Excitement is over-rated

It dawned on me the other day that I no longer get excited, nor do I seek excitement any more. One can be excited by the prospect of travel; I'm not. I've not been on holiday for 12 years, nor do I hanker for a holiday. I'm not excited by watching sport or going fast.

This is a profound difference between me today and the younger, thrill-chasing me.

Am I happier! Of course I'm happier! But why? What is it about an ascetic rural lifestyle that brings happiness? Primarily, peace of mind, agency over my time. Repeatable moments of joy.

One question arises however. I am convinced of the reality of non-local consciousness, of the survival of identity after death – in the form of consciousness and its associated qualia memories – rather than ego. The ego being intrinsically linked with the body, with its appearance and its place in the status hierarchy, dies with it. But consciousness, pure observation, abides. 

Much of the lore surrounding reincarnation features people with memories of dying young, of lives tragically cut short, and of the desire to return again to experience more of human life. 

But what of reincarnation as experienced by people who die in old age? A long life may bring substantial wisdom, along with a sharper perception of how much remains unexplored. I know what I know, my belief system is becoming ever-clearer, but I am also increasingly aware of what I don't know.

I witnessed two great forces driving my father forward in old age, namely observation and curiosity. Not everyone has had the benefits of a great education, but with enough observation and curiosity, aided by access to knowledge unparalleled in human history and more time for self-improvement, the life-long learning potential of an autodidact is vast. 

What's needed is the drive to learn; focus (for those wanting to specialise in any one field), the energy required to keep on with the hard work. And the inspiration to tap into the Flow, frequent moments of deep intuition. Didn't have enough of these qualities this time round? Ask for more next time.

A spiritually mature consciousness is likely to choose a next life that is not high in status or excitement, rather desiring an existence that offers the right conditions for further development.

Here I bow towards Plato and his Myth of Er in Book X of The Republic. For Plato, the purpose of philosophy is partly to prepare one's consciousness for the moment of biological death and the choice that follows. The philosophically educated person learns to distinguish a superficially good life from the genuinely good – wealth from justice, fame from wisdom, power from self-mastery. Once each soul has selected a life, its chosen destiny is confirmed. The souls then forget their old lives, before being reborn.

Much as I admire classic sports cars, ownership of one is not for me. Entropy would soon turn it to rust, I have zero mechanical or engineering skills; in any case I would not seek to wring out every last ounce of power on my local backroads, nor do I feel any compunction to show off a beautiful car in front of people. 

Should I have any curiosity regarding places such as Göbekli Tepe or any number of anomalous prehistoric sites, I can visit them online these days, and watch talks about them from experts. The prospect of flying off anywhere is no long exciting; the prospect of sitting for several hours in an aluminium cylinder at 30,000 feet, between security and passport checks. No thanks.

Excitement – I have have passed onto a higher plane.

A house full of cats and long rural walks.

Happiness is a 1:1 ratio between your expectations and your reality. (J. Koba)

This time last year:
The Aesthetic Attention Span

This time three years ago:
Wałbrzych, Książ and Riese

This time 11 years ago:
Something new in the skies over Okęcie

This time 12 years ago:
How the other half lives – a Radomite's tale

This time 13 years ago:
On guard against complacency

This time 14 years ago:
Ready but not open – footbridge over Puławska

This time 15 years ago:
Dusk along the Vistula

This time 16 years ago:
Mediterranean Kraków

This time 16 years ago:
Around Wisełka, Most Łazienkowski, Wilanowska by night

This time 17 years ago:
Summer storms

This time 19 years ago:
Golden time of day

Epigramology by Jacek Koba

"Dogs fetch. Cats bring. Therein lies the difference." An example of Jacek Koba's witty sayings, a few of which have ended up on this blog – Jacek being a regular commentator here for over 15 years. Now he has published a book, Epigramology – Modern Epigrams and Aphorisms, which is an absolute delight. The contents: over 600 epigrams covering modern life, from politics, money, religion, work, education, relationships, travel and... cats and dogs.

Epigrams and aphorisms are an antidote to the expendable content scrolled up by modern media. They require pauses, consideration and return. "The reader is encouraged to dip in and out at random," it says in the preface. Indeed – this book is perfectly suited for confined spaces; it has been designed to be dipped in and out of, during those brief private moments in which the reader can extract meaningful insight. Epigramology should be read in short bursts. Read a few, close the book, pause to think – and then return.

The very title Epigramology sounds half-classical discipline, half-laboratory mishap: the scientific study of the sentence that goes off in your hand. This is the territory of the epigram. A miniature essay that won't waste the reader's afternoon. The book's original subheading was to be "Quintessence, Luminescence and Incandescence", which neatly categorised the epigrams around the three – definitions, insights, and rage.

The epigram is an unforgiving literary form. A weak poem can hide behind atmosphere; a padded essay can take refuge in nuance. But an epigram is out on its own. It must enter, strike, take a bow, and then vanish. If it lingers, it becomes advice. If it explains itself, it becomes a LinkedIn post. If it moralises, it becomes a bumper sticker. Epigramology is a project to revive a classic form that demands intelligence, compression and a pinch of elegant cruelty. It diagnoses our troubled civilisation one sentence at a time.

Personal bugbears I must say intrude somewhat – Epigramology has it in for the urban cyclist in the same way that my blog has it in for the SUV buyer/driver. And this causes me to reflect. Both targets are sublimations of the real villain – Homo inconsideratus incogitans – the inconsiderate unthinking. Czlowiek, który się nie zastanawia (the person who contemplates not).

