The Random Blogger

Many of you will recognise the words in the title of this, my latest, post, as being a song by the late, great Edith Piaf, aka the Little Sparrow.

And for those of you who don’t, or who don’t speak French, then it means, simply, “No, I don’t regret anything.”

Hard as it may be sometimes, that has always been a motto close to my heart, and, like many people of my age, I’m not saying I haven’t made mistakes in my life - far from it, I made some pretty massive ones (including what turned out to be a disastrous first marriage, which I didn’t get out of for 24 years or so).

But the way I see it is this - you cannot change what has happened in the past.

What you can do, of course, is change how you feel about it, and you can also learn from it too.

You might think you wish you’d done something different, to avoid whatever it is that you now regret, but here’s the big question: how do you know that if you’d fixed that particular issue, maybe many years ago, something even worse might not have occurred as a result of your so-called fix?

This is, of course, a recurring theme in many movies and TV shows to do with time travel, and many do, indeed, warn of altering the “time line”.

One of my favourites, in this genre, is the movie The Butterfly Effect, starring Ashton Kutcher.

For those of you who haven’t seen this great example of a time-travel movie, the hero keeps going back to fix something from his childhood, but each time, something else happens that completely changes his current life, sometimes with dire consequences.

So, what’s done is done, and there’s precious little you can do about it, except, maybe, learn to live with it, make sure you don’t make the same mistake again, and try to use that experience to help you grow.

I was watching a subliminal video this morning, which is part of my regular daily routine, and one of the images that flashed past was of a shark, and it got me to thinking (as so many things do, of course).

Now, people generally know that sharks are killers (or, to be precise, some species of shark are), so why do I have no fear of sharks?

Is it because I can wrestle them with my bare hands?

Is it because I don’t go anywhere without a super-sized harpoon gun?

Is it because my body emits some chemicals that repel sharks?

No, it’s none of these, because the answer is much simpler …

… I simply don’t ever plan on being in the same place as a shark!

If there are no sharks around (and last time I looked, there aren’t that many in the mountains where we live), then my chances of being attacked or killed by one is, to all intents and purposes, zero.

This may seem obvious, or even silly, but there is a point (or two) to this.

Firstly, there are plenty of things in life to worry about - you know, minor things like how to pay the bills, how to stay healthy.

So what you don’t need to do is to worry about stuff that you can’t easily control and manage.

If you start to worry about things that you can’t directly influence, then you will get stressed out, and may even develop phobias, anxiety, panic attacks, etc.

By focusing on the aspects of your life that you can influence, you will reduce your stress levels, and over time, your sphere of influence, as it’s called, will even expand.

Secondly, you have to work out what is really important to you, and weigh the pros and cons of everything you do.

Everything in life has a cost - it may not be obvious, but it’s there nonetheless. There is, as they say, no such thing as a free lunch.

The key to a successful life, however you define success, is getting your priorities right.

So, if you like to go swimming, fine - just don’t swim in the ocean where sharks may be. Find a pool instead - it may not be “as much fun”, but I guarantee it’s a lot more fun than being eaten alive.

In essence, it boils down to this simple question: which is more important to you? In this example, would you rather swim in the ocean, with the waves rolling in and the fresh sea air, and risk being attacked, maimed or even killed by a shark, or would you rather still get your waterbound exercise in a safer environment, by swimming in a pool where the biggest risk is usually the pool cleaning chemicals they use?

As always, I welcome your own thoughts, so please post a comment below.

This post raises some controversial issues that may upset some people, so please know that my intention is not to deliberately offend anybody, but to discuss the implications of the Hippocratic Oath as it relates to advances in medical science and technology.

For those who aren’t aware, the Hippocratic Oath basically requires doctors to practise medicine ethically and to do what’s right for their patients, although there are several other conditions too.

Now, this was all fine and dandy when medical science had little to offer in the way of treatment and cures, but nowadays, with all the technology that’s available (e.g. CAT scanners), this is no longer the case.

Doctors, and other medical professionals, are able to save the lives of many people who, in former times, would simply have died, often at a very young age.

This does, of course, raise several questions. (more…)

Working with a couple of customers recently has reminded me how fascinated I am with people, and how they behave.

These two particular customers are sort of related in a soap opera kind of way – one is the brother of a girl who is pregnant by the other customer’s son, who lives across the hall from the first customer’s ex-girlfriend, if you’re still with me.

They’re in and out of each other’s apartments all day long, and from the background noise that you can hear (and can’t ignore) when you’re on the phone with one of the two, life seems to be one long round of total chaos: there are multiple conversations going on, the TV’s on too, there are dogs barking, and (more…)

I’ve never enjoyed the physical act of writing, and this goes back to my early years in boarding school, when we were made to write with the old-fashioned dip pens and real ink. (I know, this dates me!)

Being a left-handed writer, this meant that I always had an ink stain on my left hand, as it blotted what I had just written, or my writing was illegible as I tried to avoid the first issue.

I also used to dislike intensely any writing-based activities at school, such as essays. Maybe it was because the subject matter was given to us, or maybe it was because I hadn’t come to appreciate the feeling that writing can give you.

Anyway, I welcomed the advent of (more…)

These words were favourites of my house master, back in the days when I was at boarding school, whenever he spotted some unlucky pupil who wouldn’t eat part of his school meal.

Given the generally low standard of food – they could even mess up the simplest of meals – then these words were heard quite often, and they were, I have to confess, directed at me on more than one occasion too.

I always did resent this phrase, as it had struck me from an early age that there were some foods that I simply did not like for reasons I couldn’t explain.

I’ve often wondered, since then, why (more…)

I’ve written previously about my “internal jukebox”, and usually speaking, these songs / tunes that play in my head only do so for a few hours at most.

So, what is it about the latest song that has allowed it to embed itself in my mind for about five days now, to the exclusion of all other music?

What is the song?

Well, it’s called (more…)

I know I’m not the only person to notice this, but now that I’m middle-aged (nearly 50, as I write this), it really does seem like time has speeded up considerably.

There are never enough hours in the day (although frequent naps caused by our crazy life style, such as providing 24 x 7 hour phone support to our customers, may not help), and it’s got to the point when I sometimes don’t even know (more…)

It was when I remembered, momentarily, that today had been a big day for me many years ago, that it got me thinking about life in general. (The event in question, the full details of which are sort of irrelevant to this post, was when I proposed to my first wife.)

Many people would call that day “auspicious” or “significant”, because the things we do actually do happen on one specific date – you don’t, for example, propose to somebody across a time span of several days, as “popping the question” takes a few seconds at most.

But was it really that particular day that was (more…)

Like many people (I hope), I often have music playing inside my head. It may be a favourite song, or the theme tune from a movie, or it may be a catchy but usually irritating chorus from some TV ad.

I’ve often stopped to wonder, though why specific songs or tunes are selected by what appears to be some form of internal jukebox (like an organic version of an iPod Shuffle).

Sometimes, it may be a song I’ve not heard for over 20 or 30 years, and, as far as I can tell, not anything I’ve even thought about recently.

I accept that one of the features of the human brain that still makes it so much more powerful than the computer is its amazing ability to (more…)