What would you so are the three defining moments in your life thus far?
Im still mulling over mine!
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hard question
Meeting the one girl who changed my view about marrige and ironically not getting that far.
getting engaged to my current girlfriend/partner
getting my 1st car
not terribly exciting i know
Last edited by: Redviper on Fri 23 Apr 10 at 14:43
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My father dying when I was 11 yrs old.
Getting my class 1 HGV licence.
Realising I'd got everything I wanted a few weeks ago.
Pat
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Joining my last company 36 years ago and earning more than my dad
Buying my first capri with the more money than my dad and finding out it really was a babe magnet
Death of my father
Buying my first house with my GF now now wife.
Managing to get my dog hating wife to let a dog into the home (of course she loves FiFi now)
Retiring from my job I started 36 years ago.
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I know you can't multiply zero, but are there two of you? I make that 6 moments.
;-)
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Death of my father when I was 13.
My sister jokingly suggesting that I study Russian at University when I asked for her opinion, despite not knowing a word of it. I went ahead and did it.
Proposing to Mrs A.
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Only 3?
Being born the first time.
Being born the second time.
The moment my wife (to be) said "yes".
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(1) Meeting my wife.
(2) Buying my council flat.
(3) Starting my own small business.
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1. Birth of the kids
2. Joining my current co 22 yrs ago
3. Getting divorced (not to kids mum !)
3a. Being sent away to a boarding school which I hated.
Last edited by: Pezzer on Fri 23 Apr 10 at 16:16
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The death of my mother when I was 13.
The birth of my first child
Forgetting to delete texts..
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I have a few
1) Getting into university, I never meant to even study after leaving school but some how I ended up at university.
2) Getting a 2:1 and almost scraping a first.
3) Grandad dying five years ago - I was very close to him and then an uncle dying just two months later.
4) Starting my own business which ended up being featured in a Which magazine (for all the right reasons).
5) Passing my driving test.
6) Ordering a brand new car.
No doubt being 27 there is still many good and bad moments to come.
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1. Telling my mum a widow herself that her first born grandson had taken his own life, the hardest moment of my life, feeling relieved that my dad who loved him dearly would never know and feeling guilty for that.
2. Finally getting together with my lovely barmy wife 10 or so years ago after falling for her some 7 years previously...regrets that we didn't meet 30 years ago but grateful we didn't miss the boat.
3. Finally packing the car transporters in a few weeks ago...having a life again.
Could do a Z or even a Rattie and list a few more around my great kids but won't.
Last edited by: gordonbennet on Fri 23 Apr 10 at 16:31
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3. Finally packing the car transporters in a few weeks ago...having a life again.
What are you up to now GB?? Was sitting next to a transporter earlier in the week and I just could not work out how all the cars got on, at the angles the ramps were at. Decided they had been helicoptered on to it... :)
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Ok, Ive given it some thought now :-)
1. Surviving a suicide attempt when I was 14, and no, it wasnt because someone said something nasty on Facebook, was something far, far worse than anything like that. But still, it changed my perspective on the gift of living.
2. Holding my son for the first time and that switch that goes inside when you know that you can no longer look after number one because this little life your holding is 100% counting on you to make sure they are ok and for you to look after yourself so they get the best you can offer.
3. The day I married my wife. Finally knew what direction I was going in and felt totally happy with that. I never thought after the crap id had from previous relationships that id ever trust a woman again. Im glad I could.
Feel free to add more if you want to folks :-)
4. Deffo getting my driving license, I mean, my life is cars :-)
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>> What are you up to now GB??
Managed to sneak in to a place a mile from me gaff which means i enjoy a leisurely stroll to work listening to the dawn chorus on the way, easy job still on the trucks but day runs and a doddle, obviously less money but i now do a days work a day instead of two days work a day...that's the truth of it....and the other GB or even Airbrush Dave's lot whoever gets in won't be getting their greedy mits on anywhere near so much of my earnings via stoppages which is a bonus.
As for loading cars, yes it can be mind boggling, if it's a TE truck there'll be something like 17 levers and 19 airlocks to get all those angles right.... and i'm like a puppy with two tails to be out of it, finshed by 2pm most days now, got the veggies growing nicely and enjoying my lovely girl.
Thanks for asking BG.
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Hey well done GB ! If you can make the numbers work then good for you.
From your slightly jealous imaginary friend.
:-)
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Probably meeting Miss Tappets in 1964 and making her Mrs Cams 5 yrs later.
Allowing her to have 3 great kids, who in turn, have had 3 great kids and another on the way.
Surviving a major coronary in '94. happily it occured on a trolley in the hospital corridor, 3/4 million units of streptokynase for supper and all was well in the morning ! Changed my attitude to life completely.
Paying off my mortgage, having no debts and a bit of cash in the bank.
Nothing to worry or get uptight about now.
Ted
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I can't wait till they read out my will when I am dead. The kids will get told your dad owed £650,000 and you are liable for it!
Its mostly student loan debt though.
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1. My fathers death when I was 11.
I was sent to the nearby surgery in the peeing rain in the middle of the night. I stood there, dripping, only to be asked " Is it urgent?) I never knew my dad. For some inexplicable reason he had made no provision for my younger brother of my mum.
I then knew I had to earn some £££s asap as my mum had no high paying skills.
I do envy the majority who know their dad. I hardly remember anything about him.