The book was self-published via Amazon, and I must say that self-publication has now been made vastly easier and cheaper than ever before. AI's role in the publishing process is making big changes. Authors can now check their content for originality – and for epigrams, originality is crucial ("I must have read this somewhere before but forgotten it"). For publishers, AI is a vital tool for protecting themselves against accusations of profiting from plagiarism. Large language models are ideally suited for sifting through everything that's ever been written to ensure that what had genuinely come from the human mind is fresh.

Raise a wry chuckle with your after-dinner speeches by dropping some Koba epigrams into them.

My favourite Jacek Koba quote, one that I have successfully deployed in my life, is "Happiness is an expectation-to-reality ratio of 1:1".

Epigramology is available from Amazon.com (link here).

This time two years ago:
Qualia Compilation 8: Eye operation

This time three years ago:
A date for the history books

This time five years ago:
WinterCity/SummerCountry

This time six years ago:
Homage to Americana

This time seven years ago:
This land is my land

This time 11 years ago:

The day, seized.

This time 14 years ago:
Classic British cars for British week

This time 15 years ago:
Cara al Sol - a short story

This time 16 years ago:
Pumping out the floodwater

This time 17 years ago:
To Góra Kalwaria and beyond

This time 18 years ago:
Developments in Warsaw's exurbs

Politics: An objective assessment of your subjective reality

WRITTEN ON THIS, THE 37TH ANNIVERSARY OF POLAND'S TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACY

So many people today get wound up by things that do not remotely affect their day-to-day lives. Migration is a good example. People living in picturesque English villages that have seen an influx of three foreign workers say they feel “swamped”. Young people with no direct connection to the Middle East drifting into anti-Semitism because of Gaza. The issues may be real enough, but the emotional weight attached to it is often wildly disproportionate to its actual impact on the individual’s actual reality.

This is not to say that migration, war, terrorism or national identity are trivial matters. Of course they're are not! But proportion matters. Russia is an existential threat to Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians and Poles in a way that Israel is not an existential threat to citizens of South London. Islamic terror is an existential threat across parts of Africa and the Middle East in a way that it is not to people living in rural Poland. 

The closer a threat is, the more materially it constrains daily life, the more rational it is for politics to be organised around it. If you like in Kyiv right now, the prospect of being killed by missiles or drones sent at you by a bloodthirsty madman is very, very real.

National politics should, at root, be about two things: the economy and security, internal and external. Citizens have a right to feel safe. They also have a right to expect that their hard work, thrift and enterprise should be rewarded by growing prosperity. When governments fail on these fundamentals, anger is justified. When anger is transferred instead onto distant symbolic causes over which neither the citizen nor, often, their government has much practical control, politics becomes emotionally satisfying but civically useless.

Sitting here in rural Poland, I see a country on the rise. That rise is not accidental. Macroeconomics are not just a matter of government policy; they're also the aggregate result of habits, incentives and behaviours of millions of people, earning and spending money. If people are entrepreneurial, hard-working and forward-looking, the economy moves in one direction. If too many people become comfortable sitting back on generous welfare benefits, it moves in another.

There is a simple test. If there is something you can do about a situation you dislike, do it. If there is nothing you can do, then moaning is pointless. And 'doing something' does not mean shitposting on social media. It means acting in the real world.

Don’t like massive increases in traffic, density and suburban overdevelopment? Move out to the countryside. That's what I did. Don’t like the direction of your country? Build something, employ someone, stand for office, volunteer, organise, write, teach, invest, persuade. Face to face, not online. [Ditching Twitter/X in November 2024 led to an instant improvement in my mental wellbeing.] Politics should not be a theatre in which people pin their frustration onto remote causes. It should be the practical art of improving the conditions of life where one actually stands. Delivering solutions rather than winning arguments.

We are approaching the tenth anniversary of the Brexit referendum; the UK economy is some 3.5% to 4% smaller than it would have been according to official reckoning. That's a huge difference to the budgets of households on the edge. Diddly-squat to the billionaires who convinced the precariat to vote Leave.

This time last year:
Farewell, beloved grapefruit

This time two years ago:
Sixty-Six and Two-Thirds

This three years ago:
Marching for Openness and Normality
[We have it. Let's not get complacent.]

This time six years ago:
40th anniversary of the Osieck railway accident

This time six years ago:
Moonrise, Nowa Wola

This time seven years ago:

Awaiting the Summer Sublime

This time ten years ago:
4 June - a date remembered for...?

This time 11 years ago:
Corpus Christi, rural Mazovia

This time 12 years ago:
25th anniversary of Poland's transition

This time 13 years ago:
Poland's infrastructure progress

This time 15 years ago:
Wetlands in late-spring

This time 16 years ago:
Jeziorki's flood of floods: Puławska and Pozytywki

Jeziorki's flood of floods: Sarabandy and Karczunkowska

Jeziorki's flood of floods: Trombity and Kórnicka

This time 17 years ago:
Another time, another place

Lent 2026: day 44 – the importance of nuance

Our brains are wired to seek certainty. Evolution takes no prisoners – that's either a sabre-tooth tiger waiting to pounce on you from that outcrop, or it isn't. Life has become vastly more complex ever since. As we struggle to understand reality, we need to ask: how do we do so? Assuming of course we have enough curiosity; some folk simply ask why bother?

An intellectual framework. Do we need one? Or just take asking those questions one at a time, as they come? Here's a start. Ontology – the 'what we know', and epistemology – the 'how we know it'.  Epistemology? Heuristics is many people's epistemology. Making macro-level deductions from observed patterns. "He's a bad 'un, and that one's also troublemaker. They're both immigrants, therefore by deduction, all immigrants are bad and immigration should therefore be stopped." Bayesian inference – your epistemic confidence rises with frequency of observation. "Trump has lied yet again – I can now confidently assert that he's a liar."

