C.S. Lewis Quote

"You know how it is when you shed few tears or none, but there is a weight and pressure of weeping through your whole head."

Excerpt from Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis Quote

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

C. S. Lewis

Quote: Susan Greenfield

"My mum always said if you copy other people you'll always be second rate. Just be yourself. There will always be people richer, younger, thinner or cleverer. It's a silly trip if you compare yourself with others." -Susan Greenfield, Oxford-based neuroscientist

Quote: George Alagiah

"I remember a piece of advice given to me by an ex-military instructor on one of the survival courses BBC foreign correspondents were sent on. 'When you're hurt, when you're wounded, there is nothing more you can do. You'll only make matters worse - for you and everyone else - if you try to charge around. Find somewhere quiet, somewhere dark and lie down. Stay awake but stay calm. Get your pulse rate right down. It's for your buddies to do the worrying.'" George Alagiah - A Home from Home: From Immigrant Boy to English Man

Quote: George Alagiah

Nigel and I are big fans of George Alagiah, reporter and newsreader for BBC. For years he was their foreign news correspondent. We are reading his second book now which deals with immigration, in particular to the UK. It is also an autobiography of his own experience coming to England as an 11 year old boy for boarding school. "Migration is rarely about severing one's links with the old country. It's not about burning your bridges once you've got across, it's about building the bridge in the first place. The whole point is that others might follow, or at the very least you'll be able to send something back. Sending out a migrant is like making an investment, it's like putting money away for a pension. Everyone who chips in to help fund the journey can expect to make a return." "As a system of shifting money from the rich world to the poor world it works. Indeed, it does so far more efficiently than most official aid programmes. According to the World Bank, in 2002, for the first time, remittances sent home by migrants exceeded the amount of cash that went to the poor world in the form of official aid or private bank loans. Petrol station attendants, pizza delivery boys, nurses and doctors - together they transferred some US$80 billion in that year. And this only accounts for the money that statisticians can keep track of; billions of dollars more find their way to every nook and corner of the world through informal distribution networks. In its report for 2005 the bank estimated that if you include unrecorded transfers, the amount of money that went to poor countries was more like $250 billion. When British politicians boast about their plans to increase the country's aid budget, it's worth remembering that they will have some catching up to do if they are to match the amount sent back by immigrants, most of them at the bottom of the social pile." "Unlike the official aid programmes, there are no expatriate staff on tax-free salaries, no local bureaucrats to be paid off. Governments are not deciding who should get the money, people are. And there is a far smaller risk that the money will be end up paying for some grandiose project to feed the vanity of a tinpot politician. The money transfers end up in new roofs for old houses, in school fees and medical bills, and every now and then in an airline ticket so the migrant son or daughter can return in triumph."

On Children

On Children Kahlil Gibran Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable. Marianna, Kahlil's Sister. Painting by Kahlil Gibran

On Marriage

There is a wonderful woman I have met who lives in a windmill. The very same windmill that J. M. Barrie is said to have written Peter Pan from. Alas I did not take photos of her home, but she sent me two poems by Kahlil Gibran. This one is for friends who are about to embark on married life. On Marriage Kahlil Gibran You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore. 

You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.

Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God. 

But let there be spaces in your togetherness, 

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another, but make not a bond of love: 

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. 

Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. 

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf 

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, 

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. 

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. 

And stand together yet not too near together: 

For the pillars of the temple stand apart, 

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow. The Marriage of Tristram and Isolde (Burne-Jones)

On Learning

"Emotions and motivations are also fundamental to learning. Strong emotion connected with an experience helps the brain store information in a way that is more accessible and more easily retrieved. Too much stress, on the other hand, can result in reduced blood flow to the frontal lobes, impairing the ability to think and remember clearly. Taking pleasure in a task is an especially good way to learn well. Our brains release a neuro-transmitter called dopamine in anticipation of the pleasure we expect to derive from a particular activity. The dopamine motivates us, increasing our energy and drive and encouraging us to engage in the activity. If our brain's expectations of pleasure in a certain activity is met, dopamine levels remain elevated. If the pleasure enjoyed is even greater that predicted, dopamine levels are increased and we engage even more persistently in the activity. Conversely, if the activity is less pleasurable than anticipated, dopamine levels drop sharply." Daniel Tammet, Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Human Mind