2. After my mother died I discovered a newspaper tiny small add in her belongings from 60 years ago.
It was an advert offering, my soon to be brother, for adoption.
It chokes me to think about the ( totally unknown to me) background to it and how desperate to advertise your own baby. My brother loved my mother and it changed my view of her.
3. Seeing the ongoing achievements of our children. Astounding to us what the early potential is producing. We enjoy the thoughts that our early and ongoing efforts formed the foundation of them.
Both are very popular and are in addition contributing actively in the education of those following on.
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>> From your slightly jealous imaginary friend.
Cheers H, numbers seem ok but nothings guaranteed.
The only things i'm sure of over the next ten years and more
1. We'll be paying ever more tax
2. We'll peg it eventually
3. Politicians will still be doing very nicely thankyou and still lying through their teeth.
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There seems a high percentage of members who lost a parent young! Including me.
1. Lost father when I was aged only nine
2. Graduating for the first time
3. Getting married (and inheriting two step children)
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> There seems a high percentage of members who lost a parent young! Including me.
I remember driving my dad to see my gran, so he could tell his mother he was dying and would be dead some ten months after his dad (my grandad)
The poor womans face, her husband still warm in the grave and her son telling her he would follow shortly.
I was thirty. I am now older than my father managed.
My son has never had a grandfather, my wifes father dropped dead opening the front door of the house on pay day. She was 11. The police and ambulance took the body away, and wouldnt let anyone take the paypacket. They had no money for food for two weeks.
My brother in law died some years ago at a fairly young age.
Lifes experiences are what makes us. Me? I am quite fatalistic and really unsympathetic to others issues. Its life - you need to be able to deal with it. No-one else can fix it for you.
Last edited by: Zero on Fri 23 Apr 10 at 22:45
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Death is a particular milestone in life, indelible memories are formed.
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>> Death is a particular milestone in life indelible memories are formed.
>>
And some are dropped.
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>> Death is a particular milestone in life indelible memories are formed.
>>
I misread that to begin with and thought you were on about inedible memories!
I'm not sure yet. I'll say in 60 years time.... assuming I don't get flattened by a bus before.
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>> I'm not sure yet. I'll say in 60 years time.... assuming I don't get flattened
>> by a bus before.
trouble is, you wait for ages and 4 come along at once.,
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watch for the one reading book
forsssayer sayeth
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inedible memories
I was wondering earlier when I was out with the dog whether I'd spelt that word right.
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>> inedible memories
>>
>> I was wondering earlier when I was out with the dog whether I'd spelt that
>> word right.
Inedible? that word is not in my dogs thought processes let alone vocabulary.
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Is there any chance of seeing a photo of Fifi?
The name conjures up a delicately manicured poodle but the description often leads us to believe she's something quite different!
Pat
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>> Is there any chance of seeing a photo of Fifi?
>> The name conjures up a delicately manicured poodle but the description often leads us to
>> believe she's something quite different!
>>
>> Pat
Voila your wish is my command.
s606.photobucket.com/albums/tt148/know_wun/fifi/
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How could you possibly land a beautiful dog like that with a name like FiFi??
Or is that FiFi's forum name?
Pat
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Its her forum name.
When I first joined HJ many years ago, I was driving a renault scenic, swmbo was driving a renault clio. My forum name was Renault family, RF for short.
I was papa, swmbo was nicole of course. Now given that, what else would you call your forum dog?
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>> Its her forum name. I was papa swmbo was nicole of course. Now given that what else would you call your forum dog?
>>
She is stunning Z.
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1. I think my move to Poland was a defining moment - to come to a country where I spoke none of the language and art direct a motoring magazine - it nearly destroyed me. I gave up a partnership with my best mate at a time when i had a kid on the way for a complete unknown. I was a nervous-wreck, seriously, everyone I worked with hated me, I could hear my name being mentioned but never knew the context and there was the constant fear of being dropped on my backside in a foreign country. But when my contract finished four years later, I knew I'd had the worst that they could throw at me and that I could do anything I wanted.
2. My sister dying - kind of a recurring theme here but it happened weeks after my move to Poland in 2004 so a double, double whammy. We were really close and i changed overnight from a cynical, uncaring, unemotional, selfish, design robot (x-wife's words) into someone who cries at movies (and some Star-Trek episodes)
3. Birth of son. Ok I already had my daughter who I was and still am really close to but my son was born a couple of hours before my sister died. I got home from the hospital, the house was full of polish friends celebrating, I had a few shots and then the phone rang with the news of my sister. I hated that his birthday would always coincide with her death and that I was in Poland and he was in England so I just put him out of my mind for a few months and pretended he didn't exist. Then one day I just noticed how gorgeous and bright and wonderful he was and now we're best friends. I've been playing Remote Control space battles with him all evening where the TV remotes are space ships and the Lava lamp is a refuelling station.
Last edited by: BiggerBadderDave on Fri 23 Apr 10 at 21:49
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>I've been playing Remote Control space battles with him all evening where the TV remotes are space ships and the Lava lamp is a refuelling station
do not crash into and crack the outer skin of the space station.
That wax merde get everywhere and is the devil to get rid of.
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>>I've been playing Remote Control space battles with him all evening where the TV remotes are space ships and the Lava lamp is a refuelling station.
Now that is REAL play. Brilliant.
