Tony, Tony and Tony

Great days like today are just wonderful. A real delight. It’s just perfect for what I like, warm, really warm but not hot which is great because I don’t like it hot, at all. And there’s no wind and it’s just, well, ideal. I’ve been for a drive and I’ve enjoyed the view as well. There’s cows that look at me as I drive past and I see happy people walking and talking.

But whilst I’ve decided that it’s a great day you may not like it so much. Maybe in fact you’ve decided that it’s a bad day. Perhaps you’ve had something nasty happen to you today, maybe something really terrible. Your day just isn’t working out so that’s how it’s going for you.

But it’s different for you than it is for me of course. It’s entirely in the eye of the beholder and that’s why it may be wonderful for me and terrible for you. My day is the best ever, yours is the worst.

My point is that everything is subjective. What is a great day to me seems obvious to me, but maybe not you. It couldn’t be anything but a good day, for me. But that’s only me. I love the day but if you don’t its a terrible day for you.

Maybe you see terrible things in the day, all bad, darkness. The best day for me is the worst day for you, that’s how it works.

Surely the only explanation is that it’s in our minds, what the day is like. We see the day through the filter of our minds. We don’t see the day, we see what our minds tell us the day is like. We filter the day through our minds and our experiences and decide what it’s like for us.

I even think it’s possible that if you and I have the exact same experience of the day we will see it totally differently the 2 of us. You come for a drive with me and we see different things. You see the same cows, the same sunshine, the same people, but maybe you don’t even see them. Maybe you see something completely different.

Your mind registers the same things as mine, and records it, but it filters it all through the experiences you’ve had in the past and mine does that too, and that makes our experience of the day different.

Even if you have the exact same experience as I do you may well see it totally differently, depending on how its filtered by your mind. You might drive through the same countryside as I do. You might see the sun, the cows, the kids and so on, but your mind may not even register them.

Your mind might just be looking at the downside to everything. And thats because your mind filters everything according to past experience. What has happened to you in the past is all recorded in your mind and it filters every future experience. So even though youre seeing the same sun, cows and kids as I am seeing your past experiences are different from mine and so your mind uses the  past to filter what youre seeing now. (more…)

Cycling Gets You Outdoors And Getting Fit »« Do You Live In The Country? I Do And I Wouldn’t Live Anywhere Else.

Do You Live In The Country? I Do And I Wouldn’t Live Anywhere Else.

I’m lucky enough to live the country life and I just love living here. I’ve lived out here for 10 years now, that’s more than I care to remember actually. And I grew up in the city but I wouldn’t really want to go back there any more, in fact you’d have to drag me back.

There’s lots of things in the country that you just can’t get in the city at all. For example I love to cycle. It keeps me fit and less fat, and I know I need to keep fit. It gets me outdoors and I love the outdoors, here out in the country.

Around me there’s so much to cycle past, the view is hot. Fields with cows, alpacas, sheep and goats. Horses too, though I don’t like horses so much which is a shame. But I love cows and sheep and I have my own cows, each with its own calf, and I love them dearly. Each is treasured.

There’s so many advantages to living out here and cows and calves at my place is just one of them. It’s nature and I love nature. You can’t live without nature.

Its summer now and its hot, really really hot. We’ve had some really stinking hot days lately. Now of course if I lived in the city it would still be hot. But here I see the cycle of the seasons so well I feel more intune with it. I feel more at one with the seasons and with nature now. I see the grass wilt and die when summer comes, I see the grass regrow and get green again for winter. It see snow, I see drought, I see rain. It’s all part of nature.

I see the leaves of the trees turn different colors, there’s so many wonderful colors. I see the new trees growing underneath the old ones when the seeds germinate. I see the old and the young, I see the new and the not so new. It’s the cycle of life.

Nature cycles just like me, and I love to watch it all happening right through the year. It’s the renewal of life over time.

If I lived in the city I mightn’t even have a garden.  AndI mightn’t have a tree at all. I might have a lot of concrete, I might have a balcony and a BBQ, but I mightn’t have a tree or a blade of grass or a cow or a sheep.

And unlike here I probably wouldn’t get to see the seasons change like I do now, and the seasons are a whole part of change.

The city is so sterile. I spent a lot of years there so I know what its like. Now of course that’s just a personal view, but that’s how I feel about it and I know not everone feels that way.

Even the rest of my own family live there. My brother loves it and he’s single so I suppose he needs more social life than me, and there’s probably more social life in the city. But I don’t like it.

I grew up in the city and spent most of my life there. Then it was fine but it really feels now as if I wasted a lot of time in the city, I wish I’d been born in the country instead. I feel a little like I wasted a lot of my life in the city, that’s sad isn’t it?

Well not wasted I suppose, but that’s how I feel. I  waste it at all of course. I should ask my brother if he’d like to live here but I doubt he would. He likes the city. That’s his prerogative. (more…)

Tony, Tony and Tony »