Friday 3rd September 2010
Why I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do!

On the 2nd of December this year i will reach the grand old age of 35. Whether this is my second midlife crisis (i had a great one when i was 30! i quit everything and moved from Cardiff in Wales to the top of a mountain in Italy!) or whether or not it has anything connection with my current job, or anything to do with my past experiences, emotions or thoughts, who knows? And to be completely honest, is doesn't really matter.

Whether or not i could ever have the possibility or even potential to change the world is irrelevant. Lets all be honest, human kind is way to stubborn and hell bent on self destruction to change its wicked ways. If it was truly capable of change then genocide would have stopped after Armenia (over 1 million dead); or at least the 17 million killed by Hitler; or after Stalin managed to kill around 23 million of his own people; or Chairman Mao (50-75 million); or at least after Cambodia (1.7 million), Rwanda (800,000), Philippines (at least 1 million civilians killed by US forces between 1899-1902), Bangladesh (1-3 million killed by the Pakistani army), Algeria (over 1 million), the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, East Timor, Bosnia and so on... As the British, American, Iraqi and Afghan governments have had to learn the hard way - or rather the families of the many civilians and military personal killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years have had to learn - violence doesn't solve a thing.

To quote the honourable beat poet Michael Franti - "You can bomb the world into pieces, but you cant bomb it into peace" (written after 9/11).

I could never change the world. Not even Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, John Lennon, Martin Luther King Jr and Mr Obama with his Nobel prize could change the world. Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and Mao changed the world. Rothschild, J.P Morgan and Rockefeller changed the world. Tony Blair and George Bush Jr. changed the world.

I'm not trying to change the world, but as an eloquent friend once told me (via Robert Kennedy) "Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation." I'm not trying to change a world that cant be changed, I'm just trying to do my little bit.

This is my attempt to re-evaluate my own views and perspectives of the world around me by taking a good long and hard look at the past, but attempting to draw parallels with the present; to try and make sense of how human kind is evolving going into the year 2011.

It is also my attempt to do something so ridiculous it begs insanity! To cycle alone thousands of kilometres over at least 3 months, 6 countries, 2 continents (just!), quite a few beers, some musical adventures, meeting some old friends, making some new ones, losing half my body weight in pain and perspiration, and become the immaculate specimen of the man i have always wanted to be ;-)

But more importantly than anything else, this is a journey of discovery for me. But if you wish to read about my experiences and adventures along the way, that's also cool!

Love and Peace

Marcin.

just 39 days until departure!

 

 

Monday, 11 October 2010
Sent to me by a great friend.

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Kipling