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Finding out my ex-wife had died ten months previously, aged only 37.
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im now living the age my dad died at
ive been wanting this year never to arrive since i can remember
i have till december to climb this milestone in my life
all my fathers side died relatively young
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I empathise with the BigBad Guy crying over a film. I don't think I've actually sobbed but I certainly get the old tears welling up.
Me and Erin Dors were watching our recording of Madame Butterfly by the Metropolitan opera the other week. At a later stage, Butterfly's 3 yr old son, Sorrow, comes into the action.
I was pouring with tears after a few minutes at his acting. had to keep rubbing my eyes and pretending they were sore !
......and do you know, the part was played by a life like puppet, operated by three men behind it ! Everything was just so sad about it's performance.
Am I going soft or what ?
Anyway, off to the eye hospital for 8.30 so better get to bed. Hope this time they'll say my cataracts are ready to be ripped out......if so, another defining moment for me !
Ted
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>> Anyway off to the eye hospital for 8.30 so better get to bed. Hope this
>> time they'll say my cataracts are ready to be ripped out......if so another defining moment
>> for me !
yeah but you wont see it.
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Got a result this morning.......no retinal bleeding and cataracts ripe enough to be done.
Doc's put me down for an appointmemt....next few weeks....can't wait !
Be good if we have a sunny Summer, bright lights are the worst.
Ted
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That's such good news Ted:)
Pat
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Agreed, wishing you well Ted.
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>> That's such good news Ted:)
Fifi is devastated, she wanted a job as a tea and buiscuits guide dog.
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Thanks, guys and gals.
Fifi could have had the job, but only if she can carry a bottle of real ale !
Ted
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>>> Oh yes! dogs love ale <<<
/(*_*)
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1. Being born
2. Marrying my wife
3. Watching m daughter being born
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OK other people have listed more than three so here goes...
My dad surviving two bouts of heart valve replacement surgery - first was in 1974 when he was 42 and I was 4 - I came very close indeed to never knowing him.
Passing my A levels second time round. It opened so many doors, particularly the exit to a miserable job in a bank.
The sudden death of my father in law two weeks before the birth of our daughter. All happened two years ago and I still expect to see him when we visit my mother in law.
Some pretty remarkable experiences on this thread - makes me think that when I get irritated by drivers who forget to indicate, etc., it's easy to forget that some folks really do have a lot on their plates at times...
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Very cathartic, some of these posts. Most of them, in fact.
I'm fortunate that I reached 36 before losing a parent last year, which is some 10 years older than MY parents each were when they had the experience. I never knew either of my grandfathers.
I haven't had many defining moments as such, most events in my life have sort of slowly but unavoidably oozed into place. However, here's my tuppence worth:
1. Being arrested after getting in with the wrong crowd as a teenager. This event earned me the sack from a respectable career and the confiscation of my car by the BiB. My parents were so badly affected by having their house searched (fruitlessly) that I felt compelled to move out a few days afterwards and my mother was never the same again.
2. Telling the folks of their impending grandparenthood. My dad welcomed the concept with open arms (and a huge smile) and has been a devoted grandad to my three children for the last 12 years.
3. Being Best Man at a wedding 5 years ago. I went to school with the groom and had stayed in touch with him since, although his family's view of me was coloured by point 1 above (which had happened to me some 13 years earlier). It was the first time someone had really had faith in me as a person and I was honoured to fulfil his request.
Of course, the births of my children (I was there for all of them) and being successful in job interviews have been high points too, but everyone puts those here don't they. ;-)
Last edited by: Dave_TD {P} on Sat 24 Apr 10 at 00:26
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It's easy to forget how many sad things happen in your life till a thread like this reminds you. When I was 12 I took my 10 year old cousin to watch West Ham one Saturday afternoon. His mum and my parents had gone to hospital as his dad had been rushed in after an accident at work that morning. He was speculating for most of the afternoon as to what injury his dad had received, I already knew he was dead but had been told not to tell him.
I doubt such a thing would be handled like that today, but that's the way it was back then.
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A truly awful responsibility for such a young pair of shoulders RR, wrong in so many ways.
However if i had to relive certain events in my life i'd handle most of them differently, few of us are thinking straight at such times.
Handy stuff hindsight, i wouldn't mind a bottle or two.
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>> to watch West Ham one Saturday afternoon. His mum and my parents had gone to
>> hospital as his dad had been rushed in after an accident at work that morning.
And I bet the hammers made things worse by loosing. They have kicked me in the teeth for most of my life.
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...And I bet the hammers made things worse by losing...
Down with the Pompey
You're going down with the Pompey
Last edited by: ifithelps on Sat 24 Apr 10 at 13:59
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1-1 against Blackpool.
We might be saved from the drop this year because Hull and Burnley are even worse than we are.
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>> Handy stuff hindsight, i wouldn't mind a bottle or two
A crate for me as well please.
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if we were all drunk on hindsight, we wouldnt be our sober selves.
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In some respects I have led a very secure life being an only child of parents who grew up with little money but had made a tidy some through hard work and good luck. I was never spoiled but was treated very very well. Thankfully at the age of 45 I still have both my parents despite them being 30 and 40 when I was born and I have very good relationship with my father in particular.
