A crazy little thing called life

I have been having strange thoughts lately. Not morbid thoughts as such, but thoughts that seem to hover on the fringes of life; at the boundary points of existence between this phenomenal world and  that of the spirits. Anything can start this train of thoughts in motion.

Take last night for example. A pretty ordinary November night. Dark. A slight chill in the air. A dampness engraved on the pavement. A fresh breeze. And autumnal leaves scattered everywhere. I stayed indoors last night. I was watching ‘Predators’ – the new Predator movie. It features a group of people who are parachuted into another world for the sole purpose of being hunted and killed by the predators – for sport. One by one the ‘game’ (people) are brutally hunted and killed, and it got me thinking. Maybe it was late, maybe it was the dark, maybe it was the Rioja Gran Reserve 2001, but it got me asking a very simple question (and you can apply this to real life), what ‘crime’ or what ‘sin’ or what ‘misdeed’ had these people committed that meant they were hunted and killed? Let’s ask the question again:


What ‘crime’ does any hunted animal commit that means it is hunted and brutally killed by its predator?

And in a flash of (I like to call it profound) insight the answer came to me: the crime these people; the crime the zebra, the crime any hunted animal that is killed for sport, or killed for food, has committed is the crime of ‘living’. Yes, just being alive, existing, being here, is enough to condemn you to a brutal death in the jaws of a tiger, or a lion, or (in more fantastical terms), a Predator. Just my existing condemns many other animals to death (for I will use them – their flesh for food, skin for clothes, bones for ivory), but also my existing, my being alive, condemns me to a life of struggle and strife, a life of bother and pain, a life of passions not extinguished, a life of wants not satiated, a life of disease, a life of infirm old age, and finally a life of my death.

I have departed much from the theological beliefs of my forefathers; the religious and the non-religious, who seem to view life as some sort of ‘gift’ and therefore worthy of gratitude from the almighty. I pour scorn on such fanciful ideas. Life is not a gift, but a contracted debt. And the debt was contracted in our begetting – that singular moment when our parents gametes fused in an intoxicated bliss of sexual inebriation and our becoming was made possible. I was never asked if I wanted this! (this being my life). Yet I am expected to show gratitude to not only my parents but also to a god, for something I never asked for, for something that was given me without my asking. Sorry but I can’t do that. The fault is not mine! It is my parents that are to blame! I know. I know. It sounds rather ungrateful of me don't it? I sound like a spoilt child that has been given something wonderful but doesn't want it. But you're only thinking that because from the earliest days from cradle to school we are all schooled that life is a gift, a blessing, something to be grateful of – as if the alternative is some abominable hell!

Let me ask you: what is the alternative to life? Answer: non-existence. What is non-existence like? Easy: the opposite of existence. Just think back to the time before you were born...what do you remember? Exactly. Nothing! You don’t remember it do you? It’s just an emptiness, devoid of any pain, any pleasure, devoid of well....anything and everything. A blissful black ocean of nothingness. And compare this to life. I don’t know about you, but I quite ‘like’ this blissful black ocean of nothingness! But you must remember, if you’re in this black nothingness you don’t actually know you’re in it. What I mean to say is that you can’t imagine this blissful black ocean of nothingness as something that exists, positively – it doesn't. It’s the absence of everything – so you can’t imagine yourself sitting in this all enveloping blackness thinking: ‘Oh, this is rather pleasant! This kind of nothingness!’. It’s not like that. It’s absence. So in affect we are comparing life (a positive thing in the sense that it exists) to non-life (which is a negative thing in the sense of absence).

The more I think about this life, and by life I mean life in general; I don’t mean my own ‘personal’ life (which is rather pleasant by the way – free of worries and obligations and stresses), the more I think about life in general, the more I’ve come to realise that we take it way too seriously! Way, way too seriously. We live too much in it. We are swept away by it, like a raging torrent it sweeps us along, and in trying to remain above the water and not drown we don’t notice the torrent and more importantly, we don’t notice the scenery, the banks on either side, the sky and the stars. And we always seem to be pining for the end; or some imaginable point in the end, where the torrent will cease – and we will finally relax and get some rest from this constant struggling. But there’s only a waterfall at the end and we will all go over it and then it will be all over.

