Or: When you discover that while you may take a more mature approach nowadays you actually haven’t changed one bit since you were a little child.

Getting back in touch with my aunt also meant reconciling with Boy X, the kid I once was. Seeing more and more that Boy X was yet the blueprint of who I would become, it also made clear that the universe isn’t enough for me.

 

“And the joke is rather sad:

That it is all just a little bit of history repeating.”

Propellerheads feat. Dame Shirley Bassey – History Repeating

A new chapter

 

I had already closed the book a few years ago. After spending over a decade debating if there were any chances in reconciling with my family, the adventures of Boy X were permanently over. It simply was impossible. And likely for the bigger part it always will be impossible.

 

I don’t feel connected at all to my parents and sister. Sure, they are the ones biologically closest connected to me and the people I shared a home with for 13 years. But if the house were an universe, it had 2 planets. My dog and I living on the other one, he possessing the powers to travel through space when his food got served at ‘planet parents’.

 

My dog was not the only one being able to cross the void though. My aunt and late grandmother were also quite the space travellers. My grandmother used tea and cookies, my aunt pink tracksuits, purple cars and plush panda’s.

 

If it were the circumstances or if it was unavoidable at some point in time, I felt a need to reconnect. With my aunt, but also with Boy X.

 

Spending that day searching for guts, consulting a friend and after many tears I took the phone.

 

“It’s your nephew calling.”

“Boy X?”

 

The voice of my aunt was like the hug I always tend to avoid but was now so happy to get. And a new chapter had begun.

 

The Why Issue

 

After a lot of catching up, which still continues, we speak a lot about the family, about the values treasured and why things were as they were.

 

Many things I suspected, but I also keep being surprised. A lot I never knew of or had forgotten. Even about Boy X.

 

With a tiny bit of frustration left in her voice, my aunt told me about ‘the why issue’. I believe many kids tend to ask ‘why’ every now and than. I did it every now.

 

“Why?” It is apparently my nature. Today I can not accept that something is just as it is. I want, or better: need, to understand it. I had war with my math teacher as I could not just accept that x+y=z. And apparently it has been like that since the day I started speaking.

 

My aunt was the smarter one here. Having no kids herself, after another ‘why’ of me, she used the argument “How should I know why you have to do that, it’s not like I have children.” And for some bizarre reason I accepted that as a valid argument and got the task done. Something I likely will never understand.

 

When I studied Norwegian I more or less refused to speak it (and yes, I was yet in my twenties here) until I could really make myself understood. Make full sentences and write more than ‘how are you?’. And it was the same being Boy X.

 

My family was apparently about to get concerned as I still did not speak a word and suddenly Boy X showed the world his capabilities. Not just the word cookie came out, but ‘I would like a cookie, please’ (or, knowing me: ‘I need a cookie or I die, give it now!’).

 

Another example. I have always been hell to shop with. When I need new stuff I strut around 5 cities before I find perhaps one shirt and some ice cream. As a kid I was no different.

 

So, my mother took my aunt along to share her frustration (so I think), but to my mothers surprise my aunt had a smart trick up her sleeve.

I still know what they look like, it were blue, green and yellow kinda checkers meets tartan trousers. And I loathed them. No way I was gonna wear that.

 

Until my aunt told me it were ‘executive trousers’. Suddenly they were the hottest thing on the planet and Boy X even wore them for the school pictures. Man, was I proud of them! My aunt had done it in such a way that until today I thought it was my own stylish executive vision, a dream she scattered during our last conversation confessing she made it up.

 

And while I am not that sensitive for arguments like that anymore, people can still fool me with stuff like this. Moral though: I have always been hell to shop with and knew very well what I did and did not like. Something which present friends will agree on that hasn’t changed one bit.

 

More and more of these stories make me realise that Boy X was pretty much the blueprint of who I am today.

 

The corner of the universe

 

So I know now Boy X was someone who had a need to understand and had a very distinctive taste.