So defining moments could so easily be sad things and yes I have experienced depression after a divorce (thankfully with no children involved) and the death of grandparents at an age when it matters, the sudden unexpected death of my business partner with whom I also had a very good relationship. But in some respects death does not define us as we carry on. What does define you is who you are, who you associate with and what you do.
So my defining moments are
1. Qualifying as a Chartered Surveyor. I could do so many other things and decide to be semi-retired but I really enjoy the work and get a kick out of writing a valuation report with a nicely turned phrase. I feel very good when people to whom I have given possibly bad news thank me for my honesty and for the good advice.
2. Meeting my second wife. We both knew within a few hours of meeting that we would be together thereafter even though we were at different ends of the country. Despite some ups and downs inevitable in any marriage, we are still very much together. The secret of a good marriage is to let your wife run the marriage with you taking responsibility for aspects of it.
3. Fatherhood. We have a great deal of stress with our oldest child who has Aspergers Syndrome. Nevertheless we have brought all our three children up to be polite and caring. The enjoyment I get when walking down the street with my five year old daughter is huge. I know we are doing the right thing when very picky people (such as our neighbours at our flat overseas) volunteer that our children are polite.
Last edited by: Espada III on Sat 24 Apr 10 at 22:48
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I'm still working mine out but seems that the death of Mrs P and subsequent meeting and falling in love with my new wife are two of the three all in the space of 12 months so I hope I'm excused going any further !
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I coped with the old folk dying, it's the natural order of things.
What broke my heart was my eldest daughter's firstborn dying at less than two days old.
I can say that it was the worst thing I've ever had to cope with.
We have photos of him, he was perfect but got tangled up in the cord.
SWMBO has a picture taken after death but it breaks me up, I won't look at it. I do have one taken when he was in the incubator and I feel better about that one, knowing there was still a chance for him.
They tried again straight away and had a delightful little girl almost exactly 1 year later.
She's 5 1/2 now and I love her to bits. I think of Lewis a lot though, and what might have been
Ted
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>> 1-1 against Blackpool.
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>> We might be saved from the drop this year because Hull and Burnley are even
>> worse than we are.
And so it proved.
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This getting slightly repetitive, but I'd have to say meeting my lovely wife 37 years ago, though it took me a while to realise it, and that the basis of a happy marriage is for each to think about the other's happiness rather than their own. Maybe it's so obvious to everybody else that it doesn't need saying but I'm amazed they don't teach this in school.
The second was the arrival of our first child. Until then, I'd not questioned the idea that children were a lifestyle choice, though the expression was probably unknown at the time. From that point on, I wondered what the point of being here would be without them.
The last was when a friend of mine retired at 53 - I asked him why he didn't want to hold off for a while to get a bit more wool on his back, as he would be on a much reduced pension. His reply was that he and his wife had enough to do what they wanted to do, and they were going to get on with it while they had the health and youth to do it. I've had a much healthier attitude to work ever since, and spent a lot less of my own time on it.
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seeing led zeppelin twice in one week (knebworth 1979)
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I was there ! Chas and Dave, Commander Cody and the Ashby Dukes, and a full moon as we lit our lighters to Stairway to Heaven !
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Was Southside Johny and the Asbury Jukes a different band?
www.southsidejohnny.com/
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Might be the same - the years haven't been good to me - industrial quantities of weed at the event didn't help.
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I don't believe it the concert has its own Wicki site and iffy you were quite right !
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knebworth_Festival_1979
Have to dig out some recordings of the bands that were there...!
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>> industrial quantities of weed at the event didn't help.
I so want you to say you went with your good friends Bill and Ben now.......
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I really wish I was around in the 70's I wonder how my music tastes would have changed?
I've found that having 326kbps Spotify Premium has given me access to lots and lots of new music. I am currently enjoying Greenday, they are a band I would have never bought being "american emo crap" but they are actually quite good.
I've also been blasting out some of the more cheesy stuff like KISS and Rianbow.
No doubt I will be getting more into the heavier stuff soon again. At this rate by the time I get to 30 I will be all long hair and leather jackets.
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Saw Kiss and Rainbow live as well !
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1) Coming around in hospital 12 years ago after a car accident to find that my best friend who was driving was dead, but my other friend in the car had nothing more than a few bruises
2) The birth of my first Son - he got the cord tangled around his neck and it was touch and go - I just remember the feeling of being so hopeless - as it turned out (thanks to an excelent midwife and medical team) all was OK and we now have 4 happy healthy children
3) Arriving home from work last year to find my partner wanting to tell me something. The friend in point 1 who had a few bruises had been killed in a car crash shortly after dropping his son off at nursery. He left behind his son and pregnant wife. I spent a number of weeks in a state of turmoil feeling like I was in the film final destination and my time must be up soon. I then took a step back and realised how important life is, how much I had taken for granted and that I am one of the luckiest men alive to have 4 fabulous children and a partner who loves me very much
There have been other key moments in my life such as the death of a parent, but the three above have been the most significant
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I was having a search at some of the older subjects on here to see if there were any pearls of wisdom that I have missed and found this.