I don’t mean to depress you. I really don't! That is not my intention. I want to emancipate you from the tyranny of life. Unshackle you. Strip away those fetters - those mind forg'd manacles. Rather, I think these thoughts should make you sit up straight and take heed. I keep saying this and I will say it again: life is an amazing experience. That is the acme of my philosophy. Everything else I believe stems from this statement. Life is a one in a quadrillion opportunity. Look out there, look up there, look everywhere, there are more stars in the universe then there are sand grains on earth. This planet of ours is a mere blip in the utter black mind-bogglingly vast ocean of stars that is the universe. Our brains cannot possibly contemplate this vast ocean of stars. Obviously it is you and I who are alive because if we weren’t we wouldn’t be here talking about it! We must never forget how special and utterly maddeningly improbable a thing this life is. Yet we become so accustomed to it – we fail to take notice of it. There are moments (many moments) when I sit on the London Tube looking around me with a little smile on my face, and an all expansive feeling of awe, contentment and compassion welling within me. A sereneness not unlike that on the face of the monks – but my smile comes from a realisation springing from the depths of my being, that nothing matters, nothing is worth our troubling over, all will end one day, just sit back and enjoy the ride!

Just sit back and enjoy the ride. That's practical philosophy for you!

Don’t take heed and don't trouble yourself with the opinions of others – others are little people, and little people have little skulls and in those little skulls are little thoughts and little opinions. For most people have not a true vision of the real nature of existence  - too ‘involved’ they are in their everyday doings and going on's. It takes the mind like that of a child to look out of the window in a train and wonder goggle-eyed at the majesty of the scenery – it takes the mind of a stupid adult to be seated on the same train as that of the child, but instead have their nose stuck in the newspaper, or attached to another adults ears!

Adulthood! Bah humbug! What a waste! To be an adult is not to have a clear picture of life. To be an adult is to be preoccupied with nonsense. It’s children who really see life for what it is. It is children who are truly wise! I am not jesting. I am being deadly earnest and serious. Only children see this world for the massive sensory overload of a playground that it is. That is why they are constantly jumping around, excited, chasing pigeons in train stations, whilst we adults stare up at the train timetable, wondering when we can get on the train. We don't see the pigeons in a train station. But the children do.


And what does one do in a playground?


Explore and have fun.

Why we eat / what is eating?

Why do we eat?

To stay alive?

Yes, but what is it we are doing when we are eating?

What do you mean?

Well, what are we saying when we eat?

Well we're not saying anything! We just see something we like the look of or the smell of, and we say "Mmm, I like the look of that. My belly would like that very much!"

Yes, I know. But let's start from basics. What is 'eating' when looked at from first principles?

First principles? Sorry Wasim, I don't quite understand what you mean?

OK, let me try and explain.

Yeah, I wish you would!

You do want me to explain don't you? You are interested in what 'eating' really is?

Yeah, I suppose so.

Suppose so! Show a little more enthusiasm please!

Yeah, alright then. I would love you to tell me what eating really is and why we do it

Excellent, that's better! Now let me begin:

When I eat something I am in affect saying to the thing that I am about to eat (be this thing dead or alive - though usually it is dead. It would be strange if you started talking to the chicken that you were about to eat. In fact, in today's modern life, you will have no intimate connection with your food at all. It arrives neatly packaged and fresh to your local supermarket)...anyway, I think I am rambling. So where was I? Oh yes! So when you are about to eat something you are in affect saying 'metaphorically' to the thing that you are about to eat:


"Hey you! Mr Fish" (or Mrs Hen, or Mr Cabbage, or Monsieur Frog (if you eat frogs, the French do), or Mr Goat, or Mr Lamb, or Mrs Turnip or any other animal or vegetable you care to mention). What you are saying is this:

"Hey you! I am Mr Wasim and I need carbon atoms to stay alive. Why do I need carbon atoms? Well because carbon is the only element that can form the long chains needed to build me! I need carbon to build my tissues, and to build my proteins, to grow, to repair my body, for energy, for my hormones, for my blood, for my bones, for my skin. I need carbon atoms to fight off infections because my white blood cells need carbon for their metabolic pathways, for their Endoplasmic Reticulum's and for their Golgi Apparatuses, for their cell membranes...in short I need carbon atoms to be me! To be Wasim!"

