Thought for today:
"Like the Valaise blacknosed sheep from Switzerland, there have been many times in my life when I walked in a particular direction for no other reason than I was headed that way. I have always been a person who believed in fate and even when I first started driving, I would prefer to risk getting lost than depend upon the use of a road map. Indeed, most of the nicest experiences I've had in my life have been blind ones.
My first kiss at the age of eleven was at a party where the blindfolded person kissed the person they caught, whether boy or girl. Fortunately I caught Winefred Healy who I lost to the convent in her late teens. As a teenager it was common practice to frequently blind date the friend of a friend's girlfriend. In fact I've been on that many blind dates they ought to give me a dog. My first foray into the intimacies of sexual contact was more of a fumble in a shop doorway on the estate where I lived than on a feathered bed. I think I was blind drunk at the time and could hardly stand. Even my first marriage never worked out because of my inability to see beyond her good looks. After that marital failure, for a while I was prone to believe that marriage best works if the wife is blind to her husband's faults and he is deaf to her constant nagging.
It was only in later life as a mill manager that I discovered that belief often blinds a good person to the truth. On one particular shift I saw one man do something wrong that resulted in damage to a large amount of cloth and then blame it on another. Because it was the most popular man who was in the wrong, he was the one his work mates believed, whereas the less popular man was disbelieved. That incident taught me that not only do good people do bad things sometimes, but that disbelief is a thing founded on the blind belief in something else.
For a number of years as a Probation Officer, I worked with an unsighted Probation Officer in the Dewsbury office called David. When I first met David he said, 'I'd rather be blind at birth than have sight and fail to see the beauty in the world. Just because I'm blind and cannot see beauty around me, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.' David was lots of fun to be around and never asked or expected to be treated differently from sighted people.
In later life, I gradually grew to accept that things are more often than not what you believe them to be. I began to understand that it is imagery and thought which promotes all action and this belief was reinforced once I discovered that it was poetry that John Milton first saw when he went blind in 1660. It was after losing his sight that he completed most of his major works of literary genius.
Today, most new relationships, particularly those entered into by people over thirty, are first found on the social dating sites of the internet. Surely, such can only represent blind faith in the accuracy of their profile and in the judgement of mutual compatability existing. This is invariably more likely to represent blind hope than sound judgement. As the 12th century French poet Marie de France said, 'The fool shouts loudly, thinking to impress the world.'
Far better to think long and hard before you fall in love again for the umpteenth time as things are invariably the opposite of what they first appear to be. My story, 'Solo and Soloman' deals with this theme of blind faith and costs $1.60 in e-book format from https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/225068 " William Forde: March 1st, 2015.
"Like the Valaise blacknosed sheep from Switzerland, there have been many times in my life when I walked in a particular direction for no other reason than I was headed that way. I have always been a person who believed in fate and even when I first started driving, I would prefer to risk getting lost than depend upon the use of a road map. Indeed, most of the nicest experiences I've had in my life have been blind ones.
My first kiss at the age of eleven was at a party where the blindfolded person kissed the person they caught, whether boy or girl. Fortunately I caught Winefred Healy who I lost to the convent in her late teens. As a teenager it was common practice to frequently blind date the friend of a friend's girlfriend. In fact I've been on that many blind dates they ought to give me a dog. My first foray into the intimacies of sexual contact was more of a fumble in a shop doorway on the estate where I lived than on a feathered bed. I think I was blind drunk at the time and could hardly stand. Even my first marriage never worked out because of my inability to see beyond her good looks. After that marital failure, for a while I was prone to believe that marriage best works if the wife is blind to her husband's faults and he is deaf to her constant nagging.
It was only in later life as a mill manager that I discovered that belief often blinds a good person to the truth. On one particular shift I saw one man do something wrong that resulted in damage to a large amount of cloth and then blame it on another. Because it was the most popular man who was in the wrong, he was the one his work mates believed, whereas the less popular man was disbelieved. That incident taught me that not only do good people do bad things sometimes, but that disbelief is a thing founded on the blind belief in something else.
For a number of years as a Probation Officer, I worked with an unsighted Probation Officer in the Dewsbury office called David. When I first met David he said, 'I'd rather be blind at birth than have sight and fail to see the beauty in the world. Just because I'm blind and cannot see beauty around me, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.' David was lots of fun to be around and never asked or expected to be treated differently from sighted people.
In later life, I gradually grew to accept that things are more often than not what you believe them to be. I began to understand that it is imagery and thought which promotes all action and this belief was reinforced once I discovered that it was poetry that John Milton first saw when he went blind in 1660. It was after losing his sight that he completed most of his major works of literary genius.
Today, most new relationships, particularly those entered into by people over thirty, are first found on the social dating sites of the internet. Surely, such can only represent blind faith in the accuracy of their profile and in the judgement of mutual compatability existing. This is invariably more likely to represent blind hope than sound judgement. As the 12th century French poet Marie de France said, 'The fool shouts loudly, thinking to impress the world.'
Far better to think long and hard before you fall in love again for the umpteenth time as things are invariably the opposite of what they first appear to be. My story, 'Solo and Soloman' deals with this theme of blind faith and costs $1.60 in e-book format from https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/225068 " William Forde: March 1st, 2015.