Mine are:
a) Escaping from boarding school. My parents had this strange idea that I would benefit from being in such a school environment. Well they were wrong, I hated every minute of it. Hated the rigidity of it, too much religion and silly rules and other students that were not on the same wavelength as me. I found many of them arrogant obnoxious pricks, with no appreciation of how less privileged people have to live. Not all of course but more than I could tolerate, I felt my views and behaviours were being influenced by people I didn’t really like. I refused to go back and was then much happier at the local school, even though I had to lodge at relatives since my parents were abroad.
b) Leaving school early against parental advice and working in the sector I always wanted to. Had to fight hard against the forces of family expectation but I love every day of it, very happy.
c) Having quality girlfriend, a million times better than any other girl I’ve known, always cheerful and even if you’ve had a bad day she seems able to make your problems float away in about five minutes. She doesn’t scoff at or overrule or overturn any decisions I make even though she has the advantage of more life experiences, if she thinks I’m wrong she does it in a kind and gentle way. She is keen for me to maintain my previous social life with my friends as well as being with her. She shares many of the same views and behaviours as me, even down to peculiar mannerisms such as having all the labels on jars in the kitchen facing forward and in alphabetical order. It makes it so much easier to quickly find what you want when cooking. I can’t stand mess and disorganisation, I need to know where everything is so I can quickly locate it and she is the same.
Anyway I’m going to have a rummage through the archives to see if there’s anything interesting I should be reading but I won’t drag up any other old threads. This one appealed though, in a sort of bizarre way although sorry that some people have had unpleasant events to deal with.
Happy New Year!
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Missed his one first time round and like others I need more than three:
1. Leaving home for lodgings/hostels etc. on joining the Civil Service in 1978/9
2. Joining the Harrow and Wembley YHA group in 1982 through which I met a gorgeous brunette with a Peugeot touring bike; Mrs B to be.
3. Birth of Miss B in 1992 (and The Lad in 1994)
4. Taking voluntary redundancy from Civil Service in November 2013 - effectively early retirement.
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How simple life always seemed fifty years ago!
I imagine few people will get to my age without having some pretty serious regrets and those will most likely relate to "defining moments".
It is probably this perspective, so different from MJW's, that makes me reluctant to go into details. University, marriage, three kids, divorce, retirement; the collapse of another long-term relationship and consequent serious depression were all "defining moments".
But these "definitions" are part of a process - who you are/were at a specific moment or period, not a "final definition". Certainly there are/were far more than three.
Thank goodness I've left these far behind. The more recent and current "definitions" are far more pleasing.
It's a pity it took so long to get there. Or perhaps there were good reasons as to why it didn't happen before.
'Nuff said.
Last edited by: FocalPoint on Mon 23 Dec 13 at 21:26
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>> How simple life always seemed fifty years ago!
>>
>> I imagine few people will get to my age without having some pretty serious regrets
>> and those will most likely relate to "defining moments".
I have. I can honestly say I have no serious regrets. If I lived life again would I change anything? Of course I would like try and do something different maybe, but if someone said you have to live that life again that way, I would say bring it on.
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Are you really getting on for 70?
I had no idea.
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>> Are you really getting on for 70?
>>
>> I had no idea.
No, 10 short of that. I don't expect the next 10 years to change that tho.
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When my first wife died. Changed my life.
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Selling my pension to prop up an ailing business, keep the house and make sure all those who were owed money got paid. Seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
Seems inordinately stupid now, and will seem even more so in the future.
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On a lighter note...
1. Cruisin' effortlessly down an icy, mogulled black
2. Realising I was no longer capable of the above
3. Being able to say 'no' to a curry after a gallon of ale.
Merry Christmas
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1. My father dying when I was fourteen.
2. My mother dying two years later.
3. A girlfriend who showed me love and I was too stupid (and drunk) to accept it.
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Finding out my family had been told I had 24 hours to live.... (illness)
Waking up after my most severe bout of depression.
That day was the first day of my climb out of big black hole I was in.
I hadn't expected to ever wake again.
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My father dying when I was seventeen, after the last four years of his life almost warring with him I realised in later life (in my 30's) he was my best friend.
The birth of my eldest Son. Obviously birth of subsequent children were significant moments also but the birth of my eldest made me realise I was no longer invincible and I had to grow up.
Marrying my current wife.
Seeing my Mother deteriorate into dementia. Cruel disease where the person you knew and loved has gone and all that's left is a shell. Hard to imagine where that person is inside when they no longer recognise the people around them. My Mum has not recognised me as her son for a few years now but always recognised my wife and children. Now they are no longer recognised. I can't even imagine where my Mum is in her head.
Currently watching my two youngest grow up. All parents think their children are special, naturally, my two have talents I can see should be nurtured and I will encourage them without, I hope, forcing my will on them.
I can see natural talent there and want to encourage it as I had encouraged in me.
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I suppose a major defining point was attending the air disaster as one of the emergency services and watching/listening to a large number of people die without being able to do a gnats tit about it.
Changed my attitude to life forever, even though I saw some nasty things in the years after it.
All part of the things which make me totally unbothered by the trivia of life nowadays.
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Well nothing really has changed since I last replied to this thread 3.5 years ago. Since then I have been diagnoses with anxiety and IBS but I try not to let it affect my life, just means I now suffer from sleeping problems. Just before I was diagnosed of IBS issues (in 2012) I was in a lot of pain and was having a lot of tests at hospital etc, that was quite a scary part of my life. I started going out more after this as I had a bit of an attitude that life is too short. Lost a grandparent in 2009 and 20011 and my two cats around the same time. It sounds awful but the loss my cats had a bigger affect on me, one of them was only 7 years old and watching him have a heart attack :(. My grandparents had been slowly dying for years (89 and 91) so it was expected when they died still miss the though. The loss of my uncle (55) in 2005 and my grandad in 2005 (79) has a far bigger affect on me as I was very close to them.