"But dear Mr Chicken and dear Mrs Lamb and dear Mr Apple and dear Mr Rice and Dr Miss Wheat, the thing is I can't breathe in carbon from the atmosphere. I can breathe in oxygen but not carbon. If I could breathe in carbon then I wouldn't have to eat or catch or hurt or kill you! Oh no! If I could breathe in carbon atoms through the air, through my nostrils, I'd be able to make my own food! But then I'd be called not an animal but a plant. Plants breathe in carbon in the form of carbon dioxide and they use the carbon in carbon dioxide to build their bodies. I, Mr Wasim, can't do that I'm afraid"


So when I eat something I am saying: "Hey you! I need your carbon. And since you are made of carbon, or since you have carbon inside of you, and since I can't make my own, I must have yours! So give it to me!"


The problem with asking would be that if Mr Chicken, or Mrs Cow or Mr Fish could talk then they would respond by saying: "Oh no! You can't have it. It belongs to me! My carbon is mine. Hands off thief!"


But we take it anyway. Don't we?


We kill Mrs Cow, and slaughter Mr Chicken and catch Mr Fish and pull out Mr Potato and we say: "I don't care what you think. I will take if off you whether you like it or not!"

What you and I, and every other animal in the world is doing when it is eating, is stealing each others carbon. We are carbon thieves. We steal the carbon that plants have breathed in and built into their bodies, we steal the carbon that animals have built into their tissues from either eating plants or eating other animals, and we take this carbon (when we eat a steak for example) and we break the steak down in our belly, and we strip away the carbon that has been built into proteins and fats and carbohydrates, and we use it to make our own proteins our own carbohydrates, and our own fats. The proteins we need to keep our nails healthy, our hair sleek and shiny, our eyes moist and healthy, our skin, our bones, our brains, our fluids, our sperm, our eggs, our muscles - ourselves.

We are all carbon thieves.


Every beast of prey, first and foremost carnivorous man, is the living grave of thousands of corpses. Our self maintenance, our existence; is a chain of torturing deaths


How does that make you feel carbon thief?

Shame on you!

London Coffee Walk - follow link below...

"the coffee bar was the place where you would go, to sit all day, past midnight, to meet up with people, painters, writers, intellectuals...you would have brown sugar on the tables, they did cappuccinos, and you could meet women if you wanted...the coffee bar was the perfect antidote for those suffering from insomnia...nowadays, you have Starbucks. Insipid tasting coffee for the masses..."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/interactive/2010/oct/25/london-coffee-walk

The strangeness of a life less ordinary - (investigative reporting from the very rim of reality!)

I was seated at my desk today. At work. With my computer screen humming away in front, and me slouched in an unhealthy posture on my chair, legs outstretched in front (to prevent deep vein thrombosis!), and in my hand I held a sheet of paper. I was holding a sheet of typed paper in my hand and I was looking at it. I'd just printed it and pulled it off the printer. It was still warm in my hand with a whiff of ozone. Immaculately white I noticed. I'd never before noticed how white these things are! I peered closely at the paper screwing my eyelids together to get a microscopic look. The girl sitting next to me turned her head to look at me and then turned away smiling enigmatically (I thought). It was almost perfect; the paper that is. You couldn't make out the individual fibre strands of the pulp from afar. It was thin and 'smooth' to the touch. I held it up to the light. Again the girl sitting next to me turned her head in wonder. The paper: a slight glossy sheen. It wasn't really for writing on with ink pen. The paper had been specially designed (after much lab research no doubt) for printing. It had low absorbency - so the ink wouldn't stain or spread. And it was treated with chemicals that stopped it from turning yellow with age. I kept looking at it - Ahh, how the ancients would have marvelled! And there was so much of it! Skyscrapers of the stuff packed in those A4 sized brick like packets of 500 leaves. How much of this stuff was consumed around the world in a single day! How much of it was then thrown in the bin! The folly! The sheer madness! The waste! The ancients had to contend with clay tablets at first, and then came papyrus, then reeds (A stray thought pops into my head: I wonder if the word 'read' is derived from reed?) Then I noticed that the paper had marks or 'symbols' imprinted on it in black ink. And the symbols or marks were contained within larger demarcating lines that crossed and criss-crossed. Oh, yes - it was writing. My writing in fact! And the lines? Oh yes, that was the table I had just prepared! A table of audit adjustments for our German entity. It had various columns, with neat descriptions: a column for the currency, another for the amount in Euros, a column for the General Ledger account codes...It had a neat heading at the top left. It had a date of preparation. and probably other stuff that I can't recall right now. The spreadsheet related to the year ended 31 July 2009.

