…[A]sk not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. John F. Kennedy, Inaugural address, 20 January 1961 So, now it can be told: having finally escaped the Kafka-esque embrace of the Department of Work and Pensions – they owe me nothing and I owe them nothing – weContinue reading “On leaving the sinking ship”
Tag Archives: coping
On the death of a thousand cuts
For if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated hisContinue reading “On the death of a thousand cuts”
On spring
Nothing is so beautiful as spring. Gerard Manley Hopkins A short one this week, just a reminder that I’m still alive; just as spring is a reminder that the natural world is still alive, despite the best efforts of industrial civilisation to kill it off. This is the vernal equinox, the turning-point when the daysContinue reading “On spring”
On living in the moment
Sometimes it doesn’t matter that there was any time before this time. Sometimes it doesn’t matter that it’s night or day or now or then. Sometimes where you are is enough. It’s not that time stops or that it hasn’t started. This is time. You are here. Jeanette Winterson, The Gap of Time Once uponContinue reading “On living in the moment”
On activism
Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. John Stuart Mill And yet what, as Lenin asked a very long time ago, is to be done? Lenin has been dead for almost a century, of course, but while I wouldn’t claim to be aContinue reading “On activism”
On the atomisation of society
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were;Continue reading “On the atomisation of society”
On the Day of the Dead
Life is wasted on the living. Douglas Adams, The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the \Galaxy This post appears on the first of November: All Saints’ Day, also known as All Hallows (hence Hallowe’en for the previous evening). In Celtic tradition it is Samhain, the mid-point between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. In Latin countriesContinue reading “On the Day of the Dead”
On sanity
Mens sana in corpore sano.(A healthy mind in a healthy body.) Juvenal, Satires, X You need to be quite careful when quoting Roman satirists. My old school, for instance, had a motto taken from the poet Martial: “Quas dederis solas semper habebis opes” – “Only those riches you have given [to others] will be yoursContinue reading “On sanity”
On the approach of winter
For the night is dark and full of terrors. George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings I often use this blog to point out the turning-points of the cycle of the year. Here in the northern hemisphere, we are approaching the autumn equinox, the point when the nights start to be longer than the daysContinue reading “On the approach of winter”
On helplessness
I am so angry with myself because I cannot do what I should like to do, and at such a moment one feels as if one were lying bound hand and foot at the bottom of a deep dark well, utterly helpless. Vincent van Gogh Back in 1902, a pamphlet appeared with the arresting titleContinue reading “On helplessness”
The sound of falling leaves 