Tried to expand my business in 2012 as well by getting an office, sadly it didn't work and I am back to working from home again but touch wood making more money than ever (although it is still not enough). My plan for 2015 is to move out and go back to university.
Got plans to change my life but need money and that is what I am doing at the moment. I am still single and beginning to accept that I always will be for the rest of my life.
I am starting to release that I am no longer 19 (you're not 19 for ever) my body is 31 years old and in many areas it is showing it, but in my head I still feel like a 19 year old ready to take on the world.
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>> I started going out more after this as I had a bit of an attitude that life is too short
You're not wrong.
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>> Got plans to change my life but need money and that is what I am
>> doing at the moment. I am still single and beginning to accept that I always
>> will be for the rest of my life.
Don't be ridiculous, 31 is not old. You just need to put yourself in situations where you meet people and preferably females. Night clubs and internet forums are not the places, you need to join a sports club or something where ladies go.
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>>
>> I suppose a major defining point was attending the air disaster as one of the
>> emergency services and watching/listening to a large number of people die without being able to
>> do a gnats tit about it.
>>
>> Changed my attitude to life forever, even though I saw some nasty things in the
>> years after it.
>>
>> All part of the things which make me totally unbothered by the trivia of life
>> nowadays.
>>
What was your forum name before, Horace?
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>> What was your forum name before, Horace?
>>
Sorry, bit slow on the uptake.
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I think it was Ted, Duncan;)
Pat
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>> I think it was Ted, Duncan;)
>>
>> Pat
>>
I refer you to my post at 06:38
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Sorry, I thought you was apologising for being slow on the uptake...
Does that make me...Oh, never mind!
Pat
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I wouldn't say the examples mostly given are defining moments, more simply achievements or actions.
I take a defining moment as something more fundamental, something that reshapes one's views, beliefs, or attitudes, from which everything else then follows.
Mine perhaps would be:
1) Realising that I didn't love my parents. That they were merely at best good chums, at worst very irritating. (age 10)
2) Deciding that it didn't matter getting wet. From that followed the conclusion that appearances mean nothing, and inner reality is what counts (age 13)
3) Realising that I was not alone after all. That there were perhaps 2 or 3 other people I could in different ways share my life with. (age 30)
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Escaping from my dreadful grammar school with no O Levels just after my 15th birthday to become an apprentice newspaper typesetter and realising, contrary to my teachers’ opinions, that I was actually quite bright.
Starting, almost accidentally, a long-term affair with my first-year Open University tutor that ended badly, eventually. Her husband was a well-known professor and leading academics don’t take prisoners. Inspector Morse only scratched the surface...
After getting my Upper Second Honours two years before all my other OU ‘classmates’, in spite of all the complication in my personal life, my editor-in-chief coming into the Linotype department one night and saying ‘you can do better than this - why don’t you come and write for me?’ Now nearly 90, he still writes to me every Christmas, still using the manual typewriter he has always had. Last year he said ‘If ever a man reinvented himself, it was you’.
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>‘If ever
>> a man reinvented himself, it was you’.
>>
That's what I had in mind.
Everyone gets dealt a rather bland and stereotyped persona, courtesy of one's parents and background. Defining moments are the bright flashes of self-realisation that bring about one's own reinvention.
Simply finding Miss Right or buying a linked-detached house or quite liking magnolia and gloss white don't cut the mustard.
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>> Simply finding Miss Right or buying a linked-detached house or quite liking magnolia and gloss
>> white don't cut the mustard.
For many, they aspire to reach such dizzy heights. And for many its a struggle to get there because of the persona courtesy of ones parents.
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"And for many its a struggle to get there because of the persona courtesy of ones parents."
www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178055
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Getting a job in the then Malaya and experiencing a life of luxury for the three days the First Class flight then took. (Downhill much of the way after that.)
Becoming a teacher, a lot more interesting than planting.
Becoming a retiree, poor pay but god job satisfaction.
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>>poor pay but god job satisfaction
When is your Son going to return?
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Wife, daughter then son, all high quality.
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Shades of the Burgess trilogy: The Long Day Wanes?
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Some massively important events, but defining?
Probably more a period; The first period when I was living and working as a comparatively well paid person used to the UK way of life in some seriously dodgy and poor places.
Tends to put stuff, and one's own life, into perspective.
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Yes, seeing how others live can be an eye-opener. But what defines a person is the ability to empathize with people encountered whose lives are radically deprived. Not everyone can.
I suspect very strongly (although I wouldn't really assert it as a fact) that the most defining events for most people take place before birth or so soon after it - in the first couple of years - that coherent memories of them are unlikely, if they are remembered at all. Infants are born recognizing the mother's voice, and perhaps the father's, from hearing them in the womb. By the time they are three or four they have become individuals with distinctive characters. All the rest is just superstructure, surely?
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>>All the rest is just superstructure, surely?
No, I don't think so.
I found a couple of experiences oriented around my above point, fundamentally altered not only how I interacted with other people, but also how much I actually understood or empathized with them.
Not that I have found an increasing understanding of people and their motivations a happy thing, for it is not. But it does help one both accept and live with others without allowing judgment to overpower one.
