mean life is so much better now.

Plus I don’t really remember very well the old times.  I haven’t seen people I knew for decades.  Hopefully it will all work out and there will be a great reunion of sorts, a long embrace with those I once shared my life with.  I only wish my memory were better.

It is odd how time operates, we’re on a journey of some kind, some routes to be repeated endlessly over and over again and some places never to be revisited.  If only we had some kind of road map of life to guide us!

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Life in Transit

J. always liked rainy days.  Not that J. found the sun oppressive.  But there was something about the rain J. found comforting, either indoors in the warm or even out in a downpour.  The rain made J. happy and even J. remembered rain came before water itself.

It was such a day.  In an urban landscape now, the busy visual scene surrounding J., it seemed the world was peaceful in a sense here.  Life had reached and passed a certain juncture.  J. had killed the noise and distractions.

There was not a lot more J. thought.  What would the next dozen or so years hold?  When would J. return?

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Accessory to Personal Taste

The various things needed for the capable person, the business man or woman, the traveller, the parent, the leader.  Fitting out this large person, making it whole and ready, much business thrives on this.  The wardrobe for the business man, suitable for all weather, all occasions, for example.

Can it speak?  What should one say?  Abroad, the dialogue required for business and social interaction.  Business?  Here is me.  Hear what I have to say.

Along the life path, lies many interesting places and people you cannot have predicted you would meet.  People that have added value, and those that you will not forget easily.

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Globalization and Specialization

Coming from the moneyed world he was in, well travelled and always concerned with the local scene, he realized later to establish himself as a man of value, specialization of knowledge and skills was a economic requirement, if not a social one.  Only travel could have made him understand this, rapid globalization and a growing web of connections meant that, to avoid the competitive nature of business, he needed something of trade value in himself and his line of business.

He had been to many commercial cities of the world and noticed, both in others and himself, the growing haze of globalization and standardization in culture and values.  Salesmen, hustlers, associates in the professions and retail, all obsessed with merchandise of true value and making business connections with those they regarded.

There were in those years, many incidents, modern events or even social progress, curiosity met with shock.

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The Seven Year Cycle

At school, he truly started studying for GCSE at age 14.  By 21 he should have completed university.  At age 7, something happened in a family way, also around 28.

Is this truly relevant?  Is there some mystic cycle of seven years previously undebated?

There is a lack of continuity in life.  Often, a sudden change means plans are cast aside, and you have to adhere to a new rhythm of life.

Etched in memory, 7 and 14, he wonders what will happen around the age of 42.

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Later Schizophrenia: Break from the Normal

Posit some that are later diagnosed schizophrenic in a clinical setting are truly individuals whose minds are inherently so, that is, this outbreak is not the first to occur, long after birth or long after time zero itself.

It is well known schizophrenia is associated with excitation of the senses.  You hear all sorts of speech in multiple locations.  You see simply more – text shimmering on the walls and floor and figures moving around.  What was once ordered and stable has become random and unstable and highly amped up.  Imaginary figures appear, imaginary people and their speech.  Of course, however, there are matters of degree and scale.  What is the natural level of schizophrenia?

At some point in time, the world or rather the world of the individual, had become very ordered, perhaps unnaturally so.  Certain things happened, certain things did not, and there was a stable, you might say scientific system in place.  Things had become subdued.  Then, at a later stage, something happened, either consciously or not, which upset the balance and led the break from the normal state that had existed for years and marked the return to the individual’s perhaps natural state of schizophrenia.

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A Way Away

J. knew only too well.  In her bedroom, she sat at her desk looking out of the window.  The familiar surroundings comforted her but this was getting old.  She was usually a patient person but now was the time to act.

Despite all the things going on, all she could think about was this person.  How her life had changed!  It was strange how years could go by without thinking about someone until they returned like that.

J. often wondered if she was losing her mind.  Not everything she questioned could be real, surely.  Old people, new people in her life.