And then there's the question of lumpers or splitters. Are we trying to divide and subdivide aspects of reality into ever-smaller discreet units (splitters)? Or are we trying to manage complexity by grouping commonalities into larger categories for easier assimilation (lumpers)? Or both? Or neither?

But when it comes to spiritual questions, we find ourselves wrestling with inchoate intellectual structures, rather than material quantities. Our intellectual framework has no empirical evidence to go on. A divine presence ordering the Universe? Where's the scientific proof? Life after death? I know many people who have died, none have returned from the dead. 

Our certainty-seeking brains look for tidy answers. Solutions rather problems that further investigation. Close the door to that question, declare it solved and move on to the next one, rather than living in a world of ongoing uncertainty. Nuance is uncomfortable.  It often requires finding balance between the objective and subjective; holding two seemingly contradictory views at the same time. So it is important to be able to feel comfortable with uncertainty while engaged in the quest for answers. Leaving things to fate, submitting to the flow; like a gibbon flying through the air before grasping the next branch, trusting that the next insight, the next incontrovertible fact, will be solid enough to support you on your further quest. 

Your personal ontology is the result of the interface between intellect and intuition; a blend of what you have worked out vs. what has come to you; what you have read vs. what you have experienced.

On the face of it, there seems to be no room for nuance in binary questions such as "Is there a God?" or "is there life after death?" The first one suggests a yes-no answer, rather than a challenge to define 'God'. Similarly 'life after death'. Is this even the right question? 'Does consciousness survive the death of its erstwhile biological container?' is a more nuanced framing.

Ultimately, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and the like are futile questions; approaching theology and metaphysics through logic, using deduction and inference is a dead end. Answers that satisfy you, subjectively, that do not need external validation, they come from personal experience. From insights, but above all from intuition.

Feel comfortable in uncertainty.

Lent 2026: day 44
Kicks, thrills, fun, pleasure – and joy

Lent 2024: day 44
Spirituality and the Dream World

Lent 2023, day 44
The Purpose

Lent 2022: day 44
Habit, discipline or obsession

Lent 2021: Day 44
Life after life after life after life

Lent 2020: Day 44
A myriad paths to God

Lent 2026: day 41 – in touch with the intangible

Early morning walks on an empty stomach (but after a strong black coffee, no sugar), are for me among those moments of repeatable joy, especially when the sun is shining through. There's a buzz in my head, a slight giddiness, not at all unpleasant, a mildly altered state. Walking through the forest, catching sight of a hare or deer, absence of traffic or indeed anybody, awareness of the seasons, a connection with nature. Gratitude; connectedness; a grounding in base reality, touching the sense of life.

Who or what is God? Certainly, God is not a person. God is by nature indefinable to our human minds. We are not to fully know God until the moment of ultimate unity.

As I walk this morning, I find myself considering a test for the ego: would you wish another incarnation as a human, or would you rather rush through to that ultimate union with Brahman, with The One, with God? 

To be honest, I feel I'd like another crack at life as a human (though next time with more wisdom, resulting from spiritual evolution). I'd like to carry on with and within the cycle of samsara (birth, death, and rebirth). For the sake of curiosity. Knowing that within one lifetime, there can never be closure.

No rush, just a slow, patient, continuous improvement based on series of learnings, reaching higher and higher levels of metaphysical insight. Life after life after life. In tangible, physical, biological form. Consciously guided wetware.

Does this suggest that my ego, far from being switched off or even dimmed, is still interested in manifesting itself in future bodies? Reluctantly, I have to answer 'yes'.

Do I need another adventure, or do I just want one? What do I wish for my next incarnation? This is where the narrative arc of the ego needs to align with the Purpose of the Cosmos for optimal results. The best answer is: "I wish to continue learning, to continue in spiritual growth, and to receive with simplicity whatever biology I am born into."

And here I return to a fundamental thought I've often harboured since youth: had my parents not met, my consciousness would still be here, on earth, in biological form – just not the biological form that I currently inhabit. Everything that I'd have in common with that hypothetical person, essentially awareness, metaphysical will, and those qualia memories – familiar flashes of exomnesia harking back to a previous existence – is rooted in consciousness. Everything that's different – DNA, upbringing, environment – is rooted in biology. 

The intangible, the ineffable, feels so far off, but I do believe that spiritual evolution brings us closer to at least having some vague idea of life is for, why something exists rather than nothing, the true nature of reality – and the true nature of God,

Lent 2024: day 41
More Questions than Answers (Pt II)

Lent 2023, day 41
The End of Times

Lent 2022: day 41
A Better Future

Lent 2021: day 41
The Holiest of Holies

Lent 2026: day 25 – death (and life thereafter)

Hope. When it comes to the survival of consciousness after biological death, that's what we have. But is it all we have? I would argue that we also have insights gained from reports of near-death experiences (NDEs), as well as first-hand intuition, which suggest that there's a reality to this.

The consciousness that moves upon the face of the Earth is not to be extinguished. 

Last April, as I was lying on the operating table in the middle of my heart attack, I had the profound – and most calming – intuition that should I slip away, I am ready for death and fear it not. Though with no idea of what would follow my physical demise.

Unlike matter, subject to entropy, consciousness evolves; in alignment, I would argue, with the unfolding of the Cosmos. We observe; we are curious; we spend all our lives learning. There's too much to take in during a single lifetime. The journey from Zero to One is eternal; our consciousnesses are not even midway on that journey. 

