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Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week?
Have you ever wondered why things like pleasure and happiness, are so evanescent? For some things, we accommodate to their presence and after a while cease to notice them even though they are still present; pleasure is fleeting as well, and yet it is not simply because we no longer notice it, but rather because…
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How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another’s eyes
Something I read a while ago started me thinking again about how we perceive things[i]. Some conditions, like hot and cold, lie at opposite ends of a spectrum I suppose, but is it necessarily the same with happy and sad? Binaries tend to mark edges -boundaries, by and large- but they don’t really define the…
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What is it like to be a…?
When I first read the philosopher Thomas Nagel’s ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ essay, I was intrigued by his idea that ‘an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism’. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Empathy -the ability…
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Who are you?
I suppose I should admit that over the steadily increasing pace of years, I’ve had a grandstand view of reproduction -albeit not in the front row seats; as an obstetrician for over forty years I was involved in ‘l’accouchement‘, rather than in the arguably more exciting ‘fécondation’. Still, I came to think of reproduction as…
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Believe me
What is it about religions which endorse beliefs that often seem so… well, irrational? And for that matter, why do those beliefs seem so compelling? Is it merely the other-worldly components that capture our attention: the mysterious and inexplicable outshining the everyday unpolished world? Or is it more than just magic? Does it instill in…
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Are thoughts the shadows of our feelings?
Ever wonder why things often seem so much more alive, when you travel to new places? Why the colours are more vibrant, the details so memorable? Is Auckland really more beautiful than Vancouver, or is it simply, well, different? Is it just something about being there, not here -being away, in other words? There seems…
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The I’s have it… don’t they?
Sometimes the Past is instructive; sometimes it is embarrassing. I mean, are we meant to learn from the past, or to learn when we’re actually in it, wallowing through its turbid eddies, lost in its sudden shadows? You’d think I would have figured it out by now, wandering as I am through my own autumn…
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Every offence is not a hate at first
What do you do with a gift from someone you once respected, a gift that seemed freely given at the time, but which turned out to be a mere façade? What do you do with a love turned sour? A love turned selfish? All love is selfish, you say, but it is your experience speaking…
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