Mostly I think it makes one happier, or at least more content, with one's own life.
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Please yourself FMR, I still think it's superstructure, self-elaborating superstructure if you like... my point is that you can't develop the way you empathize with people unless you have the capacity for empathy in the first place.
But this whole question of defining moments is slippery by definition. How defined am I for example by the second world war and its emotional effects on society including my own family? Those images, and moments of real pervasive gloom, anxiety and grief, dominate the memories of my first six or seven years.
What it boils down to now is that I don't have a comfortable feeling of permanence with an ever-rosier future. I am conscious of a fragility in the very fabric of things, of the possibility of a great threat to comfort, prosperity, all that.
There's an I Ching hexagram 'Holding together', something like that. Psychoanalysis too underlines the importance of psychic and social maintenance.
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Not wishing to slog on, but...
>>my point is that you can't develop the way you empathize with people unless you have the capacity for empathy in the first place
I totally agree. However, you can have the capacity but not have developed it. For some, that defining moment can be the sudden realisation of capacity.
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The most defining moment in all our lives is yet to come, we know not when...
Our last big adventure.
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Spinning off into the starry void RO'R? Can't say I'm in a hurry to know what it's like. A bit sinister is my guess.
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>> A bit sinister
I've long been taken with the mistrust of left. A Northern Irish friend refers to anything which has gone wrong as "up the left"
Wonder why leftishness is seen as sinister ? ( yes I do know that much ! )
Edit- Incidentally, I write with my right hand but kick a ball with my left foot. I play squash with either hand. I ski leading with the left but use a screwdriver with my right hand.
Am I confused?
Last edited by: Runfer D'Hills on Tue 24 Dec 13 at 18:56
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>> A bit sinister is my guess.
When I lived in Highbury we were on nodding terms with a next-door neighbour, a nice reserved old boy of East European extraction. One day his upstairs neighbour said he was very ill and would we come and help. We went in there, the old guy was delirious. My ex held his hand and we tried to talk to him, but he couldn't hear us. He said distinctly: I am starving, I am starving. We worked out later he was mistranslating from German 'Ich sterbe', I'm dying. And he did die right then, before the paramedics arrived to close his eyes. We gave statements and so on.
Was he German or some part of the post-war, post-holocaust human flotsam and jetsam of Europe? Was he in the camps? Which side of the fence? It was an affecting moment anyway.
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>> Was he German or some part of the post-war, post-holocaust human flotsam and jetsam of Europe? Was he in the camps? Which side of the fence? It was an affecting moment anyway.
I'm pretty sure I can remember a name, and it wasn't German. Polish probably: Wojnicki, something like that.
The services dealt with it briskly, all done and dusted in a couple of days, police report, NHS, council. Can't remember if we went to the funeral or whether the old boy had any friends. Probably not. We were quite busy.
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My mum dying of throat cancer when I was 13 in a General Hospital, slowly and painfully.
After several jobs in retail, getting a job with a Hospice running their charity shops whereby all the profits go into help prevent people going through what my mum went through.
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That, Bobby, is very moving.
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>>
>> >> Was he German or some part of the post-war, post-holocaust human flotsam and jetsam of Europe?
The sudden deaths I dealt with were moments which stick in my memory banks. A similar case to Lud's.. I was on a foot patrol about 1966 when I heard a woman screaming. I tracked it to a nearby house where she was in a first floor window, obviously in considerable pain.
I kicked the door in and ran up to where she was rolling round on the floor by now. The floors of her pokey flat were covered in poo, as were her legs and feet. I ran to the nearest phone box and called an ambulance. By the time I got back to her she was dead. Documents revealed she was from Poland and over 80yrs old.
I often thought about what she had seen and been through over the years and if she'd had any family. What a way to go, a grubby bedsit, alone and in pain. Makes me shudder.
Apart from RTAs...The man who'd died sat on the toilet, the architect who'd fallen 7 or 8 floors from scaffolding on the newly built Post Office in Brown Street. The woman lying in bed cosily tucked up with empty tablet bottles by her. The old guy who snuffed it on the bowling green, doing what he enjoyed. The student who chained himself to the railway line, threw the padlock key down the embankment and waited for oblivion and many more.
All very different mini tragedies in their own way. All affecting those who had to deal with the aftermath. Left me very hardened to death. I'm sure the other BiB/exBiBs feel the same
HO
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>> The student who chained himself to the railway line, threw the padlock key down the embankment and waited for oblivion and many more.
Knew a cat, not well, younger than me, quite well-heeled, not an apparent care in the world, who one day without apparent warning poured paraffin - not petrol even - over himself in Holland Park and immolated himself.
Crossed in love, they said. But I don't get it myself, the level of punitive self-loathing it would take to make you choose an exit like that.
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>>>>Crossed in love, they said. But I don't get it myself, the level of punitive self-loathing it would take to make you choose an exit like that.
We know not the torments that are hidden deep beneath a pretty smile and jaunty step.
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>> >>>>Crossed in love, they said. But I don't get it myself, the level of punitive self-loathing it would take to make you choose an exit like that.
>>
>> We know not the torments that are hidden deep beneath a pretty smile and jaunty step.