Quote: Albert Einstein

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution". Albert Einstein

Interesting UK Tidbits

I am studying to take my UK Immigration test and there are all sorts of interesting facts I am learning. I keep getting asked if I am excited about getting my citizenship, but there are steps to go through before I can apply. I started off with a Spousal Visa (I couldn't leave Canada after my wedding until I got it...hence the Canadian honeymoon), and am now applying for Permanent Residency (I still can't vote or access social service funds), and finally citizenship (which of course will remain dual with my Canadian). "Until the late 1950s and early 1960s young people dressed in the same way as their parents, listened to the same music and lived their lives the same way. Then teenagers were invented - the word teenager was brought into use at this time - and suddenly, the advent of the contraceptive pill, pop music from artists such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, teenagers had much more freedom and started to live a different life. Fashion followed and young people soon began to look and behave in a totally different way from their parents." Excerpt from The British Citizenship Test by Bernice Walmsley

Quote: George Alagiah

"[International schools] still prosper wherever there is a large concentration of expatriates. They are aimed at the foreign parents who like the idea of living somewhere exotic but draw the line at enrolling their children at a school where, heaven forbid, local kids might actually be in the majority. These are the same people who will tell you glibly how they love Africa. What they mean is that they love what Africa stands for in their imaginations, rather than the reality. Like the chattering classes in Western capitals who are right behind the idea of multiculturalism but make sure they live as far away as possible from those parts of the city where the cultures actually mix and, sometimes, clash.

International schools usually make a point of advertising the fact that most of their teachers are trained abroad - a not-so-subtle way of implying that local teachers can't be any good. They are stuffed to the brim with the children of ambassadors, multi-national executives and so-called development experts. And always there is a smattering of pupils from the local elite, who end up developing views and accents that are utterly at odds with the nation they are being groomed to run. These are the people Frantz Fanon wrote about, so tellingly, in Black Skins, White Masks*, his book about the false dawn of decolonisation.

The products of these schools are a part of a new world class - not an upper or lower class, not even middle, but what I like to call the global class. They inhabit a new space outside national boundaries and conventional measures of social standing. Though they may carry the passport of a particular country, their allegiance is more to a way of life, a standard of living. These people are not to be confused with the international jet set, which is made up of those fortunate enough to have come into some serious money. Though comparatively well off, the global class is not necessarily cash-rich."
-George Alagiah, A Passage to Africa, 2001

*Black Skins, White Masks can be read in its entirety on GOOGLE BOOKS.

Quote: George Alagiah

"In Ghana we began that great ritual of the rich world, the weekly shopping trip. You know those United Nations tables that compare countries according to gross national product per capita or hospital beds per thousand people? Well, I'd like to offer a new, and just as meaningful, category: the number of shopping trips per family per year. Only relatively rich people can be sure enough of their income next week to blow a whole load of cash this week on food. Only people wealthy enough to have their own transport or to pay for a taxi can manage to get all these goodies back home. And only those with money will have fridges and freezers to keep what they've bought fresh enough to be consumed days later."

"In global terms, if you have a roof over your head, food on the table, a doctor who will not charge you when you're ill and a school place that does not depend on your ability to pay, then, my friend, you are rich. That is what every British citizen has of right. So many of the civil wars and conflicts I have reported could be solved if the states concerned could deliver anything like the kind of life we in Europe take for granted. People who have the opportunity to make a living and to pass on the benefits to their children are unlikely to be seduced by the blandishments of class warriors or the peddlers of ethnic solutions to economic inequality."

-George Alagiah, A Passage to Africa, 2001

Quote: George Alagiah

"Outside, our driver, Al Hassan, would be polishing the paint off [our Peugeot 404]. I used to watch as the little beads of sweat formed on his brow. He'd mop them off with the cloth he was using to clean the vehicle.

The only thing he allowed to interrupt him was his morning prayer. He would take his mat, which he kept rolled up in the boot, and lay it out under our mango tree. Collecting some water in the empty Cow & Gate milk tin he kept specifically for the purpose, he would perform the ablutions set out in the Koran. Then he would kneel and touch his head on the mat, whispering something I could never understand.

