Hoist The Freak Flag!

This thing that I'm about to tell you may sound extremely odd. OK, here goes. Lately, I have been worried about my freak flag. Let me explain what that means. A freak flag is a symbol for a person's level of weirdness. Everyone is a bit weird and, usually, a person's freakishness is visible to others by their flag. Brave people let them fly high up in the air. Like colorful birds, they tell the world that they are flamboyant, unique beings. The higher it goes, the farther you will see it. Hah, space even!

OK, so, in regards to my own freak flag: I think it has been in hiding ever since I had my first kid. Especially having a special needs child, I felt it was time to tuck it in. The thing is, I was afraid that people would link my boy's condition to me, and somehow look for an easy answer to why he is the way he is. I'd rather let them judge and diagnose him by an objective standard. Don't get me wrong, I think it's quite normal trying to figure out why a person is tuned a certain way, and looking at the parents for clues is one of the first things we do. Personalities vary though. My boy is odd. He's very unique. I am too. But while I'm quite shy and introverted, he's the opposite of that. Unlike him, never in a million years would you see me throwing a tantrum in public.

He's suspected of being on the verge of the autism spectrum, but, as things are progressing right now, it could still be a delay in his general development. There currently is no diagnosis that exactly fits his condition. Since most of his problems are centered around speech and social abilities, that area is where his oddity is most visible to others.

So in trying not to be at the center of blame, I made an effort to be less suspicious. I even got accustomed to talking to people. Yes, people. This may not sound like a big deal to the major part of the population, but it is to me. I'm not much of a conversationalist. Small talk makes my palms sweaty. Remembering names and faces and details to me is like playing Sudoku. Once I get it, and I know someone, I'm OK, but it's hard getting used to it. So, when my first kid was born, like all parents, I knew I had to let the world in a little. Talking to other parents, moms, professionals, doctors. And while I got a little bit of practice in doing so on a regular basis, I still feel uncomfortable at times. I think in trying to hide the freak flag, it has become even more elbowing. Because nothing is more odd to people than talking to someone who tries to hide a freak flag. It's like trying to hide a speech impairment by not talking. It's super freaking weird. And that's what I think has happened.

I should have known that overcompensating for my inner freak would not create "normal" behavior. Sometimes over-compensation works that way, with minor flaws it certainly does, but not with a whole personality. So in my quest to appear normal and together to the outside world, I forgot about my own well-being. I got a lot of stomach trouble. Now I want to go back to the old me, at least meet her halfway between crazy town and where I live now. That old me was a super creative, sensitive person who would look at her world through matted glass. I want to be her again. I am her. Freak flag, get out from under there. You're all sad and crinkled. Get up there. Fly.

To be continued!

Bring Back The Dead G(r)eeks

Plato's Academy

According to philosophy there is a designated approach to thinking about the world, with defined objectives and methods to understanding reality. Thinking itself is as old as humanity, some even say, it's older than anything else that exists in the materialized world. I must say I'm not that fixated on the meta aspect of it, but we can safely assume that it's as least as old as the old Greeks.

Methodic thinking is the cradle of everything we are, and everything we have accomplished as a species.
Isn't it a bit weird that the important questions we ask ourselves have already been asked by our Greek forefathers? They found answers according to their timeline and state of knowledge, but they knew very little compared to what we know today.

Yet somehow there is this incredible boldness in what a Thales of Miletus or an Anaximander thought about the world, what it was made of. Thales thought water to be the basic element of all things and the Earth itself to be a disc floating on water like a raft, Anaximander coined the term "matter" in a much broader sense, thinking that no specific element but matter itself was the basis for everything that exists.

The Greek table of elements

They knew nothing about atoms, but they had a theory - much like the experimental physicists do today, trying to "split" the world of atoms in subatomic degrees. Unlike today, the philosophers of ancient Greece were all scientists, mathematicians and physicists trying to back up their worldview with science. Today there is this partition wall between science and philosophy - the latter doesn't produce any usable results, numbers and figures on its own, thus has sadly degenerated into a theoretical exercise at universities alone.


Ideally, a modern scientist should be detached from all things ideological, especially his own hopes or expectations for finding an answer. This is so completely un-Greek!

Did Socrates' beard attract groupies?

Today's scientists can be philosophers only in their spare time. That strikes me as both strange and a bit ungrateful, because philosophy is responsible for us asking those questions, as it teaches us how to find out things about the world.
Yet it appears that over time, science accumulated the tools of the trade and ran with them. It's OK, I don't have a beef with science - although it evolved based on the (Borg) principles of assimiliation and compliance. Sometimes though, I wish there was a way to summoning the spirit of the Greeks back into our daily lives. Not only for the sake of knowledge, but for wisdom's sake - to remind us of the timeless relevance there is in understanding the world and its workings. Because sometimes we tend to forget why we want to know things, unlike the Greeks; their whole culture revolved around that aspect. It was a proud trait to think, a useful and esteemed quality to be able to speak one's mind in debate. I imagine that Plato's students got lots of tail for being the think-stars of their time. (Nowadays philo students are laughed at for being too lazy to do something useful-)


What is more useful than thinking? It's the value of wanting to know something, stating a theory out of curiosity; and even the celebration of finding out that they were wrong that made them reach for the stars - which, according to ancient Greek astronomy, consisted of fire, caught in bowls.

Strife is the father of all things, sundering itself, coalesces with itself, like the harmony of the bow and the lyre. - Heraclitus