Why am I telling you this?

Because, as I sat slouched in my chair, in unhealthy posture, in deep thought, staring at the spreadsheet - reading it - understanding it - knowing what it was about - the meaning of the letters - the numbers - knowing how to read the layout of the table, knowing that you begin from the left hand side, even...thinking back to my preparation of it, how I'd quickly made a decision in Excel on what column lengths to use, the amount of space in between, layout of the headings, Italic or normal? Bold or normal? Underlined? Big or small font? How best to present the information to aid understanding, what can I leave out? etc. etc. etc...It made me wonder about the sheer quantity of unconscious thought that went into its preparation.

It suddenly occurred to me; as I lay staring at this white sheet of paper, that what I was now doing, i.e. reading and interpreting and understanding this sheet of paper, was actually an amazing thing! Let me explain: Firstly (and not as importantly) it is amazing in the sense that I realised that I spend a lot of time thinking about formatting i.e. how to present information to make it easier for others to understand, but more importantly, it is amazing because here I was - an organic 'life-form', and I was holding in my hand a sheet of paper (constructed from tree pulp), and on this paper were symbols made with ink, symbols I could understand! (because I could read), I knew what the letters meant. I knew all these things! The letters didn't look alien to me like the letters of a language you can't speak inadvertently do. I recognised these symbols. And at that moment a rolling wave of strangeness crept up on me, and put its hand around me, and suddenly, abruptly...the symbols, the words on the paper no longer made sense.


How was it that we got from sea living creatures to this: reading stuff of a sheet of paper! Doesn't the thought of this impossible thing just blow your mind?

This feeling of the strangeness of everything that had crept on me, also had other symptoms: it made me wonder who I was. A strangeness that made me look at my hairy hands in disgust and also with some interest. A strangeness that contemplated the beating heart inside me, and the watery eyes (reddened from a days staring at spreadsheets) that allowed me to see, and the ears that picked up transmissions on the airwaves - from my chatting colleagues, the constantly whirring photocopier, the air con vent above. Then there were the hormones and neurotransmitters secreted by my glands that gave me; this organic life-form, 'feelings!'. What I mean is that I also have an emotional system that makes me 'feel stuff' - annoyance, happiness, love, irritation, contentedness, and a stomach that makes me anticipate my evening meal. And this entire seeing, feeling, thinking, contemplating thing I call myself, also has a body wrapped in these clothes. The layers upon layers - a mind that wonders how it could read these strange symbols printed on the flattened pulp of a photosynthesising organic life-form called a 'tree'.


At that moment I could see all. At that moment, sitting slouched on my chair, staring at a white sheet of paper, you could call me a god. A god whose job description happened; just happened to be: accountant!

Life is weird.

I am awed.

I am humbled.

I am...

Well, 

I am very much alive.

Are you?

Schopenhauer's Curse

Random words

when typed

out

in funky

w a Ys

make for

interest

ing

SaYs...

I Am a

man who

seem s

2B

Lost

n

found

but not yet

discovered...

Not yet discovered

I.

For I

must b

found

Or Else

who knows?

Mysteries

(deep 1's too)

will stay

buried

UNDER

life's

DEADweight.