Consciousness is, I believe, the fundamental property of the Universe. It is from consciousness that matter and energy, space and time, derive. Our individual small 'c' consciousnesses, in the here-and-now, are participating in something far greater than that spanned by the life on the individual biological container that currently houses that small 'c' consciousness.

I feel certain that consciousness survives the demise of the physical container in which it's housed for this lifetime. The real question for me is how does this work in practice? Does consciousness migrate to a new body? Human or some other life form? On our world, in our timeline, or somewhere else? When? Straight away, or after a certain period (Christian purgatory)? Or does individual consciousness merge with the Big 'C' Collective Consciousness (the Christian notion of  'being seated at the right hand of God' in heaven, or the Hindu and Buddhist notions of nirvana)?

Both Buddhism and Hinduism hold reincarnation to be a fact. Whilst Buddhism sees individual consciousness merging into  an Eternal Whole, Hinduism sees spiritual evolution as a series of bodily reincarnations (saṃsāra), with lessons learned along the ascent to a final merger into the Big 'C' consciousness.

My personal experience with exomnesia, anomalous qualia-memory events and past-life dreams suggest the Hindu interpretation, with an endless series of reincarnations into new containers, new human lives, new lessons, new learnings. But then, my strong intuition that "all who seek God shall find God in their own way" suggests a myriad paths to that ultimate oneness...

Today, I attended the funeral of Peter Hauke, another West London boy whom I knew for over 50 years, who died last month, aged 64. I have so much to be grateful to Peter; above all, Peter was instrumental in my move to Poland. One day in 1995, he popped by my house to ask if I'd be interested in doing some consulting work for the mobile-telephony company he was working for in Warsaw at the time. I jumped at the chance, and within two years I had been offered a full-time job in Poland. Peter taught me many practical things, from how to order a tidy Excel spreadsheet to the right way to sharpen a scythe. He has helped me out on my działka – the very chair I'm sitting on was a housewarming gift from him. A natural educator and serial entrepreneur, Peter had the character of an Ancient Greek logician and an Enlightenment natural philosopher. His consciousness, I am certain, abides.

Lent 2025: day 25
Words, music, memories and other mind-altering drugs

Lent 2024: day 25
Dealing with Evil

Lent 2023, day 25
Intuition and Dreaming

Lent 2022: day 25
Writing It All Down

Lent 2021: day 25
Faith and Knowledge

Lent 2020: day 25
Chances, complacency and gratitude

Lent 2026: day 24 – hope

Things change; that is a constant. But are they changing for the better but for the worse? Right now, the world is asking – will the eventual outcome of the war in Iran be positive or negative? The answer is granular; the answer will be found in the lives of the hundred million or so people that it affects directly, and the billions that it effects indirectly. Most of these human beings will one day look back at how events since 28 February 2026 have have influenced the way their lives have subsequently unfolded.

Does hope help? Psychopaths, sociopaths or a crazy end-times religious maniacs excepted, most people tend to hope for the best. But can that hope – can those prayers – actually translate into positive outcomes, or should we abandon hope and accept that what will be will be? 

This is about setting those sliders between Doing Something and fatalism. Well do I remember the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine four years ago. After the shock and the uncertainty, the world simply got used to it. "Do wszystkiego można się przyzwyczaić," as my late father used to say ("You can get used to everything"). We can; we are resilient. We live in hope.

Ukraine, supported financially and in materiel (to a greater or lesser extent) by Western democracies, is holding Russia to a draw; the war is costing Russia heavily. But who would have expected it to drag on for so long? We hoped for a coup in Moscow. We hoped Putin would be killed or just die. We hoped that successive Ukrainian offensives would push the occupiers out of its sovereign territory. None of that happened. We hope the Iranian people will throw off the shackles of the murderous regime that tramples on its personal freedoms and stifles their economic wellbeing in the name of religious fundamentalism.

Peace and freedom are good things to hope for, for others as well as for ourselves. 

Collectively, we are learning. Some societies learning faster than others.

Brexit, the Iranian revolution of 1979 – people hoping that an imperfect world will get better if they leave the EU or overthrow the Shah. Their hopes manipulated by those determined to get their chance to rule and impose their worldview on millions. [The fundamentalist regime ruling Iran for the past 47 years stands as proof that religion and government should never mix.]

This is a hopeful time of year. The past two weeks have seen winter chased away, mainly sunny days, brightness and a sense that nature of starting to wake up. Here amid the orchards, there is the ever-present anxiety that a late frost might yet come along and damage the crop. "The hope that springs eternal/Springs right up your behind" – Ian Dury, This Is What We Find (1979)

If we live in hope, we should be prepared to wait; things tend to get better with time. Align with the Cosmic Purpose. 

And this leads to the Biggest Question there is – survival of consciousness after biological death.

Lent 2025: day 24
Reality – as we perceive it, as it is

Lent 2024: day 24
The Ego Alone

Lent 2023, day 24
We are all Sentinelese? 

Lent 2022: day 24
Memory, identity and reincarnation

Lent 2021: day 24
Reconciling science and spirituality

Lent 2020: day 24
Refutation (II)

Lent 2026: day 15 – the luck you will yourself

Controversial, but mine. If you overlook the chance of misfortune befalling you, it will befall you. But if you consider the possibility of it occurring, you can forestall it. I sincerely believe this. Some might think me naive, yet it's something I've observed since childhood. It's usually the unexpected that creeps up on you. From big things like heart attacks to small things like delayed trains.

