Tag Archives: stoicism

What you want and what you need

Posted on by under Life and stuff, Writing process

‘You can’t always get what you want but if you try some time, you just might find that you get what you need.‘

This is the chorus from a Rolling Stones song from the 1969 album ‘Let It Bleed’. It was one of many Stones’ songs that we covered in one of my first bands. Even though I was only in my teens, I recognised that there was some wisdom in that refrain and now, some fifty-five years later, I still think the same.

I sometimes wake up in the morning with a song going through my head and, if it’s one I like, I don’t really mind. The other day it was this song and it got me thinking about the things I’ve desperately wanted at times in my life and what I ended up getting.

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Why FOLO (fear of losing out) shouldn’t ever be an issue

Posted on by under Life and stuff

I was prompted to write this after driving home from hospital the other day. My wife’s temporary residence there has meant me trying every route from home to hospital to find out which might be the best. There are three routes that I can take –

  • The motorway. This should be quickest but it rarely is as there are usually queues to get on and off at either end. These queues can be quite horrendous at rush hour so this option is chancy and can turn out to be the slowest by far
  • A narrow country road which can only be driven down slowly and is quite a few miles longer. However, there is very little queueing even at rush hours
  • A main road which runs alongside the motorway. A sort of halfway house, as it’s shorter in distance than the country road but it can still hit a queue at the end

So, one of these routes will be the optimum at any given time of day but which one?

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Why it’s always best to not to think the worst

Posted on by under Life and stuff

This post has been kicking around in my head for a few weeks now. In fact, ever since some motorists yelled at me. Let me explain.

My wife and I sometimes meet up with our son for lunch in a town not far from where we live. The pub is, unfortunately, in an old part of the town and you can only access it by driving down a single narrow street. I’m usually in luck in that I can find a disabled parking space near the pub entrance. We need this because my wife is disabled and, on her worst days, she can only walk a few steps so I need to get as near the entrance as possible. On this particular day, the disabled bays were full as were all the loading bays. There was nowhere to pull over. So, as we hadn’t seen our son for a while and didn’t want to go home, I stopped to let my wife get out with the plan that I would drive off and park in a nearby car park.

We were stopped for no longer than a minute and a half and, in that time, I was passed by three cars. They had to go up the opposite pavement and still came with a millimeter of my car mirror. All three shouted and made disparaging gestures at me, with one quite wildly intimating that I only had sex with my hand.

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