Nothing Special and Speaking Out

let me be clear about  one or two things:

first of all,i am nothing special,except in the sense that ALL life is precious and that we all tread a unique path,a unique journey from which we gather experiences and hopefully a little wisdom,and a few other important things too.none of this,i hope is false modesty,but i hope is a rational realism.i am just a"bloke",a man.One amongst billions of other people,most of whom i believe are trying to get on as best they can,doing the best they can to lead a decent life,help each other when we can and"live and let live".i hope i am humble in that,not least in placing some controls on my ability to be arrogant,which i hope is one of  the things about me that may have mellowed as i have got older.

there is nothing intrinsically important or special about my opinions either.i am not a genius,i am not even clever.i hope it has the value of experience in which we can all and any of us learn from each other,not least how similar and different we are to  each other-a confirmation of just how much we have in common,whilst confirming that your and  my road or pilgrimage through life cannot,as material beings-having some kind of solidity about us,i suppose,cannot be exactly the same.

at the risk of contradicting myself,it does have value as experience and hopefully some wisdom-not my own but learned and collected from life or those genuinely greater than me-and i don't mean names or celebrities,stars or intellects necessarily.at another level,it seems to me we live such atomised,alienated and often isolated lives that it is easy to be both intimidated and silenced by that wider life.it too has ben privatised,even from ourselves.it reduces us to lacking self confidence and daring not to speak at least in this culture.working class people in particular seem to learn what is not true,that they have no voice,no opinion,no talent-that we are reduced to our labour.i do not believe nor accept that to be the case,though for me"evidence"that  we are social beings is inherent in the reality that we need each other to encourage each other to be confident.i speak,i write in that effort and that belief.in addition,as a man(i do't like the dichotomy,i prefer a spectrum or continuity of gender identity,but that is another issue)i feel men do not speak out or share enough of ourselves or some of the issues that confront or affect us.so i speak out on that too.

i learned a long time ago,that sometimes,i suspect quite often,in situations where change is potentially quite limited it might be enough to learn that our neighbour,friend,comrade,even the stranger next to us shares some of the experience we are going through is if not enough,then at least a good start.despite some of us being still in control of much of the world,that has a price for us,and especially those exerting less rather than more power and control(i do not deny that most if not all men will have some power and greater in relation to other human beings).some of us feel uncomfortable with that power.many of us are socialised in particular ways which render us silent or at least inarticulate about our situation.some are silenced partially or entirely.we also self censor.i write,comment,speak in that context.

the rest,i hope will speak for itself...

d1/16092013