In an uncertain world, outcomes are random. A solar flare could knock out all electrical power on earth. A supervolcano could plunge us into a seven-year-long winter. An asteroid strike could lead to a mass-extinction event. A plague could sweep the earth. Nuclear holocaust could be unleashed. To date, we have sidestepped these. But for how long? As long as it aligns with the Purpose for us to do so...

Nudging outcomes, but only if they align. Wishful thinking? Yes? Whyever not? 

The Purpose of the universe is not for you to live a life of luxury and high status. But then neither is it for you to suffer in discomfort. Align your wishes with this, and be mindful of what can go wrong along the way. 

Mindfulness and prayer merge. "May I not slip up on the ice" becomes not just a petition to the Lord but an instruction to self; "be careful out there". Sceptics may argue that effect = not slipping over on the ice is caused by attention's triumph over inattention. But a metaphysical 'guardian angel' effect may also be involved.

If we look at luck through the prism of quantum mechanics, the observer effect and the possibility of willing outcomes at the subatomic level – could we not train ourselves to do this at the macro level? To alter classical-mechanical outcomes with our will? Highly speculative, a matter of belief and personal observation. But if it works out in 51% or more of cases in your life over many decades, well, hey – it works for me. Call it pseudoscience, I have no idea how it works, but it is practical. It's just that you have to cover so many bases. "May the shit not hit the fan." But which shit, and which fan?

When I step out and lock the front door, I make that conscious prayer that I may return safely home, my  tasks achieved, the day fulfilled in its promise. And on returning home, the cats all well, I give thanks. 

Take care. Look after yourself. With mindfulness. Look after our planet, too.

Postscript: I prompted ChatGPT and Google Gemini to produce an illustration for the theme "willing yourself good luck". Both images were predictably full of horseshoes, four-leafed clovers and dice. Not the point.

Lent 2025: day 15
The Ego's journey through life

Lent 2024: Day 15
Aligning Prayer with Cosmic Purpose

Lent 2023, Day 15
Intuition and instinct

Lent 2022: Day 15

Religious belief, practice, inquiry and experience

Lent 2021: Day 15
The Afterlife – Faith and Doubt

Lent 2020: Day 15
Rites and Ritual

Lent 2026: day eight – the power of gratitude

"Thank God for that!" Even the most avowed atheist might catch themselves saying that, when faced with positive outcome from a situation that could have gone horribly wrong but ended up just fine. Illness, financial matters, a legal tussle, a near-miss in the car. A sigh of relief, and a deep sense of gratitude. 

Illustrations: Google Gemini (left) and Chat GPT (right)

But be grateful to whom? It was just a random happening! It was a stroke of luck, pure chance that things turned out well, when they could have ended up as a catastrophe!

"There but for the grace of God, go I." 

"You don't even believe in God!"

"It's just a saying."

But was that positive outcome random, or was it somehow meant to be – or did we will that good outcome into existence? That would suggest magic thinking – magic being defined as a physical effect that has no physical cause.

Being thankful is powerful; it is more powerful than asking. Who receives more from his master over the long term – the grateful person or the supplicant? 

Gratitude's evil mirror is complacency. Taking good fortune for granted. Like being born rich, clever, energetic, driven, talented and beautiful and not feeling the slightest sense of gratitude for those gifts. "Accident of birth, eh?"

Wake up in the morning without aches and pain. Feel grateful for that. No financial worries. Again, be thankful. Be grateful that all is as well as it could be.

Gratitude is proof that you are aligned with the Flow, of being at one with the Purpose. "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you" – Rashi. But receive with thanks everything good that happens to you.

Don't take it for granted; the sense of entitlement ('mnie się należy') is a bad feeling to experience. Pride comes before the fall. So every time something goes right for you, when it could equally have gone wrong, take the time to experience gratitude, to really feel grateful. To be aware that you are grateful. It is a more powerful habit than asking Providence for something.

Lent 2025: Day eight
On Consciousness (Pt II)

Lent 2024: Day eight
Spirituality for our (New) Age (Pt III)

Lent 2023: Day eight
A Universe into which life fits exactly

Lent 2022: Day eight
Body and Soul

Lent 2021: Day eight
Guilty of feeling guilty

Lent 2020: Day eight
Salvation - or peace of mind?

The Long Review of 2025: Pt IV

Long and short of it: I had a heart attack on Saturday 5 April, had stents fitted immediately, spent six days in intensive care and now pretty much all is well with me, healthwise. Daily medication has come down from a maximum of ten pills a day to six, and I hope that next May's check-up will lead to a further reduction in doses.

Changes in habits? Well, no more strength-building exercises such as pull-ups and push-ups. Just the plank and back-extensions to maintain spinal flexibility. Will be returning to squats and balance-maintenance exercises in the New Year. More walking than ever; I've averaged over 12,500 paces a day every day across the whole of 2025. Not as fast as before though. [A Year in Numbers will appear tomorrow]

Changes in diet? A massive decrease in consumption of yellow cheeses (Cheddar, Parmesan), replaced to a degree by white cheese (Lidl's Balkan cheese in particular). This has lower levels of saturated fat. Out (totally) has gone Chorizo, sadly; meat has disappeared from my shopping, apart from duck breast fillets (eaten with skin off, which the cats love). No more hams or sausages. A lot more vegetables. And much more porridge oats. More on the numbers tomorrow.

Changes in my approach to life? Take it easy, man! But on the other hand, time ticks away, write more, think more.