TearAway.

BCome

a

Tearaway

from Life

n

Discover

Ur

Trueinnerdeeperburiedwonder

full

self

calling.

Ameen.

Playful Me

To know

is to see

is to laugh

is to live

is to smile

is to walk...

...is to wander

at the wonder

of the miracle

of the wonder

full

you!

you are my

wonder

full

wonder

thing...

and to love

you

is to feel

alive

is to touch

heaven

is to know

life

has a

purpose

beyond me.

To know

is to love

is to be

you.

be me.

Be all

you can be.

Ameen.

The Reluctant Philosopher strikes again

Sitting on the train today, whilst reading a chapter of Schopenhauer called 'The Metaphysics of Music', I stopped in mid-flight of thought, and stared out of the window and smiled; for Schopenhauer had finally told me why I love music. Yes, I also happen to love movies and books and paintings and poetry - but music, ahhh music is different!


Only music can move me to an emotional crescendo. A U2 guitar solo by the Edge recorded live and on my mp3 player, has the singular magical effect; on a dull Monday morning on the station platform, of 'moving me' beyond the physical realm I am occupying. The shimmering electric guitar seems to rise up into a capacious empty sky - taking me with it. You are literally transported - heart, soul and mind, to a place deep inside you of a billion possibilities - a billion stars flickering in the night of your soul. The music gives you wings. It's an illusion to think that what you are experiencing is outside of you. It's not. It's inside of you. Your inner being! That's what music does! It strums the strings of your inner self and brings it (your inner self) to the surface. Your feelings become evident to yourself and perhaps to others. Music makes you naked. Why do you think 2 lovers are so enraptured by a jazz trumpeter? Why do you think it is that random people on an underground train can be made to feel acute embarrassment by a guitarist playing a love ditty to all of them? Because the music brings to the surface those inner feelings of love and passion and desire; which in public, we repress.


With me music does many things. It inspires me. It gives me ideas. It draws forth from the chaotic froth of my inner self. A self, that even I; contemplater as I am, cannot access. It plants seeds that sometimes grow into archaic monsters and sometimes into weirdly wonderful flowers. Suddenly, through listening to a particular piece of music, I am overtaken with a hypnotic and obstinate desire to travel somewhere far. Far, far away. Music can do that. Makes me wanna do things! Before I stick on those headphones I'm just an ordinary accountant on my way to work. But somewhere, in my journey, I become an adventure seeking superhero! Dying don't matter any more. I just want to see things. And write about them later. Music makes me feel like that. It acts on a level beyond deliberate conscious knowledge. Some may say; I know Schopenhauer would, that of all the mediums of art, it is music, that speaks the truth of how we are feeling. I agree.


There is nothing better that captures the feeling of a world of unsampled possibilities then the soaring opening guitar of U2's 'Where the streets have no name'...it starts off as a faint jingly jangly sound that reminds me of street-lights reflecting off water, and ends up making you fly - skywards.


Purists working for NME or Q-Magazine may denigrate certain music for its lack of sophistication, or for not being 'in' right now - but does it matter? If music can move you - then who cares what the critics think. For as far as you're concerned, the music has done its trick. And the trick is to wash you up and tumble you about in a soapy bubbly rainbow coloured lather of emotion and feeling. To make you feel. To make you live. Love. Learn. And Explore.

Review: My brand new Sony X-Series VAIO (the worlds lightest laptop)

Do you believe in love at first sight?
I do.
I love small laptops.
I've always loved small laptops.

Over the years I have owned a succession of smaller and smaller laptops.

The first small laptop I purchased in Dubai. It was a Sony VAIO Z series. At the time it felt small, but now the same laptop, feels like a brick. That particular one weighed in at 3.5Kg.