So J. went out.  She wanted to read something, to learn something that might help.  What was in her mind she couldn’t talk about.  She wanted release and some kind of peace that was so elusive.

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More for After

How did it all begin?  It was the summer after the first year.  Everyone had failed their exams.  Some of the faces were familiar.  I guess everyone should have been depressed but it was summer and the town was beautiful now, a big change from the winter, when the days were so short and the weather so cold all you really wanted to do was lie in bed and sleep rather than go to some tutorial in the afternoon.  There was a mood of excitement, now we had the place to ourselves, the dining hall was mostly empty at meal times, so much less intimidating now than at term time.  I dreaded going there in the evening and sitting alone most of the time at a table to myself.  They were all in their various social groups and I didn’t belong.

That was the summer.  I think everyone passed their resits.  I would bump into other people I met then now and again.  Perhaps we didn’t have a lot in common other than we all failed our first year exams.  What if we had all passed?  We would never have met.

In the second year I dropped that subject I failed.  The thing is, I used to be really good at it and I remember the post exam inquiry with the heads of department was extremely uncomfortable.  That was the first charge they laid against me.

But I learned from the experience.  I had changed before school started.  The summer before the first year, I had begun dreading it.  Failing meant that, for the first time, I had suffered a setback.  I only needed to be more careful with my choices.

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Schizophrenia Developing

J. was walking.  What just happened?  J. didn’t know.  She stopped in her stride.

J. looked back.  A house appeared.  Was it there before?  Who knew the answer?  Days later, J. was reading from the press.  It was a newspaper.  It seemed very formal.  And blinked.  And read the sentence again.  Did it just change?  The text made a certain amount of sense.  The words impacted on her thoughts.

J. walked along the same way again.  She noticed more houses whereas before there seemed to be none.  She heard speech.  She saw shadowy images of things in the distance and nearby.

Many years later had numbed her mind to influences which once startled.  Reading became easy and familiar, houses had consolidated to towns and cities, experiences once shocking had become daily.

What else was there?

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The Return

J. had decided.  It was not an easy decision but one that had to be made.  The past few weeks had seen very little happen but were filled with self doubt and frustration.

It was a moment to be rational, those urges and impulsive acts had to be contained.  There were only a few options of what to do, could the recent past be dismissed entirely?  Was it all an illusion?  To return things back to normal as they were in the far past, that was the plan.

Knowing what she knew, could J. make the right decision?  A flawed choice would mean ruin perhaps or delay at best.  Though physically functioning well enough, her thoughts had turned to fear, the course of her life seemed to be in trouble.

J. was naturally impulsive, this pressure she wasn’t used to, and though the period was brief, it marked a change in her thoughts.

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A Personal Journey at School

As a junior, most of the time was spent pleasing others, the house prefects, the housemaster, matron, the other boys.  It was compulsory to join in many activities so there was little time spent alone.  To be a selfish boy or girl would be so socially atrocious a crime that many panicked in their private moments.  How to adjust to life at school?

Later on, as a senior, this became hard in another way.  There was more freedom, the grownups stopped questioning your every act and move and the future seemed limitless.  What should I concentrate on?  Having conformed for years, what do I truly want?

From not knowing quite what to say at entry, talking became a ritualized, almost lazy affair, reporting on that, an opinion, jealous gossip about people not present.  The mood was so charged that life outside school seemed unreal.

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Expectations at School

They were full of hope.  At age sixteen or seventeen, the good life seemed to be there.  Their parents were encouraging and happy for them, imagination of success for their children.

As for themselves, their expectations were often different in some ways.  Many just hoped for academic success, with little thought about what they would become by age forty.  Would they continue like their parents who each had their own fears about life?  Often in one it was education itself.

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Sixteen at School

It was a fresh start, those exams were over, the next were over a year away.  Choices had already been made.  It was not really talked about a lot but what kind of scholar you were had to be decided on.  Were there random choices for these last two years?  Interest over ability?  Most were too insecure to follow interest.