This time five years ago:
Review of the Year II: Investments

This time two years ago:
Exploration of a largely unknown Ealing

This time five years ago:
Eric Ravilious

This time ten years ago:
Dark thoughts at 2015 comes to an end

This time 11 years ago:
Shots from the sky

This time 12 years ago:
One-millionth of a zloty 

This time 14 years ago:
Random year-end thoughts

This time 15 years ago:
Beery litter louts

This time 18 years ago:
Xmas lites, Jeziorki

All Souls' Day Pilgrimage

A good pilgrimage for the day. I set out in daylight, arriving at the cemetery in Rososz around sunset, and walk back in darkness. Five kilometres there, five kilometres home. And a chance to look at a cemetery at the end of the two-day commemorations of Zaduszki, All Souls' Day or in Latin, Commemoratio Omnium Fidelium Defunctorum. Those Poles who had not visited the graves yesterday came today, which means that maximum candlelight is to be seen in the evening of 2 November. 

Doing my shopping in Lidl on Friday, the aisles were blocked with pallets of votive candles, advertised as having a burn time of 72 hours. Buy on Friday, light on Saturday, it will still be burning brightly on Sunday. And on Sunday evening, cars were still turning up bringing visitors to the cemetery.

Rososz is a small community; the cemetery belongs to the parish church, which was built in 1985, the earliest graves in this cemetery dates back to the late 1980s. As such, this is an unusual place to visit; it's neither large, nor historic, nor famous. But a visit it merits, the destination of a reasonably long walk. As with yesterday's visit, I look at each grave, noting the names – so many familiar surnames, reminding me of people I grew up with in Polish London. And those surnames that raise a wry smile, simply because they don't exist in an English context (Jeż = Hedgehog or Myszka = Mouse). And the age at death. Like in Chynów, so many died all too early – especially the men. All too often I see: "Zm. śm. trag." the date and the age; "zmarł śmiercią tragiczną" – he died a tragic death.

I came, I experienced, I felt.

This time last year:
To Warka, again

This time two years ago:
Early-November reflections
[More photographs from Rososz cemetery]

This time six years ago:

Autumn moods, Ealing

This time seven years ago
Walks in the early-November sun

This time ten years ago:
Foggy evening, London

This time 11 year:
Kraków – Europe's top short-break destination 

This time 13 years ago:
Rzeczpospolita publishes infamous 'trotyl' Smolensk story

This time 14 years ago:
Wilanowska - south Warsaw transport hub

This time 16 years ago:
Powiśle on a cold, clear autumn morning

This time 16 years ago:
Okęcie "to remain Warsaw's only airport"

This time 18 years ago:
Searching for autumnal perfection

Death comes to mind

Today is All Saints' Day (Wszystkich Świętych), tomorrow is All Souls' Day (Zaduszki). Falling this year on a weekend, the two days draw all of Poland to its cemeteries to remember the departed. The time of year coincides with the death of both of my parents; my mother on the night of 31 October to 1 November (2015), my father on 28 October (2019).

Poland's cemeteries are ablaze with candles; this is a beautiful and meaningful tradition that is taken seriously by most and ignored by few. I find the best time to go is just after sunset, in the fading light of day. My walk today took me to the cemetery in Chynów. 

As I have noted in past years, I am struck by how young men used to die in rural Poland. I walked along one row of graves and counted 16 belonging to men; ten died younger than my current age (68), only six died at the age of 68 or older. Having said that, the newest graves do show a marked tendency for greater male longevity than the historical average. Having said that, the wójt (mayor) of the gmina (municipality) of Chynów, Tadeusz Zakrzewski, died on 19 September – aged 66. The election for a new mayor takes place on Sunday 7 December; candidates' posters are up all over the gmina.

Below: the nearest grave is of father and son; both died at the age of 67.

I walked home the long way, down the (recently asphalted) ulica Spokojna, as far as the railway tracks. Left: an impressionist view looking towards the forest. The moon might look full, but it is only 81% waxing gibbous. Will be full just before midnight on the fifth (fireworks night in the UK). Note the reflection of the moon at the bottom of the image; this is an artefact of the lens rather than a puddle. 

Below: the San InterCity express from Warsaw to Przemyśl hustles through Chynów station, exactly on time. Stopping at Warka, Radom, Sandomierz and Rzeszów on the way.

Below: gratuitous cat photo – Arcturus on the doorstep to see me off on my walk. "Don't be too long, human, cats will be wanting to eat." Looking very grown up at four and half months old. About the same size as his mother, Wenusia.

I am still adhering to my SAD-busting routine, waking up half an hour before sunrise. Below: view from my kitchen window of dawn breaking through the trees of the forest next door to my działka.

The sight of a sunrise is powerfully uplifting; it sets me off for the day and is a signal that one has to make the most of the day – and one's life.

This time last year:
All Saints' Day, Chynów

This time three years ago:
Thoughts on the occasion of Allhallowtide 

This time four years ago:
Four days of sublime Golden Autumn

This time six years ago:
Obit

This time seven years ago:
The Good News

This time nine years ago:

Jeziorki railway modernisation – update

This time ten years ago:
On the death of my mother

This time 11 years ago:
Marek Raczkowski on All Saints' Day

This time 12 years ago:
Disclosure of UFOs - are we ready? 

This time 13 years ago:
Jeziorki pond development

This time 14 years ago:
Captain Wrona's perfect gear-up landing

This time 17 years ago:
Where's the daylight gone?

This time 18 years ago:
All Saints' Day - Wszystkich Świętych

Letters to an Imaginary Grandson (IX)

Should you avoid risks, or take risks? Neither and both. You should be aware of what is a risk and assess that risk before choosing whether to go for it or back off. Consider the consequences if it going optimally or going wrong. Consider the secondary and tertiary consequences as well as the obvious one. Can your decision to take the risk be undone, walked back from? Or will you be stuck with it for years, or for life?