The next portable laptop I purchased about 2 years ago. Again it was a Sony VAIO but a TZ Series. It was for a special mission so had to be light. It weighed a staggeringly feathery 1.2Kg with battery. Just to give you an idea, the new Macbook Air weighs 1.36kg AND it has no DVD drive. The Sony VAIO TZ weighed less AND it had an optical DVD RW drive! Go figure! I took it along with me tucked away in my rucksack to Pakistan, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Burma and India. It survived the trip. It survived numerous onslaughts. Jungles. Rivers. Mountains. Rain. Bugs. Snakes. Thieves. Earthquakes. Heat. Damp. It still lives. I still have it; though at home I tend to use my Macbook Pro. The great thing about the 1.2Kg Sony VAIO TZ was that it could do everything I wanted it to: Photoshop CS3 worked great on it which allowed me to process my travel photographs 'on the move'. It has great battery life - which is perfect for those far flung and cut off places where electricity blackouts occur often - such as Northern Pakistan. You never know when the power will return so a long battery life is a must.

I've now bought myself another portable laptop. Judging from the evolutionary history of my past laptop purchases you have probably guessed that this new addition is lighter still. Yes, it is. In fact; as it stands today, it is the lightest, smallest laptop in the world. Again it is a Sony VAIO and it is part of their new X-Series Range. It weighs a mind numbingly paltry 0.7Kg! (with battery). I'm typing on it right now, and when I hold it up with one hand it literaly weighs less than a paperback book. It is that light! This baby I'll be able to take with me wherever I go. I don't need to put it in a bag, I can just grab it with a book in my hand and shoot off. No more thinking: 'Oh, do I really want to carry a laptop around with me today?' - It doesn't matter. I won't even feel it in my hand.

The screen measures 11.1 inches, which is the same as my previous 1.2Kg TZ. In fact the screen has exactly the same high resolution image quality. Great for detailed Photoshop work. It is also very svelte measuring less than a cm in thickness. It has plenty of connectivity: 2 USB ports. A headphone jack. An SD card slot and another for the Sony Magic Gate memory sticks. Bluetooth. SIM card jack for mobile surfing anywhere on the planet - even Antarctica! The keyboard keys are cut out and placed in separate slots to aid typing. They are small, but for me it is no problem at all, since my fingers are small also. It has an inbuilt motion eye camera. It has 250Gb of Hard Disk space, 4GB of ram. A 2Ghz processor. It has a GPS tracking device in case I get lost somewhere and need to be rescued. Fat chance! Should I continue? Put it this way: It does everything my TZ did for me and weighs 500g less!

As you can tell I am extremely enamoured with it; so gushing with love for it! How Sony managed to pack all these goodies into a body that weighs 0.7Kg is beyond me. It really is a modern technological marvel. Jam-packed with electronic wizardry. This little thing has more computing power then the Apollo space mission.

It's the small portable lightweight take-everywhere-without-noticing laptop I've always wanted and dreamed about. It makes writing anywhere possible. It makes blogging a real pleasure! I will be taking it along with me on my next trip. This baby will see action. It'll be in my bag and I won't notice a thing...


And that, is the whole point. Isn't it?

Blogger Out.

Coming soon...The Return of the Vagabond

We travel not for trafficking alone
 By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known
 We take the Golden Road to Samarkand...

The world is mine Oyster Card

I always get a free coffee when I go to my local Pret a Manger. Always. Apparently (and I find this hard to believe) I make all the girls smile gleefully upon stepping into the store. Ti's how I walk? Ti's how I dress? Ti's how I talk? Perhaps it is the constant quizzical look I have plastered to my face - a look that betrays my innermost thoughts - a look that says: "I have not a clue what this life is - but I'm still gonna get myself a coffee". A look like that of a child that has been given the keys to life. The look of a man who has an Oyster Card for the world.

"Why, then, the world's mine oyster, Which I with sword will open..."

(William Shakespeare)

Who knows. What I do know is that...yes, I always get a free coffee when I go to Pret.

"This man deserves a free coffee" they say. And sometimes I feel as if they are poking fun at me. Do I look like I need a free coffee? Do I? What does a man who needs a free coffee look like? Certainly not like I. But then what do I know? All I know is that the girls working in Pret (and yes, it is always the girls) feel like giving me a free coffee. It is one of the pleasures of this life. To be given something for nothing. To be given a free coffee now and again - simply because, somebody likes the way, you smile.