He chose subjects like many others before him.  She chose recommended subjects also.  They were not in the same classes.  They had an entirely different experience academically.  They saw each other outside classes though.

Perhaps they were the best choices at the time.  They certainly had been prepared for them.  In his case, he chose ability over interest.

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An Invitation to Schizophrenia

Life seemed so good, until it happened.  An upset, a disturbance and then a wave of paranoia.  What seemed real for years came into question.  Thoughts became lucid about many things, what was once a nebulous area became clear.  Things would never seem the same again.

Life halted in so many ways.  People were curious, that was apparent.  Bring them round into normality.  How could someone so alone become such a social delight?  Invitations here, a calling there.  There is somewhere new, invite the schizophrenic, tour the buildings, sample the goods.  Make things happen, please.

Is it just altered perception, generating reality or providing power for others to imagine?

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The First Two Weeks at School

He didn’t know what to expect.  The past year had been uncertain.  Today the train from London was uneventful.  He had already visited the school a few days before but the shock began when he entered the grounds on this the first day.  He had to adjust rapidly to life here.

The other boys were quite polite.  The scale of this world was large.  Everything happened within the school, there was no need to go out at all it seemed and no pause until fixed weekend exeat.

He was the subject of some curiosity, though after a few days he had already answered most of their questions.  Where are you from?  You sound different.  It was only after two weeks that he believed he had settled in.

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One Time

Only this time he was fully prepared to learn.  He knew an effort was required now.  Learning needs patience.

To memorize theory is one thing, to use it another.  Perhaps he was judged overconfident in his academic ability by some.  He thought himself overrated by others.  In these few weeks, he needed to compile the subject and perform in the exam.

Why was it like that?  Little motivation until the few weeks before and during the exam period.  There was complacency perhaps, not just in him but in others as well.  There was always pressure at school to conform, not to try too hard and not too little.

In these weeks however, the pressure was on.

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The Last Term at School

It was lunch period at school.  Everyone was thinking about the exams this June.  It was to be a nervous summer.  School was coming to an end.

He was going back into the main building.  He probably had already eaten.  His mind was on the future.  He was about to walk down the steps inside when she appeared.  They said hi to each other.

He was aware that although successful now, his life soon would be different.  He did not know much about her life now certainly.  Would they meet again?  There was the childhood elsewhere, his family, it was altogether an alternative situation from hers.

Here they were together, once, how things would change after this time at school, they did not know.

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Dreams Came

J. began to dream.  Another place, another house, the presence of others filled these dreams.  J. spent much of the day time when she was awake wondering about this.  The mood of the dream world was still there when she woke up.

J. thought her life quiet compared to what was going on in the dreams.  It was a whole other life.  J. told people about them.  J. found out she was the only one who had these dreams.

J. sensed their power, the hold they had on her life and just knew things were about to change soon.

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The First Term at School

C. was nervous.  The nervousness had begun in August.  The summer days were beautiful, people were everywhere, but C.’s world was about to change.  Her parents couldn’t stop talking about it, to themselves and to their friends and relatives.  C. was going to be a success.  She was making her way in the world.

C. had heard about this school for years.  Perhaps the pupils there already were little aware of how much gossip there was.  Would she fit in?  Would she make any friends there?  C. spent hours imagining wonderful conversations, the friendships she would make, and the progress in her studies.

The first day of term was filled with new names and faces.  Others were not shy of approaching her and she found neither was she.  She sat next to her soon to be best friend, also new.  They had much in common.

After a few weeks, she felt comfortable at school.  However she was unprepared for the pressure, both academic and social.  It seemed there were stars, ready and willing to speak out in class.  Ambition was clear in many of the people here.  The boarders were in an almost separate world, few of them dared make links with the day pupils outside the classroom or the playing fields.  They knew each other and to be fair, they spent most of their time outside the classroom with each other.

By the end of term, C. was nervous again.  Her report was not going to be as good as she hoped, she hoped her parents were understanding.  C. had run out of things to say to the other girls, she spent much of her time at school with her best friend.  They were full of questions about C.  How was she coping?  What did she do outside of school?  Did she speak to a certain boy?