"Quid quid agis, prudenter agas, et respice finem," as my mother, who died exactly ten years ago today, would tell me. "Whatever you do, do it prudently/wisely and consider the end result/the outcome. As a child, I'd question the word 'whatever'. Does this literally mean every single thing you do? If so, your brain would fry from having to consider every possible possibility whenever doing anything more challenging than breathing or blinking.

Well, yes. Even if momentarily. The chosen course of action could go wrong, or it could bring reward. Half a second's conscious thought is a better guide than no thought at all. Intuition is a good guide to follow, even better than thought. There's the danger of over-thinking things, 'paralysis by analysis'. Better to find yourself 'in the flow', that blessed state when your consciousness is aligned with the Purpose of the Universe and everything naturally falls into place.

Consider why you are interested in taking the risk. Good reasons? Or bad ones (seeking glory, riches, luxury)? This should be an important filter.

With age comes experience, the bitter-sweet experience of risks taken or avoided, and it becomes easier at 65 to assess whether an upcoming risk is worth taking or not than at 15 or 20. But as a young man, with a lifetime of decisions ahead, being able to identify risks in the first place is essential. Ethics stand as a useful filter. Don't take what doesn't belong to you. You may think you can get away with it, maybe you can, maybe you can't. However, it's not about the risk of getting caught –  theft is morally wrong and legally sanctioned. 

Moving to Poland with a young family in 1997 was a risk, though less of a risk than in 1990. The decision proved to be absolutely the right one. 

[Incidentally, following on from yesterday's post: went to bed at 21:30 yesterday (22:30 summertime) and got up at 05:00 today (06:00 summertime), seven and half hours in bed, nearly all of it spent sleeping.]

This time last year:
Valencia and manmade climate change

This time last year:
On death

This time four years ago:
Improvements on the Radom line

This five years ago:
Rural rights of way, revisited

This time six years ago:

Cause of death

This time seven years ago:
Opole in the late-October sunshine

This time eight years ago:
Work begins in earnest on the Karczunkowska viaduct

This time ten years ago:
Sublime autumn day in Jeziorki

This time 11 years ago:
CitytoCity, MalltoMall

This time 12 years ago:
(Internet) Radio Days

This time 13 years ago:
Another office move

This time 14 years ago:
Manufacturing a City of Culture

This time 15 years ago:
My thousandth post

This time 16 years ago:
Closure of ul. Poloneza

This time 17 years ago:
Scenes from a suburban petrol station

The kittens at two months

Feline development is mind-blowing. To think that these little fellows, now eating solids, chasing each other, grooming, sleeping, eating, fighting – and using the two cat toilets in the sień. All those neuronal connections in place such a short time after birth – astounding. Developmentally, an order of magnitude faster than humans. Personalities taking shape. Each one of the five healthy and happy, enjoying life, exploring the environments of their home. Wenusia has proved to be the most excellent mother. Now the kittens are allowed to roam, she keeps a watchful eye on all five in case any should stray too far. But eight weeks of breastfeeding has hollowed her out; she is very thin despite eating vast amounts of catfood. Her favourite remains Dolina Noteci's salmon-flavoured stuff. [Trouble with this is cleaning the tins afterwards for recycling – the cat food is damned difficult to remove from the corrugations.]

Below: photo taken a week ago, towards the end of the kittens' eighth week. All five feeding. From the left: Scrapper, Czestuś, Pacyfik, Celeste and Arcturus.

Wenusia has also grown up tremendously these past two months. She's aged about 20 human years over that time. I have very soon have her sterilised – she does not want to or deserve to go through all that again. She's got lots of life ahead of her.

Scrapper – the first born – eyes wide open, manic, hyperactive – and if there's a fight going on, he's involved. Like all his siblings except the ginger tom Czestuś, all have kinked tails, with two 90­° bends, looking like little downturned question marks. Below: Scrapper in uncharacteristically calm mood. Normally, he's round-eyed, his head jerking rapidly towards any new stimulus that crosses him. A John Belushi character.

Celeste – a longhair cat, grey tabby with white underside, a ball of fluff who looks like a little teddy bear, as wide as she is long, stumpy-tailed but beautiful to look at and to stroke. Below: Celeste has her brother Pacyfik in a neck-hold. She might be the only girl, but she gives as good as she gets from the boys.

Czestuś – the friendliest of the bunch, he is the most likely to come over to me and give me that slow double-eyed blink of feline trust. And he'll lick my hand. The fourth born. During the first weeks, he was the biggest and fastest growing, now just slightly smaller than the rest. 

The twins, Pacyfik (Pacuś) and Arcturus (Arkcio); similar in behaviour; as they grew they weighed exactly the same, to the gram; they are placid, but able to fight back vigorously should Scrapper start on them. More likely to sleep apart from the other three (I now have two cat baskets).

Below, from left: Scrapper, Czestuś and Pacyfik, chilling in the sun.

Below: Arcturus, starting to look like a mature cat. Emotionally well-adjusted, most likely to wander off on his own. Two months ago, he'd just emerged into the world.

The vet will soon be called. Sterilisation reduces the risk of cancer and other diseases. I don't like the smell of male cat urine. I don't want more irresponsible cat fathering! Sorry mates, the humans will have your balls!