Boy X also wanted to become a beautician with his own shop in Paris (ha! entrepreneurial ambition! wanting to go abroad! and let us never talk again about the whole beautician thing... though I have done some things as a stylist and spend over an hour on my hair daily...).

 

In many things I discover lately how much of Boy X is still inside of me. I may take (most of the time) a more mature approach or place it in perspective a bit more, but the basics are still pretty much the same.

 

So, I am Boy X. And I think I finally start to come to terms with that idea. Once I was a little kid, and though Boy X has had to fight a lot, without him I would not have been here today.

 

I have a thousand things to learn still and likely always will, but Boy X paved a path that I will gladly continue to follow.

 

As my aunt said it today: “The universe was never enough for you, you always had to look around the corner of it.”

And if you tell Boy X or present me that there is no such thing as the corner of the universe I will simply respond with one word: “Why?”

 

I’d like to thank two people. First my late grandmother. A woman that I always have and always will adore. With tears in my eyes I can say you have been my rock and one of the very few who believed in me. While you have a steady spot in my heart, I do miss you. I wish I could have been there for you.

Second, my aunt, I am so glad we have reconnected and that you help me understand the past again. You have never ignored Boy X. Even while he was yet gone, you have kept him alive.

While there is a significant chance you have already seen this once, given it has had over 10 million views on youtube alone, the apparently world-estranged me came across it now for the first time.

 

The late Randy Pausch was an American professor of Computer Science and Human-Computer Interaction and Design who passed away from complications of pancreatic cancer in 2008.

 

But, as he states himself in this speech, it is not about what he is, it is about what he can do as he got asked once at EA, where he spent a sabbatical. And he demonstrates what he can do in this speech. Not only does he speak about his amazing work, amongst the many things a lot has been virtual world related, he most definitely shows what a great motivator he is. He easily engages the crowd present and the millions who watched it.

 

The speech focuses on achieving your childhood dreams, which he illustrates with his own dreams and work for others. He uses the examples of many others to make his point and does it in such an engaging way that it makes you want to stand up and go achieve your own right now. And when you realise that he gave this speech knowing he had only 3-6 months left to live, it makes it even more amazing. He used his last days to pass on his legacy and beliefs. And I am glad he did.

More about Randy Pausch on his personal page at the website of Carnegie Mellon University.

Speech found via my beloved TED.

About 2 hours ago the new year has begun, even a new decade (though some will disagree on the latter but I kindly ignore them).

 

While fireworks are lighting up the sky and making noise as if the apocalypse has come, I am sitting behind my desk listening to Schubert’s ‘Ellen Dritters Gesang’, for as far as I can hear it through the bangs. I wrote before here about the song and I keep loving it.

 

I decided not so much to think of this moment as the beginning of a new year, but truly as a decade. Maybe the word ‘era’ is even in place for me.

 

In the year 2000 I turned 18. It was something I had been looking forward too ever since I was a little kid. Finally I would be able to decide myself what would be best and no longer would I have to deal with parents, caretakers, childcare organisations and so on. I was gonna rule the world. And than it happened.

 

Opposite of New Years Eve, where the sky does seem to burst open, I find birthdays, at least visually, always a bit disappointing. I keep hoping to wake up and find some grand change but alas, every year the day seems just the same as the day before.

 

Nevertheless turning 18 was a big thing. Perhaps more so for me than for others, as it also marked the day I lost my home, income and insurance, given that I was no longer under the ‘protection’ of any childcare organisation. Suddenly I had to do it on my own.

 

That what I always had dreamed of became a nightmare. I had to crash with friends as I had nowhere to go and it took me a long long time to get things a bit working for me again. Turning 18 wasn’t that much fun after all.

 

Being 27 now I can say I had my ups and downs over the past years. There were times it went very well, other times it went very wrong. The turn of 18 wasn’t the only moment I found myself without money or (nearly) without a home.

