Life at 40

I finally started the Arabic course that I’d always promised myself I’d take. Guess that makes me a bona fide terrorist then. It was interesting that not a single Asian was there. I did notice a short guy called Jason from Washington who found it difficult to meet my gaze and looked like he had been sent by the CIA. I was amazed at how many white people wanted to learn Arabic – and how few brown people – I was the only paki there. There was a Moroccan, who already knew Arabic, but not how to read and write. I still haven’t got around to doing my first week’s homework, there just isn’t the time.

Work is taking up more and more of my life. I find myself resentful of this, but trying not to be as I remember Indonesian Nike slaves one quarter my age with no life whatsoever. Just a couple of years back, I was so utterly on the rocks, that to look at where I am now, I can only exude gratitude.

Unfortunately, I have not had much time for family, friends or blogging. This is obviously not good. I would dearly love to attain that fabled work/life balance. I’d prefer just to call it life balance, as this clumsily named idea gives as much (if not more) importance to work as it does to life – and to imply that having more of one means less of the other is clearly daft. If work isn’t part of life, then what is it, slavery? I shudder when I think of it, because for many, that is exactly what work is.

My landlord has decided to sell up, so having moved 4 times in the last 3 years, I am once more forced to move again within four months – unless I somehow achieve a miracle and get to buy it out. I’m tired of packing up my life and moving on again, and this time, there’s two of us. Since 2003, I’ve lived in Maida Vale, Stanmore, Fulham, Cricklewood and Willesden. If I don’t buy this place, it will be 5 moves in about 3 and a half years.

You know what they say about a rolling stone, right? Well every time I have moved, I have discarded more and more of my past, more and more possessions and it seems that this is life’s way of telling me that I haven’t quite got rid of enough stuff yet. That’s worrying. there’s only a few guitars, books, synths and CDs left. And this laptop that is almost as old as my divorce.

I’ve kept an eye on the news, kept some clippings in del.icio.us and found that political blogging tends to be seasonal. It’s not just my output that has gone down, many of my blogmates are seasonally quiet too. There must be some statistical analysis device that can predict such lulls. Maybe I should bear in mind the Somerset Maugham story (The Ant and the Grasshopper in case you’re interested) that my dad taught me when I was 8, and hoard up some posts for times of famine.

I went to Paris last Thursday on business. I travelled First Class on Eurostar. It was a treat. I’m a big fan of First Class rail travel. I don’t think there’s any form of travel quite so romantic and indulgent. When I become welathy again, and insha’Allah, I shall, then this will be the one luxury I will enjoy without guilt.

Whilst in the meeting with the company I’d gone to visit, I was quietly impressed with their hospitality, their charm, their command of English and the spread of Pepsi Max and baguettes that they had so sumptuously prepared. I wished I could speak French. I was humbled, I always am, but safely revert to the humility and embarassment that is the safety net of the English-speaking lazy sod who knows he doesn’t have to try, because everyone else does it for him. Kind of like modern children, who have absolutely everything laid on for them by their guilty, middle-class parents. Some of them grow up to be self-reliant, independent, capable adults. Many do not.

I felt an overwhelming love for humanity in this meeting, apropos of nothing I thought, but then it dawned on me… travel does broaden the mind if done with humility and with a will to understand that other cultures are equally valid and respectable and need not be crushed underneath the boot of imperialism to be deemed equal.

Good parents (and managers!) are taught to condemn the behaviour, not the person. It is a little difficult to feel compassion towards people like George Bush, Ehud Olmert and Tony Blair, certainly not before dispensing that compassion towards those more worthy and needy, but in order to be truly good, that is what is necessary.

Can one hate evil without hating those who are the embodiment of it?

It’s hard to answer such questions when all the time, gnawing away at me is clocksense that reminds me that it is now past midnight and I must be up at the crack of dawn to work tomorrow. It’s hard to focus on what is important in life when one knows that there are functions and events to attend after work until the early hours and that the following day, I’m off to Madrid, again, sacrificing dawn to midnight to my employer.

Life balance? I’ll get back to you on that one.

Salaam.