____________

There is a beautiful couplet by Omar Khayyum and it goes thus:

'AWAKE! For morning in the bowl of

night

Has flung the stone that puts the stars to

flight

And Lo! The hunter in the east has

caught

The Sultan's turret in the noose of

light'

Repeat every morning upon waking. Any filmy residue will at once vanish from your eyes. 

__________

If you open your mind too much your brain will fall out

Schopenhauer - What he has to teach us about love

According to Arthur Schopenhauer, we are biologically driven to seek out unsuitable partners. So if you are unlucky in love, don't take it to heart - happiness was never part of the bigger plan!

It is a warm spring day. A man is attempting to work on his book on a train between London and Birmingham. But the man has been unable to think even a coherent sentence since a woman entered the carriage and seated herself opposite him. This woman has short brown hair and wears jeans, trainers and a canary-yellow sweater. He notices she has little freckles around her nose. He imagines caressing the back of her neck, sliding his hand inside the sleeve of her pullover, watching her fall asleep beside him...

He speculates that she may be a teacher or a graphic designer, or a doctor specialising in genetic research. He considers asking her for the time, for directions to the loo... He longs for a train crash - he would guide her safely outside, where they would be given lukewarm tea and stare into each other's eyes. But because the train seems disinclined to derail, the man cannot help leaning over to ask the angel if she might have a spare ballpoint pen as his dastardly fountain pen has decided to run out of ink...

Philosophers have not traditionally been interested by the tribulations of love. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), was puzzled by this indifference:

'We should be surprised that a matter that generally plays such an important part in the life of man has hitherto been almost entirely ignored by philosophers, and lies before us as raw and untreated material'

The neglect seemed strange to Schopenhauer. He wondered how it was that Philosophers had not thought about love. Because love:

'...interrupts at every hour the most serious occupations, and sometimes perplexes for a while even the greatest minds... It knows how to slip its love-notes and ringlets even into ministerial portfolios and philosophical manuscripts...'

Like Michel de Montaigne, Schopenhauer was concerned with what made man less than reasonable. He concurred that our minds were subservient to our bodies, despite our arrogant faith to the contrary. But Schopenhauer went further. He gave a name to a force within us which he felt invariably had precedence over reason: the will-to-life (Wille zum Leben) - defined as an inherent drive within human beings to stay alive and reproduce. It ensured that the most cerebral, career-minded individuals would be seduced by the sight of gurgling infants, or if they remained unmoved, that they were likely to conceive a child anyway, and love it fiercely on arrival. And it was this will-to-life that drove people to lose their reason over pretty passengers on long-distance train journeys from Birmingham to London...

Schopenhauer refused to think of love as something trifle:

'It is no trifle that is in question here... The ultimate aim of all love affairs ...is more important than all other aims in man's life; and therefore it is quite worthy of the profound seriousness with which everyone pursues it.'

And what is the aim of love? Neither communion nor sexual release, nor understanding or entertainment. Love dominates life because:

'What is decided by love it is nothing less than the composition of the next generation...'

The fact that the continuation of the species is seldom in our minds when we ask for the phone number of a girl we've met in a club is irrelevent. The intellect understands only so much as is necessary to promote reproduction - which may mean understanding very little: an exclusion, which explains how we may consciously feel nothing more than an intense desire to see someone again. Why should such deception even be necessary? Because, for Schopenhauer, we would not reliably agree to reproduce unless we first had lost our minds. And when we fall in love, we do invariably lose our minds! Think about it. It is total madness to think that this one person, that you have just happened to fall in love with, is out of the 2 billion or so other suitable inhabitants on earth, the only person right for you. Such exclusivity! It's irrational. But as Schopenhauer said Love is not meant to be rational.

