Category: Panning for Soul

By: Patrick   I just finished an old biography of the theologican and philosopher Martin Buber (Encounter with Martin Buber by Aubrey Hodes). One of my friends raves about Buber, so I thought I would give this book a go. Buber really was an extraordinary man concerned with love, relationships, dialogue, peace, politics, education and…

By: Patrick   A couple of years ago in a section of this website entitled ’21’, I wrote a list of 21 things that I would like to achieve in life. I would now only put 8 of them on the list were I to re-write it (which is not to say I have actively turned…

By: Patrick   I call the bingo at a local community centre every other Tuesday. Always the same people sat in the same places having the same chats and telling the same jokes. I often wonder what it would be like to break the unspoken rules, to pause for an extra few seconds at one point,…

By: Patrick   Having recently found out about the 2008 movie, Yes Man, starring Jim Carrey in which he says ‘yes’ to all propositions that come his way, I started scheming about writing the script for the sequel to this movie with a view to improving upon the original. Having not managed to watch the…

By: Patrick   I rarely feel strong bonds to people I have never met, especially not those who were dead before I had even heard of them. Yet the other night, I got this lovely image in my head of the late comedian Bill Hicks and the late writer David Foster Wallace sat in a…

By: Patrick   It seems that as a society we do not take boredom very seriously. I recently went to a conference on the theme of boredom, and when I mentioned it to other people, most of them chuckled. “Was it boring?” was the standard response. Fair enough. For most people, boredom as a mood…

By: Patrick Written 25 April 2012   Fernando Torres broke his long-standing goal drought last night, scoring Chelsea’s winner in a crucial European match. It was interesting to hear the discussions afterwards on the radio. Apparently some psychologists had suggested that his goal drought may be ‘fatal’. It seems interesting that psychologists feel able to…

By: Patrick   I am thirty-one years old. I seem to have reached a stage in my life where I am struggling to find meaning in a lot of things that once seemed so important. Not all things. I do not feel depressed, but rather I am finding that in most crucial areas of my…