This attempts to explain depression as well as anything I've seen.
youtu.be/XiCrniLQGYc
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Depression can lead to suicide, yes. But something other than depression is at work in the decision to go very slowly and painfully like that. Nor can it be attributed simply to Buddhism or the example of Vietnamese Buddhist monks.
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>> I'm sure the other BiB/exBiBs
>> feel the same
Definitely....they're all queued up in there.
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"Wonder why leftishness is seen as sinister ?"
The ancient Romans were very superstitious, and set a lot of store by auspices (a word which literally means bird-watching). If a bird (usually a crow or raven) flew in from the left (sinister) it was an unlucky omen, if from the right (dexter) it was supposed to be lucky.
The Latin words for left and right seem to have kept their connotations as languages developed over the ages, so that dextrous in English is a good thing to be, unlike sinister.
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Yes, the right hand has more dexterity than the left in most people, but I don't think there's anything sinister about the left. It's good for holding things down at least, and can have a dexterity of its own.
What sinister means to me is sort of creepily threatening, the potential to turn very ugly in an unexpected way. I don't associate it with the left really despite having done Latin as a nipper. As for the political left and right, a less sinister left and a less dextrous right than the ones we've got would be hard to imagine.
I'm only superstitious about magpies which I salute, often in a quite informal way, when I see them alone. Crows of all sizes are fairly common round here. Them and idiot pheasants one of which managed to get me to run over it a week or so back.
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Probably in earlier societies right-handedness was seen as the norm and by definition left-handedness was seen as deviant - odd, wrong, weird.
The Bible perhaps just echoed such home-spun psychology, but it undoubtedly gives the Almighty's seal of approval to the idea that the right-hand side is good and the left bad:
"And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
…Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:" (Matthew 25, vv 33-41)
"A wise man's heart is at his right hand; but a fool's heart at his left." (Ecclesiastes 10,v2)
Here's another angle: "About 10% of the population is left-handed, but 40% of those with schizophrenia are, according to a new study. That suggests that handedness may be a window into biological markers that predict psychoses..." (tinyurl.com/q5qbecm)
The word "right", meaning "on the right hand side" is from the same root as "right", meaning "correct". "Left" originates from a Saxon word meaning "weak".
Last edited by: FocalPoint on Wed 25 Dec 13 at 18:27
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My defining moments are mixed into those that I realised were such at the time..and those that only became apparent some time later when I thought back on it.
Getting in to the Old Bill (cadets) at 17 was a huge deal...but I didn't think so at the time. I was pleased and it was what I wanted to do...ish...but it wasn't the big deal at the time that it eventually turned out to be...and I'd had a load of doors closed to me, because of colour blindness. That career did me proud.
Getting promoted to Sergeant was another that I didn't appreciate fully at the time. I achieved it when I didn't think I had a chance, so was a bit surprised and underwhelmed. A mate came round to my flat with a bottle of bubbly and said "What's up with you man, you don't seem at all bothered"...there was a good reason for that...I wasn't. I was thinking, 'what on earth am I going to do with my time now' as it had taken me 18 months of studying 2-3 hours a day to get there... and eventually achieving it left me a bit flat, if I'm honest.
First wedding..that was good, at the time..(if only I knew what was coming).
Divorce. That really kicked me in the nads. I think having someone you cared about have a nervous break down made it worse, because you could (eventually) see what was happening, but do sod all about it and all the selfish things they do, could to some extent be explained away, rather than just you get angry and think they're being selfish. Not sure why that hit me as hard as it did..but it did very much so. Made me a more aware and understanding person though, so there was a small upside to it.
Second marriage. I married a lovely person, someone right for me and now we have two wonderful kids. A really positive defining moment and I knew it all the way along and still do.
Promotion to Inspector. It was unexpected in the end. There was some ridiculous system in place that I couldn't get on with (along with numerous others and the reason why it was eventually scrapped), one where you had to go to a hotel somewhere to role act and pretend..you'd have actors come in and you had to role act scenarios all within a defined time, whilst being observed...what a pile of crap. It bore no resemblance to reality in the slightest, gave you utterly unrealistic time-scales and all it did was allow the liars in life a free reign (along with the gifted, in fairness). So when out of the blue after 6 attempts (over 6 years) I finally cracked it (the year before they binned it), I was a bit surprised. I'd already got my head around retiring as a grumpy old Sergeant, so the two pips were a bonus...and that was the best time of my career, particularly the near 3 years on an emergency response team.
Then, last but not least, the birth of my two kids...bawled my eyes out on both occasions.
I've told my missus I'll be shot dead by a jealous husband when I'm 86, so I'm rather hoping there'll be a few more between now and then...;-)
Last edited by: VxFan on Fri 27 Dec 13 at 00:48
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I can think of one sort of defining moment. But it wasn't the only one or the most important. I can just remember it.
It was the moment when, living on a military base in a colony at the tail-end of British imperialism, I realised that the way the adults talked about 'the locals' didn't really describe the locals as I knew them, as human beings and quite variable. My parents weren't racist at all, but that was the culture and I was aware when quite young of a glaring psychic and philosophic anomaly in it.
Later that made me embrace an anti-racist stance which proved both tiring and beneficial. But I repeat, it wasn't the only defining moment in my life.
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Yeah AC
I too lived in Keighley once. My feelings exactly.
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Defining moments... thinking about it I'm happier with constantly evolving throughout life... can't think of any moments that define.
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Defining moments in your life - Redviper
