Early December 2012

A lovely sunny day to remind one that human life can be brilliant at times irrespective of personal wealth or the lack of it.

Reading through some of my previous blog posts suggests a tendency to be affected or  sometimes afflicted by events in the world as reported in the media. The atrocities committed by man on man woman and child throughout the world, do tend to feature in the  media rather more than articles about the the plethora of human kindnesses. Possibly this is  because articles about the ordinary kindnesses displayed  every day by  humans to each other the world over, sell few newspapers whereas graphic and sometimes hideous accounts of  war or other evils, make the headlines and sell  more papers.

But today the sun is shining and  the congregation at mass this morning  8th December celebrated the Catholic feast of the Immaculate Conception. Christmas present buying is getting underway and peoples' moods on the streets seem, ok only slightly  more buoyant  than usual but still upbeat. Christmas cards are beginning to arrive and secret santa gifts for work are being thought of. All pretty ordinary really and not the stuff that sells newspapers yet such ordinarynesses  are  in many respects, the spice of actual  life.

Sometimes life's ordinarynesses are so commonplace that one can almost sleepwalk through them and only wake up so to speak when interrupted by  an event which is unusual - the Olympic Games 2012 were a great example as  for a few days each morning's travel to work on the District Line, seemed  to be shared with people from round the world who were concentrating not so much on waking up and traveling to work but on witnessing some fantastic human endeavour. This seemed sometimes  to  cause us commuters   to reflect a little  if not squash up to make  more room. Realisations  then creep in that the ordinary commute is perhaps potentially  at least, sometimes colourful as well as routine.

Occasionally   a newspaper article or some unusual event also  reminds me that life's routines can actually  be quite interesting if not fun in themselves. Of course realisation then also sinks in that for some people  the ordinaryness of life is almost that of survival. Refugees, homeless battered wives and neglected children to name but  few. No human can save the world alone.

However  on crisp sunny days like the 8th December 2012  is at the moment  in SW19/20, there is a feeling that maybe together mankind can really  thrive.

Tomorrow is another day though...