announcement 1 of several: its all about love!

[chris raettig <chris@raettig.org>]

this posting is going to be naive, clumsy and rambling, despite the ultimate
point being a breathtakingly straightforward one. so be it. naivete is
definitely underrated. rambling clumsiness is sometimes the only way i can
even attempt to explain the things that are so fundamental to who i am. when
the right words fail me (as often they do) i tend to resort to excess verbiage
in an attempt to compensate. and so with that disclaimer...  


i came back from my christmas period holiday feeling amazing. very calm,
centered, relaxed, contented. comfortable with myself and my place in
the world. upbeat. resolute. free from emotional baggage. brimming
with positivity. a feeling completely detached from my realworld
circumstances - not that aspects of my circumstances dont embody
those things. just that the way i feel wasn't caused by those
things and hopefully isn't dependent on them. 

its easy to say all that. but i really mean it. it was - is - an amazing
feeling. its the most genuinely wholeheartedly positive place i've ever
reached. thats not something i say with any levity. i'm not entirely sure 
how i got there. though the opportunity to slow down, take a look around 
(smell the flowers) and assess things after the hectic pace of last year, 
that obviously helped. in some ways last year was the hardest of my life. 
quite a few negatives. but with some time to gestate and some more time 
to reflect on these perspective experiences, i'm able to draw positives 
from it. the fantastic people around me are another part of it. i feel 
blessed to have such engaging and inspirational dialogues taking place 
over email, icq and (perhaps especially) in person. 

i think, too, that a lot of it comes from within. i'm just not quite
sure where. or more precisely i'm not certain why i've been able to
reach this place now, at this point in my life, rather than previously.

self discovery is a life long pleasure. occasionally i will 
learn something new about myself. about the things that i consider
to hold true. then i will attempt to become an embodiment of those
truths. the degree to which i succeed is slightly more irrelevant
than the attempt. 

the realisation that life is both short and beautiful was an important
one for me. i learnt this the hard way. i was dying of cancer. i'll
be blunt about that, because it felt both incredibly blunt and
numbing to be there. i'm not attempting to be manipulative here, there are
some things i need to say. i could tell you any number of stories. about
sitting alone in my flat. contemplating. my shoulders beginning to shake.
then collapsing and sobbing for hours. i can very clearly picture it all
over again. feeling utterly alone and rudderless.

frantically trying to find meaning to life. to find answers. eventually 
realising that there weren't any. then finally developing a determination 
to enjoy this incredible world day at a time. squeezing every ounce of 
happiness out of it that i could. making the decision to deal in positivity 
rather than negativity, because life is too short for negatives. whatever 
your life expectancy - thats irrelevant. on a long enough timeline the
survival rate for everyone drops to zero. your life is ending. one
minute at a time. life *is* short and beautiful. but its okay if
you forget that sometimes, too :)

the biggest single influences on my life have been; the internet, 
my voluntary work and cancer. through each of these things i've
seen people living, and dying. i've seen the strength of human spirit,
and the depths of human misery. i really have learnt tolerance
from the intolerant, open-mindedness from the closed-minded,
silence from the talkative, kindness from the unkind. but have also
had more directly positive influences. it becomes a virtuous circle. positivity
attracts positivity. i'm reminded of something i wrote a year or so
ago entitled 'the internet saved my life'. it literally did. for
a while during my youth i was dangerously fucked up. i must attempt
to dig out that bit of writing. if i find it, i'll put it online again.  
i cant explain why i was reminded of that without digging it out. 

sorry - i'm drifting off theme a little. 


so every now and again - very occasionally - i'll learn something new
about myself, or about life, that informs my approach to it and
in some way advances my contentedness. often, though, i'll reach
such a place of contentedness then something will happen (usually
something with zero significance in the global scheme of things) and
i'll regain cynicism, disillusionment. greed. ego. 

i guess that the point i really want to make is that this hasn't happened
so far this year. (well, except maybe ego ;-) i mentioned at the start how 
i returned from my winter break feeling amazing. having reached another 
moment of realisation. having discovered a little more about myself, and 
working out how to practically apply that. working out the things that i hold
to be true. 

