Slowly the Quiet Morning Unfolds

Friday. It is grey skies outside, but quite warm. The light is brittle. Outside seemingly not a soul is stirring.

Sam has today day off too, he had some sort of crisis at work Cup Day and had to work, so today is in lieu of that.

Sam makes us mango, sticky rice and coconut milk for breakfast. Yum, yum. I manage the coffee machine.

We’re sitting around with Buddy and Bruno on our screens. Our breakfast library. Clearly too quiet for Buddy as he barks at us wanting more attention.

Bruno rolls over on to his back up against my left thigh with his legs in the air, I rub his tummy as I contemplate more coffee.

Ah, it is a dog’s life. I want to come back as a pampered bulldog in my next life. 

Oh course, I say this purely as a figure of speech, you know, as there is no next life, that is just deluded thinking, mostly from people who haven’t got over their childhood. Heaven, Father Xmas and the tooth fairy, all stuff we should get over as we become adults.

My mate David believes such nonsense, which gives us hours of discussion. 

I was telling him how a friend of mine wrote on Facebook on the second anniversary of her father’s death, “Thank you dad for all your love and guidance since we lost you.” And how such ridiculous thinking tests my resolve not to make comments on the deluded’s Facebook posts.

There was silence on the other end of the phone, momentarily. Then there was David’s careful and considered voice in response, “Oh yes, I can see how that would go down in the Christian Fletcher play book.”

“Oh yes,” I replied. “You always lull me into a false sense of security about you being a sane and rational person.”

If he heard me say I want to come back as a pampered bulldog in my next life, he’d say

“I know you believe it deep down, and you are just too stubborn to admit it.”

“Dust,” I’d say. “That is what awaits us after death.”

“And yet you just admitted to a belief in an afterlife.”

“It’s a figure of speech.”

I gazed off out into the garden as I rubbed Bruno’s tummy. I closed my eyes at the thought.

What we all believe, I think? I guess it comes from our parents, mostly. So, if you have uneducated parents, I guess you will believe certain things. 

I guess, then it comes from your childhood and what experiences you have?

And probably, after that, and to a lesser extent, it comes from experiences you have as an adult. I guess.

The birds call from the trees outside and momentarily I am transfixed by their morning song, and the incalculable thoughts of why everyone thinks the way they do.

It is good that we all think differently, it makes the world go around, it makes it more interesting, more dynamic. But what about all the toxic people with ugly thoughts? I guess that is where equality becomes so important. Equality in opportunity, equality in living standards and wealth, equality in education. Equality is good for everyone, like all people of the world being vaccinated. If you exclude sections of the world from vaccinations, that is when you get mutations that can threaten the rest of the world’s population. Equality works exactly the same way.

I shake my head and break the trance and head to the kitchen to make a second cup of coffee.

Sam asks me, "What do you want to do today?"