	One of the most profound mysteries of love is "Why him?" and "Why her?" And why, despite good intentions, were we unable to develop a sexual interest in certain other people, who were just as attractive and might even have been more convenient to live with?
	This choosiness did not surprise Schopenhauer. Our will-to-life drives us towards people who will raise our chances of producing beautiful and intelligent offspring, and repels us from those who lower these same chances. So we're NOT selecting people we can live happily with. We're selecting people who will give us healthy offspring.
	Since our parents inevitably made errors in their courtships, we are unlikely to be ideally balanced ourselves. We have typically come out too tall or too short, too masculine or too feminine; our noses are large, our chins small. The will-to-life must therefore push us towards people who can, on account of their imperfections, cancel out our own (a large nose combined with a button nose promises a perfect nose). Schopenhauer liked predicting pathways of attraction. Short women will fall in love with tall men, but rarely will you see tall men go for tall women (they unconsciously fear the production of giants). Feminine men will often be drawn to boyish women with short hair:

'The neutralisation of the two individualities... requires that the particular degree of his manliness shall correspond exactly to the particular degree of her womanliness, so that the one-sidedness of each exactly cancels that of the other.'

Unfortunately, the theory of attraction led Schopenhauer to a conclusion so bleak, perhaps readers about to be married should leave the next few paragraphs unread; namely, that a person who is highly suitable for our future child is almost never very suitable for us (though we cannot realise it at the time because we have been blindfolded by the will-to-life). Happiness and the production of healthy children are two radically different projects, which love maliciously confuses us into thinking of as one for a requisite number of years.

'Love... casts itself on persons who, apart from the sexual relation, would be hateful, contemptible and even abhorrent to the lover. But the will of the species is so much more powerful than that of the individual, that the lover shuts his eyes to all the qualities repugnant to him... Only from this is it possible to explain why we often see very rational, and even eminent, men tied to termagants and matrimonial fiends...'

So back to the train. She has offered you her ballpoint pen. You decide to take a risk and ask her out for a coffee once the train arrives in London. She say's yes! Over coffee you discuss everything under the sun: life, the universe, and everything. She talks about her family. You talk about yours. She tells you what she does and you tell her what you do. You talk music, books, movies, food and even a little philosophy. Wow! You think. She's perfect. Then she says she has to leave. You give her your number and email address and she promises to phone you. But ten days later she still hasn't rung. Nor has she sent an email. It seems you were duped. You may have found her perfect but not she you. The philosopher offers consolation if we are rejected by the pretty lady on the train: our pain is normal he says! A force powerful enough to push us towards child-rearing could not vanish without devastation. What is more, we are not inherently unlovable. Our characters are not repellent, nor our faces abhorrent. The union collapsed because we were unfit to produce a balanced child with that particular person. One day we will meet someone who will find us wonderful (because our chin and their chin make a desirable combination!).

We should in time learn to forgive our rejectors. They may have appreciated our qualities; but their will-to-life did not. We should respect the edict from nature against procreation that every rejection contains. We should draw consolation from the thought that a lack of love might only produce:

'a badly organised, unhappy being, wanting in harmony in itself.'

There were many works of natural science in Schopenhauer's library. He felt particular sympathy for the mole, a stunted monstrosity dwelling in damp narrow corridors, but doing everything in its power to perpetuate itself. The philosopher did not have to spell out the parallels. We pursue love affairs, chat in cafés with prospective partners and have children, with as much choice in the matter as moles or ants - and are rarely any happier. He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.

'Much would have been gained if through timely advice young people could have had eradicated from their minds the erroneous notion that the world has a great deal to offer them.'

We do have one advantage over moles. We can go to the theatre, the opera and the concert hall, and we can read novels and philosophy - here is a supreme source of relief from the demands of the will-to-life. Schopenhauer admired Goethe because he had turned so many of the pains of love into knowledge, most famously in The Sorrows of Young Werther, a story of unrequited love suffered by a young man. It simultaneously described the love affairs of 1000s of its readers. There is consolation in realising that our case is only one of thousands. Of a person who can achieve such objectivity, Schopenhauer remarks:

'He accordingly will conduct himself... more as a knower than as a sufferer.'

We must, between periods of grappling in the dark and turning down blind alleyways, endeavour always to transform our tears into self-knowledge. The art of living and the art of love, much has the sage Schopenhauer to teach us on these things!

Read Schopenhauer. Live. Love. Learn. Explore.

_____________