Ah yes, the 'm' word – mice. Wenusia has brought home three mice, two dead, one alive, on successive nights. The first was eaten by Pacyfik. End to end, leaving nothing but a small bloody stain on the kitchen floor. The second dead mouse was eaten in similar fashion, by Scrapper. The third was still alive. Celeste killed it and ate it whole. Now, Wenusia does much of her hunting in my neighbours' allotment, thus ridding them of a vermin problem for the various crops they're growing.

Will I give them away? Right now, every one brings me joy – more importantly, every one of them brings joy to their siblings and their mum. Keeping them together as a family for as long as possible is good for them developmentally and emotionally. In the wild, mothers will drive their little ones away at around six months old, after which they are expected to find and mark out their own territory. Should there be any conflict between them... well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Below: Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe. family group – all five with mum. Wenusia is stretched vertically, licking her paw. Scrapper lies with his foreleg across her back, the other four are attempting to feed with various degrees of success.

I must say, the kittens have brought me so much joy. It's wonderful to wake up to a kitchen full of kittenish mischief every morning. So far, other than the usual scratches to fabric and my skin, no damage done. 

Below: Wenusia, fast asleep. She's given so much of herself. Instinct and intuition guide her.

Below: still feedin' with three on the teat this afternoon – Scrapper, Celeste (note her long hair) and Pacyfik. Kitten paws gently kneading mum's belly to express the milk.

And now the controversial part. I feel fairly certain that Wenusia and I can communicate telepathically. I look in her eyes and think. And I feel she understands. I communicate to her my respect for the way she has handled motherhood. She responds with a slow blink...

This time last year:
A run of perfect days

This time five years ago:
Twilight motorbike ride

This time six years ago:

Are we Bodies or Souls?

This time nine years ago year:
Popping out for a drink

This time 15 years ago:
In search of happiness

This time 16 years ago:
Mercenaries and missionaries

This time 17 years ago:
Spectacular sunrise, Jeziorki

Consciously, mindfully, averting misfortune

An early morning insight, between sleep and wakefulness: {{ We can preclude catastrophe; we merely need to consider the catastrophe and discount the possibility of it happening. That conscious act collapses the wave function* }} 

This is the notion of quantum luck. Misfortune often strikes unexpectedly. Rule it out by expecting it, by thinking about it, considering it... and at that moment the wave function collapses. [The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics postulates a multiverse in which an infinite number of universes co-exist, each sparked by collapsing wave function. So there is a universe in which you leave home consciously considering the possibility of your house being burgled – and you return home to find that it has been burgled. But not in this universe.]

The obverse is quantum luck is indifference to fate, to random misfortune. The obverse to quantum luck is also complacency; the thinking-by-default that if I were lucky yesterday, I'll be lucky today and I'll be lucky tomorrow. No. You will only be lucky today and tomorrow if you are grateful that you were lucky yesterday. You have to consciously feel that gratitude for this to work. Being mindful, aware, grateful.

You live in a world shaped by priors, things that have already been established, over which you have no control. Accident of birth is the most significant prior. But a whole series of unfoldings is constantly unfolding, possibilities that turn into realities. Fate, random events... 

You are studying for an exam. By chance you come across a fascinating article that explains some question that has been bothering you for some time. You set out this thinking in your exam essay – and it lands you a higher score, which gets you into a better university, where you meet the love of your life... Or not. Once the possibility has crystallised into reality, it becomes a prior from which further events unfold. Good and bad. You can't change the past, but you can influence the future. By action, obviously. But also by conscious consideration. Guided by a desire for good, rather than by ego.

The doomsday scenarios that we guard against. A supervolcano eruption. An asteroid strike. A devastating pandemic. A coronal mass ejection of the sun that knocks out all electricity on earth. Somewhere, on our planet, someone is considering each of these possibilities, and is thus guarding us against them. Last week's 8.8-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Kamchatka was the sixth-most powerful ever recorded and yet the death toll was zero. Good preparation (mass evacuations following tsunami warnings? Mitigation through better civil engineering)? Or – as news came over the airwaves of earthquake, could it have been the conscious hopes of millions of people around the world?

Mystical Judaism has the ideal that there are 36 righteous people (the lamed vovniks) who between them sustain the world. Mindfully watching out for all us sinners. Are there just 36 of them? Did God make the world in six days? I feel that yes, there are conscious folk out there watching for us at macro level just as I am consciously aware of averting misfortune at the personal level. 

Religion is a story we tell ourselves. Science is a story we tell ourselves. Which do you believe? Or do we each weave our own narratives to explain reality? Can God be boiled down to a physical formula? Can science explain the soul?

* I asked Google Gemini to explain the collapse of the wave function in quantum mechanics in simple terms: "Imagine you have a spinning coin in the air. Before it lands, it's neither 'heads' nor 'tails'; it's in a fuzzy state of being both at once. This fuzzy state is like the 'wave function' in quantum mechanics. It contains all the possible outcomes, each with a certain probability. The 'collapse of the wave function' is what happens when you catch the coin and look at it. The act of observation forces the coin to 'decide' on a single outcome – it becomes either definitely heads or definitely tails. All the other possibilities vanish instantly. In quantum mechanics, this is a central idea: until we measure or observe a particle, it exists in a superposition of all its possible states. The moment we measure it, its wave function 'collapses', and it settles into just one of those states."

This time last year:
Warsaw's progress to normality

This time four years ago:
Summer winding down

This time eight years ago:
My Mazovian roots

This time nine years ago:
My father revisits his battleground

This time 11 years ago:
Over the hill at Harrow

This time 12 years ago:
Behold and See - the Miracle of Lublin - Pt 1.

This time 14 years ago:
Quiet afternoon in the bazaar

This time 15 years ago:
The politics of the symbol