'What are you saying?' I would ask.

'I'm talking to God,' he replied simply.

Yes, but what are you saying to Him?'

'I'm not saying anything. I'm not telling him anything. Just that I am here to serve him.'

'Don't you ask him for anything? I asked God for a new bike. Maybe you can ask him for a new car.'

'No. I just want him to keep us safe.'

Years later, as I travelled through the Muslim Sahel, I would see this ritual in progress a thousand times, perhaps at the ancient mosque in Timbuktu or in the shadow of a petrol tanker on the road to the north of Nigeria. I still cannot watch this simple act of Muslim worship without being aware of a wonderful sense of continuity. It's the absence of any ceremonial props that has always fascinated me. One man in communion with his God; no fuss, no bother. It was like that in 1966 for AlHassan; it is the same for hundreds of millions of others today.
This early and close-range familiarity with Islam is, I think, one of the reasons why I have never been tempted to accept the fanatical adherents of the religion as truly representative of the whole. In my mind Islam has always been a religion of quiet purpose and private worship; a religion that aims to help in the pursuit of personal fulfilment and communal advancement. Indeed, a religion that tries to balance the ambition required for the former with the restraint necessary to achieve the latter. Al Hassan's Islam never seemed threatening when I was a child and I refuse to feel threatened by it now."

-George Alagiah, A Passage to Africa, 2001

Quote: George Alagiah

"When I joined the BBC, arguably the Western world's most influential broadcaster, I told myself I would avoid the clichés. If I took pictures of the starving, I would try to preserve their dignity; if I showed footage of conflict I would try to explain where all the anger and hatred came from. I wanted to challenge the image of Africa as a place of tribal savagery and greedy, callous leaders.

But Africa didn't help me. All too often it was difficult to make sense of what I saw. That's the way it has been since the BBC sent me back to Africa for the first time. Liberia was a bad place from which to attempt to rebuild the continent's tarnished reputation. Two and a half decades after I had left for boarding school in England, Africa was in worse shape than I could ever have imagined."

-George Alagiah, A Passage to Africa, 2001

The State of the World

"One illusion has been shattered on 11 September - that we can have the good life of the West irrespective of the state of the rest of the world. Once chaos and strife have got a grip on a region or a country, trouble will soon be exported...The dragon's teeth are planted in the fertile soil of wrongs unrighted, of disputes left to fester for years or even decades, of failed states, of poverty and deprivation."
-Tony Blair at the 2001 Lord Mayor's banquet.

"Widespread poverty and chaos lead to a collapse of existing political and social structures, which would inevitably invite the advance of totalitarianism into every weak and unstable area. Thus our own security would be endangered and our prosperity imperilled."
-John F. Kennedy arguing in 1961 for a big increase in America's aid budget.

"In the aftermath of September 11 people were fond of saying that 'the world had changed'; that life would never be the same again. What they meant, of course, was that life in the rich world, and especially in America, had changed. In the poor world nothing much had changed at all - except that many more countries would be regarded with suspicion and many more of their citizens seen as potential terrorists."

"If leaders like Tony Blair (and those that follow him) remain true to their words, then over the next forty years Africa might well look very different from the way I have had to portray it during the last forty years."
-George Alagiah, A Passage to Africa, 2001

Quote: Henry Ford

“If you think you can’t do a thing or you think you can do a thing. You’re right.”

Henry Ford, American industrialist and pioneer of the assembly line product method, 1863-1947.

Quote: Moby

On George Bush: "A lot of what I want to talk to him about is faith. Because I try not to judge, but I really don't understand the notion of a pro-capitalist, pro-death penalty, pro-war Christian. To me, that just seems like a vegetarian who eats a burger."

Moby, musician, May 2006

Quote: C.S. Lewis

"Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of pre-conceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than a minority of them - never become even conscious of them all. How much of total reality can such an apparatus let through?"

C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Mercy Motto

"All [humans] are equal, but some [humans] are more equal than others."

-butchered quote from Animal Farm by George Orwell

Quote from Recent Book

"Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolation of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand."

C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed