Olympic ambitions

At the time of the Olympics, when we see the constant images of athletes receiving medals and laurel wreaths for their incredible victories, it is not uncommon to feel in ourselves a mix of emotions, starting with national pride, through the individual respect, empathy, envy and ending with sorrow and regret for not being ourselves the winners. We feel that someone who receives a medal is in truth a mere human being, although  an exceptional athlete, and feel that, like them, we had our windows of opportunity, but let it close. We know it's too late now, but then console ourselves. After all, how could it be otherwise? We are mortals and we have our lives to care. How could we have been Olympic athletes?

What is the role of ambition in this context? 

 Perhaps the ambition has no place in the spectrum of feelings of ordinary mortals like us, but, why not, if we envy the winners? If envy, why not be like them? The most common answer is that indeed, we are content with what we have. We are pleased with our small achievements and somehow, the ambition is a dangerous feeling. She can bring medals, but can also bring war, death, and it may be the cause of all misery in the world. Take any problem, personal or global, and ambition serves perfectly as a cause to take responsibility. We can not justify the misery of world hunger as a result of the greed of the rich countries who do not want to give up a small share of their wealth? And our difficulties of day-to-day? Of course, we always attribute our problems to the ambition of the boss, wife, husband, the government or the driver with a newer car.

But what we can achieve in life without a little healthy ambition? Pure and simple humility is the outright disgusting and undergrowth. Even animals are humble in  relative terms. No living thing had a intend to give up what nature bestowed upon them by right. No gazelle surrender meekly to a lion to be devoured. Everyone has the right to be ambitious. Maybe the evil of ambition is when we aspire to achieve our ambitions at the expense of others. From a social point of view, this is the best ambition: that allows us to win, but not prevent the next win as well.
Made this distinction, ambition is not at all a bad feeling. It is natural that is not socially encouraged in our country. A tradition of political and religious makes us, Brazilians people, more humble than ambitious (unlike our dear brothers from Argentina). In a way, the ambition goes against certain Christian religious principles. But this Christian reading of the ambition is nonsense. If we think that the founder of Christianity himself says God, then it is perhaps the most ambitious men, if not even a god. And if he asks us to be like him, so why not give space to our healthy ambitions?
The main question is: is it worth? In most cases, we will not receive any laurel wreath for our efforts, and the overwhelming majority of our investees, we fail, with no right, sometimes having as award only damages. But the few times that we are successful, then the effort will be compensated. At this time, we will be envied and admired, and respected, and be the pride of the nation. And we feel proud of ourselves, and we will be explosively happy, which is what matters most, in the end. As a accessory prize, humanity wins with this, because whenever we do great things, these things tend to be good things, and of which not only we, but all benefit.
So from where start? We have no basis whatsoever to assume that we will succeed, but some lessons our fellow Olympic athletes teach us.
First, that even a superatleta can at most be a pent-athlete, but a versatile athlete, a superatleta. I mean, it increases your chances of success when he decides to be an expert in running, or swimming, or basketball, but not all at the same time. Focus is what they teach.
Second, there is amateur athletes and professional athletes. And if we want to be a professional athlete, the work must be full time, not just on weekends, and not only when we want. Dedication is what they teach.
I wonder, because I have no ambition to shape other ideas or suggest other opinions: what my focus? When will I start to dedicate myself to it?
About laurels , I think them later ...

The lack and the excess of information

I have tried to focus on a productive activity, but I always have with me a slight feeling that no matter what I do, I'm in the wrong direction and wasting my time. I mean, not that I do not see a value in what I do, but looking at things from an existentialist perspective, everything is meaningless. No matter what I do, so I find myself doing some hard questions: Why am I doing this? Where will this lead? What's the point? What do I gain? And if it is an illusion?

Indeed, my problem is everyone's problem, although not everyone knows this problem: the death. Not that I'm afraid to die. I do not want exactly the opposite: to waste my life on something not worth it, but I just go find that it not worth when on my deathbed. This feeling of not knowing what is really worth in life has haunted me for years.

In "Epitáfio", the song of the Titãs, one brazilian rock'n'roll band, have a clear example of the embedded message behind this idea of urgency and alert. The lyrics are like the poem "Moments", apparently Nadine Stair. We should do certain things and not others, or rather, we should do more things and less others. But what guarantee do we in the end? No one. It's a beautiful letter, but don't serves as a foundation for leading a life.

Incidentally, this is the subject of this message: lack and excess of information. We lack information to guide us, and this precisely because we have an oversupply of information. We have the self-help books, and we have religions, and philosophy, and psychology, and we have gurus, and we still have a million other sources of information bombarding us with compelling messages. Do this and be happy, do it and be rich. Leave to do A to do B. Forget C. How to separate the wheat from the chaff? And who ensures that there is wheat in the midst of so much chaff?

