what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Identities

In 2011 did a post about identities which recounted how, when I was going through some difficult times, a friend tried to help by encouraging me to explore the various roles I had – father, son, husband, politician, writer, activist etc. I didn’t understand what she was driving at. 
The penny dropped only those few years ago – when I realized that I had become a collector – and could also add the word “explorer” to the list of more conventional epithets such as - lecturer, politician, maverick, leader, writer, consultant, resource person

I was reminded of this earlier this week by a review of a collection of Stefan Zweig’s stories in which Zweig was described as an 
“affluent Austrian citizen, restless wandering Jew, stupendously prolific author, tireless advocate for Pan-European humanism, relentless networker, impeccable host, domestic hysteric, noble pacifist, cheap populist, squeamish sensualist, dog lover, cat hater, book collector, alligator shoe wearer, dandy, depressive, cafe enthusiast, sympathizer with lonely hearts, casual womanizer, man ogler, suspected flasher, convicted fabulist, fawner over the powerful, champion of the powerless, abject coward before the ravages of old age, unblinking stoic before the mysteries of the grave.” And this is only a partial catalogue!!

No comments:

Post a Comment