 

But, especially given that I have done this period without being able to rely on family in any way, I also have achieved a lot to be proud of.

 

I have held interesting positions that normally would be unavailable for someone without the appropriate papers. I worked and lived abroad. Even while not always voluntarily, I moved around a lot being able to get a taste of many villages and cities. I have come to learn that who I am will shine through no matter how I look. I developed a strong ethical sense. I have been able to wine and dine with everyone from prime-ministers to local groups of kids fighting for a cause. I had a short documentary made about my life. I have come to know true friendships (and false ones too). I met 2 awesome guys who allowed me to support them. I made the decision to follow my heart in life. Discovered talents. And I can go on.

 

All in all, while I never travelled outside of Europe, I do feel I have seen and experienced a fair bit of the world. And I have come to know a lot about myself.

 

So, for me the past decade was about growing up as an adult. And the new decade is about using that knowledge and live a happy life as an adult, without forgetting to continue to move forward.

 

Given, that is going to require a lot of work (more about that later, but scroll a bit back on the site and you’ll understand why as well) and some short-term challenges, but I am determined to get it done and convinced I can get it done.

 

So, that is my new decade. And for yours, I hope it may be as good as mine as I am gonna do some great stuff the coming 10 years. Just watch me.

 

The new decade. Because you’re worth it.

 Beatrix, Queen of The Netherlands, seems to feel the internet is in large responsible for the estrangement of some people in society. In her traditional Christmas Speech she spoke about virtual contacts and how it may have resulted in a society where ‘the modern human seems to lack attention for others’. 

A view on her words.

 

 Beatrix herself is the main author of the speech. It is considered the one moment in the year where she is truly able to speak her own opinion and she traditionally gives her view on matters that concern her. Though the speeches have always remained quite abstract as not to offend anyone, she is very clear in her words.

 

 This year she spoke about how we, in her opinion, have become strangers of each other, how we appear to no longer look after our neighbours and that we seem to have lost touch with what she calls the community.

 

 We are too individualised and one of the main reasons for that: internet in general and online social communities in particular, or so seems the claim of Beatrix.

Cookies for the Neighbours

 

 My neighbours are total strangers too me. When I see them outside I greet them, but that really is about it. And I don’t feel a need for more contact. If they’d start some chit-chat one day I’d be polite, but clearly keep my distance.

 

 Home is a place where I wish to be able to relax and I prefer not to take the risk having neighbours ringing my doorbell for a cup of coffee (or sugar for that matter). Not saying my neighbours would, but it is a risk you take when you connect more, Surely I would alarm them if I notice a fire or a burglar and I more or less count on them doing the same as that too me is just human decency. But truly nothing more. Does that make me a bad neighbour?

 Should I bake cookies and take them next door one day and check out who they actually are? Meet them, so to say? Get to know their name? Is being civilised enough or should I really be social? 

“[...] But the modern human seems to lack attention for others. In current time people are mainly focused on themselves. We are inclined to look away from the other and to close our eyes and ears from what is around us. Now even neighbours are sometimes strangers. We speak without having a conversation, we look at each other without seeing. People communicate with short and fast little messages. Our society becomes more and more about the individual. Personal freedom has separated itself from being connected with the community. But without any feeling of ‘we’ our existence will be void. An emptiness that will not be filled with virtual encounters; quite the opposite in fact, distances will only become bigger. The ideal of the redeemed individual has reached its end. We must try to find our way back to what holds society together.”. 

 

 Though the Queen was actually a close neighbour of one of my previous employers, my co-workers and I knew nothing of her personal life, putting me in no position to judge how well informed she truly is on certain matters. She may just be Bea1938 on some obscure blog and constantly be twittering, updating her facebook page, roam Second Life as a furry or she may have never touched a computer in the first place.

 

 What one has to bear in mind is that the Queen may (may, as she has not mentioned it in her speech) be affected by the tragedy on Queensday this year. A man has attempted to slam the Royal Bus with his car. The Royal Family was not harmed, but 7 others were killed when the man took his car with great speed through the cheering crowds. He himself died later in the hospital. It has been said the man had been estranged from his family and the people around him resulting in spending most of his time online.