The last day C. dreaded.  This term was not easy in many ways.  She hoped the next term would be better.

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Magical Schizophrenic Wonderland

Be warned…

A schizophrenic trip is very, very dangerous, there are risks, a lot of risks!

Buildings appear, people appear and disappear, things seem odd.  Maps change in an instant, text reassembles itself, objects are found in other positions, in a blink of an eye everything can seem different.

Who have I met?  Who have I interacted with?  Am I alone in this?  My thoughts question my actions.

My senses go wild, I change, what to believe?  What is to become of me?  How will I solve my problems?

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An Incident

J. was relieved.  The tension was over.  Something had come through.  The waiting had gone on for hours.  Things were just beginning.  She went out.

Outside, it was a change, and J.’s thoughts turned to happy.  She saw people, couples mostly and a group in the distance.  A single girl or woman made the approach.  A question.  J. was only too happy to respond.

Later at home, J. was even more happy, even though the foul mood of the morning had reinstated itself.  J. caught herself wondering about her capacity to deal with the situation.  The thoughts of the morning had become rather stale.  J. only knew to think again and again about it.

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A Day at School

More about C.  One day she arrived almost late.  Her parents were preoccupied that morning.  Her father was worried about money and his job.  C. wondered about them but they said nothing.  She questioned much about their lives but they were either distracted or just not that interested themselves.  Their focus was on C.

With her best friend at school, conversation centred around particular people at school, the future and how they were doing in their subjects.  They were often seen walking around school together.  What did they talk about?  Boys hoped they were nice, girls thought they were obsessed with themselves.  People thought about them in the same way, when they thought of one they thought about the other.  What would become of them?

Always aware that this was only for two years, C. wished to use her time wisely at school.  C. was excited.  It was a time when the best things seemed likely.

The afternoon was a time for reflection on the day.  The first period after lunch was quiet.  C. found it hard to concentrate on the lesson.  The day was slipping away from her.  By the end of the last period, C. could only think of tomorrow.

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A Story: Afraid of the Dark?

Someone once asked J., “Are you afraid of the dark?”  J. replied, “only sometimes!”  Well it was dark that night, no stars, no moon, and howling with wind outside.  To J. that was a signal.  So J. went out, on impulse, ready to hasten the inevitable.  It was different outside, the mood indoors had been calm.

There were shadowy figures, were they people?  No, only trees.  Thinking to herself that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, she paused.  But then J. said to herself, “Why am I scared of the dark?”  Perhaps she owed that much to find out.  Lightning struck.  It started to rain hard.  J. dealt with this by walking faster.

Suddenly a human figure appeared, the same person who asked J. about being afraid of the dark!  Could it be coincidence?  It was hardly the arena for further conversation, a rocky path in the middle of nowhere.  They exchanged greetings and left it at that.  It struck J. as strange, this outing, did it depend on that question?  It all stemmed from shrieks and noises heard in the night.  People calling out.

Later, they met again.  J. wanted to bring up that night, but the conversation drifted away from there.  J. was bemused.  Something else was a big deal now.  It was as if the past month hadn’t even happened.

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Person to Person

J. knew lots of people, really.  She must have met thousands over the years.  Those closest to her thought about her a lot.  The network that was structured around her developed and expanded in a haphazard way.  Hearsay and gossip was all the rage.  J. was at the centre of things and people were linked to her by those stems, those ties surrounding her.

Further away from her, people knew her by reputation.  J. was willful, some might even say arrogant.  Her attitude was one of easy come and easy go.  She missed meetings, ignored some people, indeed sometimes she was nowhere to be found.  To some she seemed oddly lacking in confidence, they couldn’t understand or simply were not even aware of her own insecurities.  They demanded much from J. and often she disappointed.  The foul mood prevented many things from happening in all honesty and poor communication could always be blamed.

