100 Days of Love and Hate - Day 71

[dalekboy]

Only 15 months since the last post! Woohoo! Given that I found myself having a harder and harder time reading and writing over that period, I'm happy to forgive myself.

Most Love and Hate posts tended to take around four hours of pretty solid work to get to a point where, if I wasn't entirely happy with it's wording, I wasn't unhappy with it being seen. And I just don't generally have the mental energy to throw around like that. And if I do, well, I can be playing with my son, or trying to get back into writing fiction.

I wanted to try and get a few more under my belt before posting again, but what the hell.



Crazy People


There are people who are strange and odd, where their unusual outlook or way of doing things is so much a part of themselves that they are rarely aware of it, if at all. Then there are the 'crazy' people, the folks who regularly need to tell you that they are wacky, weird, strange, etc.

"But I'm mad, everyone knows that!" and similar phrases delivered again and again in a desperate attempt by the try-hards to make themselves feel special or unique. What they are is, at best, tiring, at worst, a pain in the arse.

It's their attempt to make one believe they are actually interesting, entertaining people and I hate it! I really hate it. You can take someone who is an otherwise reasonable mate, but the more they tell me how fucking amazingly strange they are, they more I want to beat them with burning rubber-tubing. Because I know people who are genuinely odd and interesting folks, and you know, not one of them ever feels the need to tell me again and again how bizarre they are.

Oh, once in a while the truly strange will acknowledge it, but usually only when it's directly relevant to something. Putting a bit of behaviour in context, or the sudden realisation that they really don't think in quite the same way. Their comments aren't about getting attention, they are about getting perspective.

The try-hards aren't just attempting to convince everyone else, they're trying to convince themselves. Real arists, geniuses, great lovers, tough people, humanitarians, famous folks, etc. know what they are, and are comfortable with that.

They don't feel the need to keep telling the rest of us.




Steve Irwin

There's a lot that can be said about Irwin and his attitude and perceptions of things. I don't know how many times I watched him handling some animal and telling it, "It's alright mate, it's okay," as it tried to bite him, and all I could think was "No, it's not okay Steve, it's just been pounced on and grabbed, as far as it's concerned, nothing good can come of this."

But you know, I really liked the guy.

Yep, he was a dill. I'm not entirely sure the sky he saw was blue and not orange with purple spots, but his heart was in the right place. For his many flaws, he cared about animals and the environment, really cared. You don't have to like the way he showed it, but don't say he didn't give a damn. A good portion of the money made from his TV career was poured back into animal conservation. He bought up huge areas of land in Australia and overseas so that they could be left undeveloped as informal 'National Parks.'

And most importantly, Irwin got people excited about conservation and the environment not by preaching to them, but by his sheer enthusiasm.

His death was a sad loss.

And love him or hate him, he did more in his forty-four years than most of us would manage in twice that.

Comments

[mynxii.livejournal.com]

The best thing I learned on December 13th was that I'm not strange, never have been and that it was just something I made up to explain what happened to me and how I felt. It wasn't true and I made it mean something. What I got from that realisation was the possibility of being connected to anyone. Of being both extraordinary and ordinary along with everyone else.