Resolutions etc

So I was reading some stuff about willpower and how we only have a limited amount of it to use (which is why people tend to come home after a long days work and just want to sit in front of the TV apparently), and the person who was writing suggested then that we should limit the amount of stuff we do that would require extra will power to one thing at a time , e.g. don't say I will exercise everyday, I will eat healthily AND I will practice the fiddle everyday, but pick one and work at that. This got me thinking about will power and resolutions etc and how I think most people have a tendency to make them and break them. But the thing is that maybe we are too harsh on ourselves, say your resolution is to eat healthily from now on and you manage for a week or so and them succumb to the temptation of cake. Then maybe you feel bad because yes you did that and you broke your resolution and so you failed. However I think there is another way of looking at this, yes you failed the resolution to eat healthily from now on but that doesn't mean the resolution was useless, indeed because of it you ate healthily for a week (which you might not have done if you hadn't made the resolution in the first place), and just because you slipped up once doesn't mean you can't count that last week or that you can't carry on post-cake. Technically you failed the resolution but that doesn't mean you failed yourself, the effort you put in the last week is not cancelled out, nor is the health benefit you would have gained. My point is, we don't need to succeed 100% at keeping to resolutions in order to benefit from them. I think we need to see resolutions as inspiration rather than rules, something to aim towards and to do when we can, that will improve us even if we don't succeed in following them all the time, but we also need to accept the fact that it is very hard to succeed 100% and I would say as long as you succeed more than you fail and you keep 'getting back on the horse' then you should feel proud of yourself :). Hence we can set as many resolutions as we like.
And besides, a life devoid of cake would suck.

NB: This blog is my opinion (if I put a fact somewhere then I will give you guys a reference for it), as such I do not pretend for one minute is is correct so obvs feel free to agree/ disagree at will.

delapidated is a nice word

There’s something I really love about places that have been abandoned and are being gradually broken apart by time. Things that were once used gathering dust, crumbling and rusting… paint peeling and walls eroding. Places that might have once buzzed with conversation and people coming and going now silent and empty bar the nature that gradually encroaches and takes over. It gives a sense of something that is lost, that can never be returned to, a sense of impermanence. Probably the people who lived in and used these places never imagined they would be ruins like this, probably we in our own houses and the other places we use do not imagine they will be ruins too, but it is likely one day that this will be the case. One day the room I am writing this in will be gathering dust, the building around me crumbling… even if it is occupied and well-kept by tenant after tenant eventually none of this will exist, the earth is after all at some point going to be engulfed by the sun (I doubt being able to survive that featured on the requirements for this building…). Perhaps I like the way these places are in the transition between existence and non-existence, that one day people will not know that they were there, that gradually they are fading out of reality and it feels like you are one of the last people to see it, that it is almost a privilege or a secret. We see something as it is in the present but we imagine how it was in the past, or people might actually be around to tell us, and in our minds we time travel, and speculate and bring the past to life.

I think that is enough on this topic, it reminds me of the poem Ozymandius, which I am pretty fond of mainly because of the message (at least that I get) that no matter how great or how powerful you may be you too are impermanent,  and you will be forgotten no matter how much you try to immortalise yourself.

To quote (by Shelley).

“I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away”

I used to read a lot of poetry, now not so much… I should start again.