We could afford to test these requirements. Practice is the best proof. But life is too short for testing. And at the end of a test that can take a lifetime, we find that the trick does not work? Too late, you missed ...

Doubt has immobilize me. I have to start something, but I arrest myself in a logical vicious circle wich not allow me to leave it. How to get out of a wheel of rats? Where to start a circle? I'm stuck with my own intellectual limitations. I'm not smart or wise enough to find a way out. Meanwhile, time passes ...

Decipher me or I will devour you!

Memory and popcorn

I've been looking around on old ideas that I have also written down in my also old agenda. Things on the excess of knowledge, about algorithms and on axiomatic theories and object orientation. All because I do not think a way to sort my ideas. I am a perfectionist. I do not like taking risks. I thirst for knowledge. Anyway, I had a dream last night that is so crazy, forced me to get out of bed. Once I realized I had finished dreaming, I took pen and paper and wrote down everything that I was able to remind myself: I needed to register the crazy dream not to lose it. It was better than the best films. And so I spent more time writing about dreaming the dream itself, and as I wrote in my old diary, she finally, after five and a half long years, sold out in its ability to record things. She Is complete from beginning to end. She begins with ecological promises and ends with a hallucinatory dream. Very well.

But my memories are not only in this agenda. Days ago, I felt curious to reread a lot of letters I have saved as souvenirs, letters written by me and my family and friends, letters exchanged between the years 1987 and 1995 and who were forgotten in a corner. I put them in chronological order and read one by one. What a surprise! I was impressed with the amount of detail you'd forgotten about how my life was, and indeed still is, rich in experiences, but remembered well, without much effort, it seems obscure and uninteresting. No, I did not have a so boring life, I now realize, because of those old letters.

Happy for my past, I now realize a good use for blogs. They now seem boring and I do not get many visitors, but in ten years will be very happy revisiting it, reading the same things that I will have written ten years ago and not remember more, and I feel grateful to have it done . The fact of receiving a visit is a mere side won.

Of course, not everything is lost forever in our weak memories. Today I had a proof. Without help of a calendar, a diary, letters or a blog, I was able to remember something that surprised me: I made a bag of popcorn in the microwave and then putting them in a plastic bowl, I added salt as usual, but the salt was next to a glass of red pepper sauce. Bingo! Remembrance rescued. Yes, I remembered that as a child and lived in the sleepy village of Tujuguaba,  in the State of São Paulo, we, citizens, used to go on Saturdays and Sundays to the church of St. Anthony, the only Catholic church of the place. A simple little church surrounded by a nice little park with  nice benches, where children played and adults walking. Next to the stairs that gave access to the garden, a popcorn vendor usually appeared. It was Pigeon, the popcorn seller, a thin and quiet man that lived near the church, and took the opportunity to earn a few bucks. There, we ate our popcorn with salt and pepper sauce, and remember now, it was good! I moved from Tujuguaba when I was 14 years old. I spent twenty years without remember in popcorn with chili, and even less in Pigeon. What is the advantage of it? I do not know, but I was happy to remind me of my childhood, popcorn with chili, and that's enough.

We can not misprise these little moments. We are what we remember who we are.

Ecological Thought

In the first text posted on this blog, I mentioned an agenda that I have used since 1999. It is a paper agenda, plain, with a picture of small fishes printed in a hardcover common leaves tied in a spiral of wire. I bought it to write foolishness. It's called Ecoagenda 1999.

Well, early, at the beginning, on the first pages, there is a space to write down or we plan our 'ecological attitudes in 1999.' Once I started using this agenda, I noted five items, five future attitudes, five small projects designed so immediately. Nothing too elaborate. Just simple things that any mortal can do without much effort.

After almost six years, I look at the short list and come to several conclusions rather curious.

However, the first conclusion I reach reading the short list of five promises is that of the five attitudes that planned to adopt in 1999, I really ended up coming to adopt over that time virtually all of them. If not all are being used in its most perfect form, at least in part they are. These small actions taken mean that people change, albeit slowly and unevenly, over the years. I've changed! My first item on the list was 'stop smoking'. And I stopped it, five years ago. I know that there is little relationship between ecology and smoking, but the fact is that I concretized what I set out to accomplish. Have changed provokes a sense of hope in the future, since our present today in part is better than our past, in what we had for him undesirable. If in the past we change for the better, we can continue changing and hope a little better future than today in what we actually do not want.

