Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Value-Unladen Statements

I've been accused of making too many plain statements before - just statements of fact without any attachment of the personal value I place on them. I don't know if that's such a bad thing. Of course some people want to know why it's important enough to me to notice it. But for me it is often just a piece of information that is merely awaiting connection to the rest of the sea of bits of information floating around in my head. So at the moment of utterance, it is in a sort of holding area, a waiting lounge, while the immigration officers deal with the other potentail entrants (or just go off for a HKB*). Or sometimes it is already connected but to go over the connections would be very tedious for me.

So my value-unladen statement today is:
I have just visited http://www.clinical-depression.co.uk/


*hoong kee break - otherwise commonly known as a smoke or cigarette break.

How To Get Out Of Holes

I'm thinking of the idea of being stuck in a hole, and how to get out of it. Now if this happened in a MOHAA session jumping around should do the trick. Things get trickier if it's IRL, or if it's a depression of the psychological kind.

Which reminds me of a story I read way back in Primary School. There was a man who had a feud with a tigress (the Chinese had plenty of such human-animal interaction stories) and one day he managed to trap the tigress' cubs in a pit. The tigress was in despair until the man suggested in fake good-naturedness that she should throw rocks into the pit so that the cubs could climb out. Of course by the time there were enough rocks in the pit the cubs had been stoned to death.

This is the other side of the motivational tale of the donkey who was in a similar situation who was pelted with mud/earth/soil. According to the tale, the donkey "shook it off and stepped up" every time something was flung at it, and eventually it climbed out of the hole it was in. Moral: every time you get criticised, "shake it off and step up" and you'll become a better person and get ahead in life.

Yeah right. I think that story is just telling you that if you're an ass in a hole the shit that others throw at you is a good thing.

It's about time I learnt from the Great Leaders of my country and starting throwing grenades at people who throw stones at me. Them people didn't get ahead by shaking things off. They got ahead by getting even, and more. Look at what they did to that SIA pilot some time back.

Anyway, back to my original train of thought. What do people do when they're in a hole? You could try to dig yourself out, but that would run the risk of the hole collapsing in on you and burying you alive. You could shout for help, and pray that you have more friends than enemies. And if your friends do turn up, you have to pray that they're smart enough to throw you a rope rather than earth or worse, stones. Of course if they're too poor to buy a rope and too dimwitted to improvise one then you're pretty much screwed.

So if you're ever in a hole it pays to have rich and smart friends. Which means you don't really need to be clever yourself.

Yes I am in a depression. It's the job. Among other things.

My writing can be so bad sometimes.

Brain working modes, or how my tendency to focus only on one thing at a time impacts the things I do

 What do you know? Another 6 years have passed, and so much more has happened. Today's post is an attempt to capture something I was thi...