My parents.

This is a lousy scan of pictures of my parents, taken around the last time I actually saw them in 1997, shortly before I left the UK to come to the US. More about them (or more about you, M&D, if you're reading) later in the blog.

This blog is, in part, dedicated to them.

Like many people, I've had a difficult relationship with my parents, just as they had a difficult relationship with themselves, and with each other. But what is the struggle that many of us find ourselves in, in our lives, that relates so fundamentally to our parents? This is something I'll be exploring in this blog.

It struck me a long, long time ago that we live our lives for the time we do, then we die, and our bodies turn to dust or mush, and the memory of our existence fades with time. Even if we're famous, or a king or a queen, or some evil despot or dictator, prophet or saviour, the story of our existence, and the impact of our existence becomes less and less relevant as the truth of it becomes more obscure. We only really have our own lives to look at, and I really do believe that on some spiritual level we choose our parents in order to teach us a lesson.

But these are my parents: I love them. They went through the austerity of the early twentieth century, through World War Two. They did their best, and are on their own paths in life. I've often found it terribly sad that not only did their marriage fail, but that they were unable to have any kind of relationship at all after that. I mean, how sad it is that two people who brought three children into existence became unable to even look at each other, or be in the same room together, more than 30 years later? But that, at the end of the day, is their own business, and perhaps part of their own purpose of existing in this lifetime.

After all, what is a life without lessons? I have mine, and they have theirs. We all have lessons that we have to learn, don't we? There's inevitably at least some level of struggle in our lives. For some, it may seem more than others. I don't know how to answer that.

For me, thought, the internalisation of myself has been the biggest burden. And that, in part, is why I feel compelled to make this blog. Just as I said that we die one day and turn to mush, we also have our lives while we live them. This is my time. My time to exist, have my voice, and say what I need to say to the universe.

I think I must have been about ten years old when I first heard Thoreau's quote The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

I guess that was when I decided that my life would be something more than that.

I mean, we die, don't we? I don't want to keep harking on about that, but we do. What is a life that's lived carefully? Or safely? Or wearing a mask to the world? Or a life that needs to hide, or be ashamed of its existence, its wealth, joy, poverty, anger, sadness, truth, emptiness and such? We're all in the same boat, aren't we? We all have to pop our clogs one day, meet our makers, and all that. No matter whether we're Hitler, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Me, or Mrs. Jones who works at the bakery who saw herself on TV once, we all face the existential crisis at one point, and we all kick the bucket. Every one of us does.

Anyway...on with the blog.