But not only. I came to interesting conclusions about the process of ecological awareness, or ecological marketing, as well as irreversibly the ecological mentality has penetrated the minds of all people, and how this mentality is partly correct, but partly not. However, these conclusions are too long to discuss in a simple blog. In so far as to put them in writing, and I will put them, I'll be releasing them on my personal website http://rosenvaldo.simoes.sites.uol.com.br/ (for now, only in Portuguese).

For now again, we get the conclusion, simple, but true, that we can change, and we change. Only the time scale of our personal changes is that it is too slow to realize that and we can congratulate ourselves for them.

greetings to our changes for the better!

Jim Carrey - Eternal Sunshine

I watched the new movie with Jim Carrey. I must admit he has a charisma that makes any movie shine, even if the theme itself is not the most inspired. I do not know if this is the case.

The idea turns around a possible technique to erase our undesirable memories. Well, suppose that one day it becomes a reality and we have a girl tired of girlfriend's face looking for a clinic and asking them to forget it, literally. The consequences are not so difficult to imagine. From it I take three conclusions:

First: movies are currently making some sort of subliminal brainwashing, something that, without paranoia, would make a good theme for a movie about the fourth power and the media in general. Each film that suggests a plausible future reality is, even if unintentionally, preparing his audience for a situation when fiction one day will become reality. A movie like Signs makes that if a few years we contact aliens it does not seem so absurd. And not just Signs. Contact, Aliens, Enigma of Another World, and even not Independence Day and Men in Black do this: prepare humanity for the day of real contact. And they make that amazing discovery, such as spacecraft do almost daily in the sky, pass undetected because no dazzling from the movies' point of view. A computer like Hall 2000, from "2001: A Space Odyssey", makes our modern Pentium seem old valve radios, while even Bruce Willis in "The Siege" has not been able to prepare us for a September 11. But in general, the movies flatten the ground, leave the work more manageable.

In the field of medical advances, a highlight is Vanilla Sky, trying to prepare ourselves for the day of our immortality. And Tom Cruise tries again to prepare for the day that dominate the extra-sensory powers, in Minority Report. This, with Jim Carrey, try doing the same, though very quietly, very subliminally.

My second conclusion: that if one day we have available a feature like that, it would actually no use more than a cardiac defibrillator or a medical ultrasound  monitor screen. I do not know if normal people would want to forget something, even undesirable. Sure, there are traumas that must be forgotten, but what's the point you forget a bad relationship, a bad boss, a bad day? I think really, we are our memories, and not without reason that a blow to the head that makes one forget all that life is lived is a bizarre event considered of a medical point of view, and thus this citizen does not  has a personality, from the social point of view. He has a past, it is true, but only in the others  minds. He, from himself,  is a no one: a simple blank slate. We are what we are exactly because we are the sum of our good and bad memories. Who would not be surprised when you hear an old song, reread an old book, watching an old movie, meet a face long forgotten, travels back to the places long forgotten, rereads a yellowed forgotten letter in a drawer somewhere? Even a bad memory that will be remembered in these cases is still welcome. So...

I make my third conclusion: that our problem is not a  forgetfulness machine. This we already have: the time. Just wait and all will be forgotten sooner or later. Our problem is the opposite. We need a machine to remember. We need to dig deep into our minds and find out, put saved forever all what a day we live, even if when we put saved on a sheet of paper, in a journal, in a speech with our grandchildren and even in our blogs, why not? Imagine the day when we have a remembrance machine. Sit back, pay your session and have good memories! And save them on video! Show the world what you really lived!

When this day will come?

Questions that do not want to shut up

I wonder:

After all, what is the purpose of a blog?

What are people willing to take a blog seriously?

What is the time required per day to make a default blog a custom, cool and attractive blog?

And then, if it is much visited, what to do with the thousands of e-mails of praise, congratulations and criticisms?

What aspires a blogger?

Is the only purpose of a blog the fighting for fifteen minutes of fame and then a count of page views great and sad?

What have we really important to add to the world, and in particular to the Internet?

It's worth the effort to spend hours every day browsing for new pictures to the blog, new ideas for the blog, new contacts for the blog, new disclosure about the news of the blog, new animated gifs again and more and more disclosure?

Can someone in good conscience really believe that a blog be a source of fame and money?

Why to think that someone who has to manage his own blog, and everyone have your on the Internet, may be interested in reading other people's blog, your direct and immediate competitors?

Who may be curious to know what goes on in my life, except those who know me personally and also know everything that is on my blog, because they live here beside me, watching things happen in real time ?

A blog generates more questions than answers.

Alright! What's matter is experience. I think ten years from now we will remember blogs as things did not work, like cars that could fly, or as small dinosaurs, fossils, which have evolved to better and more efficient forms of virtual communication. I hope that blogs evolve, because the way they are today, seem to me something without identity, without purpose, without personality.

And a photolog, then? Where does it end?