From the first day, J. always seemed in control of her own destiny.  In a wave of meetings early on she introduced people to each other and somehow managed to maintain links between very different types.  J. advanced ideas, people always wanted to know what she thought of something or someone for that matter.  She seemed to know what to say and when to say it.

People liked to imagine her living quietly somewhere.  Often this was true.  But she was hardly alone.  Someone like that never is.

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Immortality Review

Immortality is a theme in life and there are many questions:

What are the best experiences?  What are the ways to health?  What will last forever in people’s minds?  Is life just a game?  Who wants to be a millionaire?  Is there an end of time?  Planning and interdistance?  How does the switch affect diurnal patterns?  Algorithms and programming?  How to communicate?  High school forever?

Just a few to begin with!

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Life at School

I know this girl, I’ll call her C., entered this school at age sixteen, little prepared for the shock of the new, everything and everyone different from her life at home previously and the people she knew before from her old school.

Her parents gave in to her wishes to go to this school, they didn’t know much really, only that her heart was set on it.  Try hard, make friends, they told C.

Some of the kids were astoundingly polished, others not so much, there were goddesses there, with their hair and winning smiles, worshipped by boys and other girls alike.  Then there were the legends of the playing fields, healthy, fit and strong.  The academic ones were rather intimidating, as if they knew all that needed to be known and were destined for success in life.

Life at school before all this was peopled by simpler characters it seemed, she found them hard to remember, blurred by those in her life now.  There were new words: prep, matron, exeat.  Politics of the classroom and the playground became complex.  The unspoken mood, ever present, only made things tense.  Conversation was awkward.  C. never knew quite what to say to people.  Indeed, did people really make life long friends here?

And just as suddenly, it was all over.  Back home after the last summer at school.  C. regretted not what she did do, but rather the things she didn’t do or say.  Many years afterwards, C. found she didn’t remember a lot of faces and names, she had only memories of the few that mattered to her.

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Say Hi!

REM: HI/HELLO, SMILE

THINK: SAY/WHAT/HOW/WHERE/SEE/GOING/MEET/LEAVE/HAPPEN

REM

SAY: HI!

END

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A Human Interest Story: Nineteen Year Old Trying for Immortality

At sixteen, Jamey survived a traumatic accident, quit school and got a job all in the same year.

She says, “I had to grow up quick.”

Two exboyfriends later, she is now single and happy.

“Things didn’t work out, but I am forward looking, confident that life will work out OK.”

She says of her job that it brings an order and stability to her life that was missing in her early childhood.

“Growing up was tough. I had to learn to adjust.”

She enjoys music, movies, reading and writing. “I like to think!”

“When I think of the gods and goddesses I admire, it is their wisdom and goodness that comes to mind.”

“I wasn’t the brightest at school, not the most ambitious, so I guess maybe I wasn’t cut out for a lot of things that other people seek in life.”

“There are a lot of things I’d like to learn, like drive, fly a plane. Maybe I’ll get a car next year, who knows?”

“Everyone I know says I’m just too easy, I’m letting things drift past me, but hey, it’s my life, right?

She says coyly, “take someone I’m thinking of, I go, was it her moves, her looks, was it the sound of her voice? I wanna be just like her!”

Of the worst things that have happened in her short life, she says, “I look back and think, well, at least I learned something from that, at least.”

“I think the next ten years are crucial for me. I need to make something of this life for myself.”

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Millionaire?

Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

A millionaire with means…

Monopoly… Fast, Complicated, Uncertain

Start out with very little, chance upon a property, make some money out of it, and then, if successful, income flows, the money pours in.

…you are rich!

The lesser path to prosperity…

When the opportunity presents itself, you can imagine well what may be, what path it may take you along.  What suggests it?

A millionaire makes connections, functions as a social and economic hub…

the way in which the millionaire came is a source of fascination for all.

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The End of Time

Time itself suggests activity, mood, theme, a realm for things to happen.  When events recur, the new is lost, is this not the end of time?

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