I had many hours to kill at airports waiting for connecting flights. Picked up this book - Veronika Decides to Die - by Paulo Coelho (have become a big fan after reading The Alchemist).  This book is essentially about a woman who decides to take her life - she seems to have everything - young and pretty, lots of guys, loving family, steady job - yet something's missing.  She is not depressed nor angry, merely apathetic and feels life has nothing left to offer her.  At the last moment she thinks this thought - 'nothing in this world happens by chance' - and begins to live again - with first thoughts - why this line at precisely the moment she had begun to die - what was the hidden message.

An excerpt from a review : when Veronika decides to commit suicide it is not from profound depression but from boredom and emptiness. When she wakes up from her overdose she finds herself in an old fashioned literary "asylum" where the treatments are--to say the least--unorthodox. There she learns that she has damaged her heart and will in fact die in little more than a week. And from there, the parable unfolds.

Faced with the real possibility of death, Veronika begins to appreciate life. The author develops his theme artfully. Follow your vision, he says, live in the moment, make the most of your fleeting time. Do not waste your life trying to meet the expectations of others, but do what you have always dreamed of doing. 

The strength and tragedy of Veronika's fictional story was instrumental in passing new government regulations in Brazil that have made it more difficult to have a person involuntarily committed. Like any great storyteller, Coelho has used the realm of fiction to magically infiltrate and alter the realm of reality.

Coelho states, ííAn awareness of death encourages us to live more intensely.íí In her last few days she indulges in all that she had deprived herself of, like playing the piano, her desires, openly displaying hurt, anger, love and frustrations that she kept bottled inside for her 24 years. Veronika now sheds her inhibitions, negativities, complexes, and feels a by now futile wish to live again.  

Its an unusual book - touching, often amusing and thought provoking.  It asks some interesting questions about the true nature of ëmadnessí. It questions who is ill and who is normal in our society, and who is fit to be the judge of either?   "Don't you know what it means to be mad", Veronika asks in the book.  "Anyone who lives in their own world is mad .....on the other hand .... you have Einstein,  mad - because he said there was no time or space - just a combination of the two.  Or Columbus, insisting that on the other side of the world lay not an abyss but a continent. Or Edmund Hillary, convinced that a man could reach the top of Mount Everest.  Or the Beatles, who created an entirely different sort of music and dressed like people from another time.  Those people - and thousands of others - all lived in their own world"

And leaves you with the thought - what if you were faced with the prospect of death just as you started valuing life?

I came upon this poem a while ago and thought i'd share it here.

So what is a Cage? - by Rebecca Belliveau

It is secure.
It is a barrier.
It is a home.
It is a life.
It is a death.
It is a body.
It is an existence.
It is sleep.

It is someone else's reality invading your own.

If I force my world upon yours, I will blind you.
When you make me live in your truth, you deny my own.
I am an artist because I want to create my reality.
I have always lived in others', and wondered who was right.
I joined a group of people who denied the reality imposed to search for their own.
But there was nothing when they looked inside, so began the need to create - to destroy - to create again.
I keep searching for someone to tell me I am not insane to need my own reality, to be honest with myself.
I so need another to validate my sanity.
When something is wrong, you know it. Deep inside, even if everyone around you tells you it is not, you still know the truth.
To live in someone else's world means to deny yourself this truth simply to survive.
These are the reasons I create.

12:38:11 PM    comment []  trackback []

I think what i missed most while i was away was my newsreader.  Its like my morning cuppa tea and as vital as a daily newspaper or a favourite weekly magazine or journal to me.  So the first thing i did when i got back was download Sharpreader - its exciting as i can customise and organise it the way i want it to read.  Now i need to figure out how to post directly onto Radio from there. 

I 'stole' the idea from Stuart who's been researching newsreaders and sharing his learnings at his blog.  And he takes these learnings forward into a super vision of 'Putting Execs on Blogging Steroids', which he sets off with these issues : 

There is an old joke about how many people it takes to change a light bulb. So.... How many bloggers do you need to change a company? How many newreaders (subscribers in a co) do you need to change information habits?

How do you seed the change? How many should you start training. Who goes in that initial learning to blog team after the blogging briefing... where you said... "Hey that's a great idea!" lets train some bloggers.  How do we start?

10:49:14 AM    comment []  trackback []

I'm thinking of transferring my blog from my old groaning PC (OS - Win98) to my spanking new laptop (OS - Win XP).  Realised how much i missed blogging while away - so many stories to tell - and the spontaneity is lost when the moment passes.  Could have blogged through email - but somehow never got around to setting it up. 

I tried this :

Steps 

1. Download and install Radio on the second machine you want to move to.

2. Launch Radio and from the "Are you re-installing Radio?" section of the setup page fill in your usernum and password.

If you are using a proxy server, setup the "Proxy server settings" section first.

3. Exit and shut down Radio.

4. From your computer that you have been using Radio on, copy the Data Files and www folder (sub-folders of the Radio UserLand folder) to the Radio UserLand folder on the second computer.

You should also copy your Macros, Themes, Tools and Web Services sub-folders if you have modified any of the files in these folders.

5. Launch Radio on the second computer. Your weblog posts should appear when the desktop website home page opens in your browser.

There are a few preferences (eg. mail server, organization) that won't be retained when you move Radio. Also, you may need to update any file paths used by any Tools.

If you have registered Radio, you will need to re-enter your serial number. With Radio running, you can find a copy of your serial number on the Weather Report help page on your first machine. Or you can follow these instructions to retrieve your serial number from the UserLand store.

I think i'm missing something somewhere - i downloaded and installed radio on my new machine - but don't know where to register my usernum and password - the problem is that i wasn't asked for a usernum or password as per the instructions - so its like a new subscription. 

Any suggestions ?

LATEST UPDATE : It works !  Thanks Lawrence Lee, Andy Fargan, Lilia :)

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10:30:42 AM    comment []  trackback []