How much better you feel when you focus on the good and ignore the bad.

Is it wrong of me to categorize things in this way? Can there be said to be “good” and “bad” in any objective sense? Some would argue not but I choose to ignore their reasoning and their conclusion.

In my subjective consciousness there is good and there is bad. I have been told that there is good going on in the world and that I should look for it. I am convinced that to do so is to help cast off the black lens of accidie. That to don rose tinted spectacles is an important part of changing one’s mind. In other words (physiology allowing) many of us should be capable of brightening up our lives by altering the way we perceive the world.

I tend to concentrate on the negative, to see only blackness and dark whereas what I should be doing is searching for light, for warmth.

Yes, in many ways the world is a shitty place and we are a shitty species. But it isn’t really our fault. We have evolved in a brutishly simple way – to survive. Is this any more our fault than the violent nature of the lion or the fox?

Lettersquash argues nobody has deliberately created the evil Matrix in which we live and that there are no grand conspiracy theories which accurately reflect our society and our lives. There is no evil capitalist plot, no one is determined to screw the planet or its population. It is just that most if not all of us act purely out of self interest. And I feel he is right.

So cast away the concept of “fault” (and evil, if you so choose) and look for people who are doing good things. People who are nice, and wholesome and worthy.

I am told by my friend John that there are good things going on in the world. When I spoke of the horrors of the UK and US penal system he pointed out the enlightenment taking place in Greenland and Scandinavia. There you have it – look to the good and not to the bad. Although we should try and convert the latter into the former. Even if we do not believe in absolutes of good and evil, most us can recognize what is wrong when we spot it.

I have been reading another blog recently and am coming to see where Keith is coming from. It isn’t god out there, just reality. Which is equally wonderful and just needs to be found. As he says, it is not “mystical” if it is real and I am coming to believe that perhaps his reality is “real”.

What prompted this latest nonsense of mine? I have been spending a few days in splendid isolation down in the country and as usual the silence speaks to me. I hope that perhaps my perception is changing slightly, that maybe I am beginning to look through the mirror slightly less darkly.

I am prompted to think of the little friends I call Gilbert and George. I had Gilbert and her mother staying for a couple of days and there is nothing better to promote enlightenment than a lovely and intelligent young woman. Beautiful of mind, so far as I can tell. Good through and through like her sister George. Or at least so far as I can tell.

I call them Gilbert and George because ever since they could talk they have finished each other’s sentences and looked at each other before speaking.

I have never heard Gilbert or George speak ill of anyone or anything. Which is especially odd since they have had to put up with their wilfully difficult and odd uncle all their lives. Perhaps I am a cross they feel they have to bear.

I have always naughtily provoked these two into blushing but now they are both young adults I have to try harder. In an attempt to bring a rosy hue to Gilbert’s cheeks I recommended she watched Fleabag. Much to my amazement both Gilbert and George had watched every episode in both series.

That’s called growing up I guess but it has not spoiled the girls or their charm.

It is not surprising I turned out a miserable old fucker. I blame my family in part, although they never intentionally set out to wreck my life.

But with the odd exception they were all warped and damaged in some way. I have long pondered nature and nurture and both have certainly played their role in forging the bars of my cage.

My parents argued incessantly and unpleasantly. It was deeply disturbing. My mother raged at her mother and her siblings; I don’t think there was ever a family lunch when one of them didn’t storm out in a temper . One of my relatives was nicknamed “Moanie”. As far as my mother was concerned the rest of the world was “common” and unworthy. She or (perhaps they – my parents ) fell out with all their siblings and so we became deprived of cousins as time moved on.

Surviving relatives still bicker and worse. Divorce and unhappiness has plagued various of them.

Leaving aside the undoubted genetic component, these people could choose to behave otherwise but do not.

So I must battle to cast off the deep black goggles I am so prone to sport.

Our reality is what we choose to make it.