Day Forty Three

Humanity’s biggest mistake is that we believe what we are told.

Have you ever noticed how many things don’t make sense?

For instance, the glib, ‘If I can do it, anyone can.’

Really?

With enough determination and perseverance I can become Queen of England?

 I don’t think so.

It may seem an encouraging sentence but actually it’s setting people up for failure.

We don’t all have the same strengths, or opportunities, or luck.

The speaker may have had many challenges but pushed through and achieved their goals.  Great,  but many millions try and try again and still don’t make it to where they dream to be.

That expression goes hand in hand with the equally crazy  ‘You can be anything you want to be.’   Don’t be so ridiculous!  

 I couldn’t dance with the Royal Ballet, not even when I was younger and loving my ballet lessons. My genetic heritage designed me to be dumpy.

 Determined but dumpy.

 So whilst I may have dreamed of dancing with Rudolph Nureyev, no amount of punishing practice at the barre was ever going to achieve that.

How many parents trot out this dangerous lie to their children? How many children fail to see through the untruth and feel ashamed when they didn’t make it?  

I have dyscalculia, something which even today is rarely recognised.  I sweated night after night over my arithmetic lessons, knowing I didn’t, couldn’t understand how to do it. Like many dyslexic kids, I was labelled stupid because, ‘anyone can do simple sums liked that!’

‘I taught myself Chinese.’

‘I taught myself how to read.’

Poppycock ! Here’s proof.

沒有別人的幫助，您將永遠無法理解這一點。

Assuming you don’t already understand Chinese, does that make sense to you? You could stare at those characters for ever but in order to learn what they mean and how to use them correctly (not to mention the idioms and grammar, so important to language),  you’d need help.   

   

 Just before lockdown, I was at a party and a complete stranger came up to me and said, ‘Don’t I know you?’

What did he expect me to say?

(puts on spooky voice) ‘I have psychically trawled through your memory banks, found the ‘guest list’ and I’m not on it, so no, you don’t know me’.

 ‘Am I in the right place?’

‘Well, sir, if you wanted to be on a billionaire’s yacht sipping Pina Colada, no you’re not but if you were actually looking for the Gents, then yes, you are.

‘I know what you’re thinking’ and ‘I know what you’re going to say’ 

I’m always tempted to stop the pompous prat in mid flow and say, ‘All right then, tell me what I’m thinking, I never knew you were a mind reader.’

How about, ‘He can’t be dead, I only saw him last week!’

I know this is simply an expression of shock but it always makes me think the speaker had somehow conferred immortality on the deceased last time they met and is quite offended they’ve passed away as an act of defiance.

Over the years, I’ve realised  both WW1 and WW2, were won by adolescents, some as young as 12.

So many times I’ve read that Dad, Granddad or Uncle Fred lied about their age to get into the army.

This may well have been true in a few cases where tall and eager young lads knocked a year or so off their ages but in 1916, there was such a reluctance to join up,  the UK government sent out Press Gangs to round up eligible men off the streets.  I doubt they went into schools - but you never know.

‘You can only be healthy if you’re thin.’ This has been so often disproved in numerous studies, I’m not even going to argue with such nonsense.

William Perry, ‘The Fridge’, defensive lineman in the NFL (American football) weighed in at 330 lbs/152kilos . A top athlete, runner and football star for many years.

William Perry. One of many millions of big, fit, healthy athletes.

  

‘In ancient times, people didn’t live as long as we do today.’   Really?

In Psalm 90.v 10 it says, ‘The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow.’   

Moses, hardly a spring chicken himself at the time, wrote those words. 

The Israelites were wandering about in the desert, hardly in a position to command the best health care and food but obvioulsy still tottering about in their 70s and 80s. 

I know that in each case, this is not the whole picture but this was never intended to be a serious article.  Just don’t believe everything you’re told, okay?