The Count begets the Prince.
The news we read these days border the bizarre. I remember a column years ago in the Toronto Star which I liked very much, “News of the Weird”. At least their peculiar news made us laugh, a welcome change from horrible catastrophes, Economy crisis, tragedies and other nuisances or sadness that invade our houses and minds every day, almost as a routine. Things happen in a such a speed that we don’t even have time to digest and absorb one bad event, another one comes along.
The hero of the week was Angela Merkel. Leading her colleagues, she managed to avert an unprecedented Economic disaster, that would shake the very foundations of capitalism and throw us into a Financial Holocaust of colossal proportions. Something like the Great Depression with people jumping from buildings or the mega Depression in Germany in 1922 (50% of the active population unemployed) which paved the way for a bunch of criminal and sadistic crazies a.k.a.the Nazis, to take control of the country and commit crimes unheard of in Human History. If we get all evil people and barbarians together, from Caligula to Nero, from Genghis Khan to the Vandals, nothing to date can be compared to the crimes that the Nazis and Japanese committed in WWII.
In the prehistoric times when I was born, we used paper and pen or a cranky and noisy fossil typewriter, 10 years younger than God, to write a letter. People would write stuff like “oh, by the way, so and so has been ill lately”. By the time the missive got to its destination the so called “ill” person was dead and buried. Nowadays, the Earth shakes in the other side of the world and in few minutes, faster than a bullet, there is a clip on Youtube. If this is good or bad I am not sure. That is why more than ever I watch the National Geographic documentaries when I can always learn something and it is entertaining.
For me, it makes no difference if a tragedy happens in Turkey, China, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, Brazil or elsewhere. We are all the same. We all have feelings. We all cry and feel pain, we are all in the same boat, we are brothers and sisters.
If I ever hit a jackpot, I will give away all my electronic toys, even my vintage Ipod, and join “Doctors without borders”, live in Tahiti as a “Nature Observer” or go to Lhasa to live with the monks or to Benares, two of the “Windows to Eternity and Celestial Peace. No more computers, Ipods, Ipads, laptops, Yahoo, Google, Android based machines, blue tooth, Mei Mei software, Siri technology, I clouds, wi fi, IOS, I7, red rocket, too much technology and never ends. However, the hunger, disease, poverty and despair persist in the world.
Two things caught my attention in the last few days, one of the endless arrogant interviews of Donald Trump, highlights of Steve Jobs autobiography (already sold out the first edition) and the news that Prince Charles admits to be a relative of the Romanian Count Vlad, the Drakul, (the demon) that became famous for impaling Ottoman Turks. The Turks feared him so much that they preferred to die in battle than to be capture alive and agonize in the hands of the cruel Count, that later became a novel and a horror personage in the novels of Bram Stocker.
The Royal Houses have always been connected by marriage or alliances, to keep money and power in the hands of a few. The House of Windsor is linked to the Romanov Russian Royal Family and to the Kaiser of Germany.
Steve Jobs seemed to be a strange character after all. Besides his brilliant mind for innovation and his uncanny ability to know what people wanted, he was a perfectionist and seemed to have some schizoid traces in his personality, according to some. It is interesting to see how many geniuses suffered from some kind of mental disturbance one way or another, from bipolar disease to schizophrenia. Perhaps the fuel for their creativeness. I love Apple products, since the first time I saw a Macintosh 30 years ago and I prefer to remember Steve for his positive things. I never met anyone perfect in my life. I have to deal daily with my own imperfections and many limitations, to have the luxury to observe other people’s.
I feel that one one of the greatest virtues of a person is to know his or hers own limitations. As a member of CLM reminded us recently, self awareness is the first step to the journey to cure. It is always easier to pass the buck and blame somebody else for our incompetence.
Donald Trump has an ego the size of the Empire States building and the Statue of Liberty together. We all know that he is a successful businessperson, but he does not let us forget that for a split second. His vitriolic arrogance is scary. His personal attacks on Obama, makes me wonder. He seems to hate Obama viscerally. He just controls himself, I believe at a great cost, to be politically correct. I prefer to always see the positive side. Whoever thought that Obama would perform Biblical miracles was naive or insane.
He is an extremely intelligent person has strong charisma is an articulate politician, but at the end of the day he is just human. To expect that he would fix the chronic problems of the first Economy of the World overnight, is to demand too much from a person. There are way too many hidden agendas, interest groups, backstage sabotage, things that the simple mortals like me, will never find out. From the “Illuminati” to the Wall Street old boys, greedy money lovers, people don’t let the guy run the country, this is my personal view. Honestly, I would be afraid if Trump is elected the President of the US one day. God save us from this nightmare.
The greatest people I ever met or read about, were all very humble, bashful, a sign of real greatness. From Beethoven to Van Gogh or Michelangelo Buonarotti from Noel Nutz and Albert Einstein to John Paul the Second, Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and Nelson Mandela (to name a few), the real outstanding people, were or are all simple and down to Earth human beings, aware of their mortality and shortcomings.
A great moment in Beethoven’s life, was when he met Ney, Field Marshall of Napoleon, in the streets of occupied Vienna and Ney told him “The Emperor would be very pleased to have you to play for him”. Beethoven replied bluntly “I do not perform for tyrants”.
I had the privilege and honor to get to know closely one of a kind professionals in my area and they grabbed me by the hand and taught me my first steps in Dentistry. People like Ronaldo Pinheiro. His lectures would aways end in standing ovations. An immense culture in Dentistry and a fantastic General knowledge. The type of person you would sit down to have a beer with at 9 in the evening and when you realized the next day was breaking and we would have breakfast together. He was my guru. People like Reynaldo Todescan (check the web), that recently accepted an invitation to start the Implants and Reconstructive Dentistry Program in the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada.
A Brazilian like me, Todescan has every conceivable title, from MSC with Honors to a incredible PhD thesis. He is admired and respected by all his colleagues. When he talks, others listen. He talks in a very candid and humble way, respecting all colleagues. Also a privileged mind and a first class individual in any sense. A delightful person to have a chat with and discuss about the most varied topics.
Through them, I realized how little I knew and how much I still had to study. I learned by osmosis, I am a good student and pay attention to professionals of this caliper.
I admire many of your bloggers, from the irreverent, resourceful and very intelligent “DragonB,” to the young and bright Victoria, sincere to a fault, from David Lee, which I admire a lot to the sensitive Yaya Liu, that I also greatly admire and respect. I am learning a lot with them all. I mentioned just a few. I feel CLM has a heck of top people writing articles for its members. We all benefit from these articles. Brilliant minds at work, not to mention John Abbot and his immense experience about wonderful and puzzling China, its people, History and culture.
I am no Hans Christian Andersen, but I always liked writing children stories. I am right now writing my book “Memories of a Fool”.
This is it my dear friends. I hope you enjoy this informal conversation, as if we were sitting in a sidewalk table in a cafe, it does not matter if in Barcelona, Paris, Vienna, Beijing or Rio. Nothing more comforting than to make new friends and have a relaxing and amiable chat.
I am giving the final touches to my next article “The search for happiness, the ideal partner, do we expect him or her to be perfect”? I hope you guys will like it.
Thanks for your time
Truly thoughtful and inspiring.
Thank you.
I've commented and asked the question before, "Why do politicians, kings, queens, premiers, dictators, etc. forget the lessons of history?" The same could be said of relationship experiences when we let so called "Chemistry" overrule our brain.
I hope to read more of your thoughts and insight soon!