 

Conversations without voices

 

 Further in her speech as she continues:

 

 “The current technical possibilities seem to bring people closer together, but they stay within a ‘safe’ distance, hiding behind their monitors. We can speak without having to appear, without being seen, anonymous. Simply and roughly showing emotion has become an easy thing. No longer people are being accounted for speaking without respect. Being the stranger is not what causes aggression but aggression is what makes the other a stranger.”

 

 The ‘world online’. I have very dear friends there. Some physically close too me, some far far away. Most I have never met in person, some I have never heard the voice of. But does that matter?

 

 When we exclude avatar-eyes this sure speaks for me: “We speak without having a conversation, we look at each other without seeing.” The exact intention of the Queen with this phrase still puzzles me a bit. I mean, how does one speak without having a conversation, other than when we speech? Is a conversation only verbally possible? Surely the Queen has written letters to others and has received a response, isn’t that a conversation in its own right too?

 

 The monitor we sit (or hide, as the Queen calls it) behind does add a border. Sometimes I really miss being able to look someone in the eyes, to give (or get) that hug or just truly being together. But it also gives us the power to connect with people we would have never connected with otherwise. It is very unlikely I would have met any of my friends that I met online without the internet, simply as we live in other places, would not connect through work as we do other things and we are too old for summer camp. Yet we have found personal grounds that makes us friends. Things that make us love each other. The bonds are equally strong as with my friends who I met in the ‘traditional way’. Only difference is that we don’t physically meet, or at least not on a regular basis.

 

 Now this is solely speaking about good online experiences. I have met way more people online who had a hidden agenda or that I didn’t have that click with. It is a matter of not letting things go to fast, taking time to get to know each other and to be a bit cautious. But doesn’t this apply to meeting in real life too? How many people do we speak with in real life and don’t end up being friends of us?

Shiny tools, shady people?

 

 The Queen addresses a serious problem in parts of society and for certain individuals. I am the last to deny that or to look the other way and pretend it is all that shiny. But where I disagree with her is putting the blame on the tools used (the internet and online social networks). It is a problem of the person self. It is about not being able to find that balance or not knowing how to connect in real life in general, thus losing contact with society, or their neighbours if you will. And this is a serious matter, a problem we should at least attempt to solve as a society.

 

 Isn’t it the same as the connection people make between violence and computer games? I honestly consider it bogus. We are all quite easily (it’s scary sometimes) influenced to some extent by what we see, read and hear. And when you consider that, wouldn’t way more people be shooting in the streets as they play these games? Or could it be that the people committing these crimes have other issues that are the true cause? Sure, a game could have enhanced it, given an example even. But when one is in good mental health a game would never be the trigger to shoot someone, don’t you think? The problem lies deeper and the same would apply to the rude behaviour of some people online and those who really use the internet as a way to communicate without speaking and a place to hide.

 

 Some people in society disconnect, but that is not because of the internet. The internet is a powerful tool that can be used for the good and the bad. The problem lies in society in general, how we raise our children and keep an eye on our peers. Some people are not able to balance things and they are often not supported in finding that balance. Or they have never learned how to make friends due to a variety of reasons.

 

 And for the internet? It is just like every invention over the dawn of time. The Royal Family drove in a bus as a way to greet and connect with the Dutch people, yet the same technology was used by a man in his car in a (sad) attempt to slam that bus.

-----

 There seems to be no official translation available of the Christmas Speech. The translations are done by the author of this article, Miskat Qinan, and are as accurate as possible.

 

Please note that this article is a personal opinion and it is not intended to offend anyone.

 You can read and view the Christmas Speech of Her Majesty the Queen Beatrix in Dutch on the official website of the Royal Family.

 

 

Madonna - Hollywood (birds remix)

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