we're twenty days in. for whatever reason i've lost none of the
contentedness and centeredness i started the year with. i'm quite
honestly stunned by this. already good and bad things have happened
this year. i've re-immersed myself into london life. the stress of
work. the complications and hassle of paying bills, maintaining
the lifestyle i've chosen to inhabit. working damned hard. its
really (and strikingly) playing out what i tried to explain at
the start - that this feeling is irrespective of circumstance. 

one of the things which has been occupying my mind recently is the
concept of 'corporate values'. while i was home at christmas i tried
to work out the personal values i hold to be important. sometimes its
worth putting things in black and white, however obvious they might seem.
i'm not saying i embody all (or any) of these things, but they are all
things i consider to be important. to be essential. and in a way
they're goals, too. simple things; love. respect. passion. competence. 
simplicity. honesty. fun. happiness. creativity. motivation. 
compassion. ethics. (rugged sexuality. manlyness. - just kidding!)

love being the most important of these. and this was at the heart of
what i was thinking about over christmas. 

its funny. you can know something logically. or in some recess or
fold in the back of your brain. its quite another thing to take it
as a central (or *the* central) philosophy guiding your life. to
accept it as the most important thing. to honestly and sincerely
embrace it as self evident truth. 

as usual, the smiths said it best; 'and yet you start to recoil,
heavy words are so lightly thrown'. these are heavy words, but i'd
like to think that i'm not throwing them around lightly.  

what i realised, put simply, is that love is all there is. its a
way to live ones life... working to offer love to those around you.

i've had a lot of in depth discussions on this theme with a few of
the people around me in the last couple of months. and i've seen
the benefits of maintaining a loving outlook time and again. i
want to be in a position where i can offer an unconditional love
to all those around me. which is built on a genuine respect for
that person, and their passions and motivations in life. i want
to be able to put this love at the very top of my agenda, enabling
me to make the success of others more important than fulfilling
my own short term desires. because not only do i think this is
the right way to be (and i'm getting slowly better at just being
all the time) its self fulfilling. it creates virtuous circles.
i haven't got time to deal in negativity. i want to deal exclusively
in love. and genuine love is always considerate. its distinguishing 
characteristic, as a piece of artwork hanging in my flat constantly
reminds me, is regard for personal dignity. its effect is to 
stimulate self respect in the other person. its concern is to help
the loved one to become their true self. in a mysterious way it
finds its purest realisation in its power to stimulate the other
to attain their highest self realisation. 

i'm not saying that i want to abandon my own goals and development.
just that i want to seek them not by hoarding information, backstabbing
or stepping on other people. i want to seek them through love. 
a quote from milton mayeroff in an article on fastcompany explains
this far better than i can;  "'love', he writes, 'is the selfless 
promotion of the growth of the other.' When you help others grow 
to become the best people that they can be, you are being loving -- 
and as a result, you grow."

this is how i want to exist.

or at least, that is a woefully inadequate, brief and sketchy summise
of the way i want to exist. its as best i could do to translate something
i wholeheartedly and fundamentally believe into rigid sentences. 

i'm not at all trying to suggest that this is the way i *am*. and its
certainly not the way i've been in all situations at all times in the past.
but this recently dawning realisation means that this, above all else,
is how i *want* to be. and what i'm working towards. its not easy. 
its very hard to love some people. but its right. and its true. 

they say that no man is an island. but i think some of us are long
peninsulas. it may take me a long time to become a full embodiment of
what i've just described. and i'm certainly flawed, and will fuck up 
along the way. but i'm learning. and most importantly i now have the
clearest idea of how i want to live, and some of the steps involved
in getting there. it will be an interesting journey, which is about
as much as i can ask. 

am i being naive? quite probably. do i think thats a bad thing? not in the
slightest. will i change my mind a few weeks down the line? who cares. 
right here, right now, everything fits into place. it fits perfectly
into the small set of things i hold to be really true. it makes sense. 
love can be a way of life. it can be a practical approach, rather than
just mushy sentiment. built on respect and compassion it can feed
everything else. 


failing all that, of course, i'm just going to kick some ass :-)


i have begun an ambitious attempt to practically apply everything i've here
described in my professional life. (see next announcement...)