When the porridge is just right, don’t neglect to eat it all up －ちょうど良い温かさのときに、ポリッジを完食し損なわないように－

This porridge is too hot!” exclaimed Goldilocks.

So, she tasted the porridge from the second bowl.  “This porridge is too cold!”

So, she tasted the last bowl of porridge.  “Ahhh, this is just right,” she said happily.  And she ate it all up.

From the traditional fairy tale, “Goldilocks and the three bears

 

When does a person reach the Goldilocks time of life?  That is the time of life when your chair is neither too small nor too big, your porridge is neither too hot nor too cold, and your bed neither too hard nor too soft.

Is it perhaps around the time you graduate from high-school? You may be young and healthy.  You may have your first sweetheart.  You may see your life ahead as being full of opportunities.

Then again, you may be spotty and awkward.  Your sweetheart may have gotten into a better university and be about to leave you.  The future may seem so full of important choices that you are sure to get it all wrong.

Is the Goldilocks time then perhaps when you have found your life partner, but before you have kids?  You may have few financial worries, and be enjoying a double income.  You may have settled into a career and feel confident at work.  You may have many friends around you with time and money enough to keep you in good company.

Then again, you may not see any purpose or direction to your life.  You may be good at your job only because it is so repetitive, boring and lacking in responsibility.  You may look with envy on your friends, who all seem to be getting happily married or making a success of their lives, whilst you just stumble along confusedly.

Perhaps the Goldilocks time, if you can remain healthy, is the time of your retirement.  You may be financially secure.  You may be enjoying the peace of mind that comes from reduced responsibilities.  You may have a grandchild or two, and laugh as your kids struggle with the dirty nappies.

Then again, you may be scared to spend your money in case you have to pay for care as you get older.  All the free time and lack of responsibilities may simply feel like loneliness.  Your kids may be too busy with their own problems to bring the grandkids round as often as you’d like.

It’s hard to pick a perfect time of life.  There will always be things that could be better.  Each period of your life has its unique benefits and drawbacks.

But if there is a Goldilocks time, I can say with confidence that it comes somewhere between the ages of 3 months and 97 years.

Looking at my three month old son, I can’t help but notice how frustrating life must be for a baby.  Until you can walk and talk, it’s like living your whole life as a passenger on a budget flight.  Your entire experience can basically be reduced to three things: eating, sleeping, and going to the toilet.  And you need help from the surly flight attendants to do all of these things.

I have less experience of 97 year olds.  But I saw in the news today that a 97 year old Japanese Buddhist monk voluntarily gave up his driving license in order to encourage other older citizens to do the same.  The number of traffic accidents caused by elderly drivers has been increasing and there have been a number of campaigns aimed at getting them to stop driving.  I suppose people are reluctant to do so because it would be an admission that the Goldilocks time is over; that life is again becoming a flight on a budget airline, with surly attendants.

If you are reading this, then you must be in the Goldilocks time right now.  Go out and eat that porridge while it is still hot.  Eat it all up. 

Vocabulary:

porridge – a dish often eaten for breakfast in Britain, made of boiled oatmeal and hot water or milk

to eat something up – to eat something completely, so that nothing is left

spotty – of a person, having spots or small red marks on their skin

repetitive – involving the same thing over and over again

envy – jealousy; the feeling of wanting what another person has

a drawback – a disadvantage; a negative point

reluctant – unwilling; not wanting (to do )

surly – bad tempered or impolite 

Sure though thy feet, proud Britain, have a care. A female Prime Minister’s reign may see thee trip – beware! 汝の足が地に付いていようとも、誇り高き英国よ、気を付けよ。女性首相の統治下でつまづくかも知れぬ。－用心せよ！

“The number 73 will be your downfall.”
An oracle given at Delphi to Emperor Nero, who was later killed by a 73 year-old.

 “With silver spears you may conquer the world.”
An oracle given at Delphi to King Philip II of Macedon, who then controlled silver mines, using the money to bribe others and gain great power

 “Be kind to pigeons, for one day there will be a statue of you.”

The best fortune I have ever gotten in a Chinese fortune-cookie 

I sometimes envy fortune-tellers.  It seems like such an easy job.

You need to spend time making yourself look weird and in touch with mystical powers.  Then you give some vague predictions, which could never be proven untrue - it helps to say what the listener wants to hear.  Then you just advertise and wait for the gullible people to come to you.

It’s a bit like being a politician.  I heard a commentator describe Theresa May, Britain’s Prime Minister, as the “high priestess of Brexit”.

It was a clever and apt description.  He was suggesting that she was like the high priestess who interpreted the Oracle at Delphi.  In ancient Greece, the words of the god Apollo were supposed to be given to people who asked questions (and paid money), and the high priestess would interpret the god’s answer and present it to the world.

Whenever Theresa May faces difficult questions or opposition, she mentions the Brexit vote.  The trouble is, only she is allowed to interpret what it means.  We voted to leave the EU, but did we vote to have a close or a distant relationship with the EU once we leave?  Nobody is allowed to ask, because Theresa May is the high priestess of Brexit, and only she can interpret the vote’s meaning.

There are many famous examples of the Oracle at Delphi predicting the future, and that future coming true.

The Oracle predicted that the Roman Emperor Nero should beware the number 73.  He decided that this meant he would live until he was 73.  Instead, the man responsible for forcing his suicide at the age of 30 was 73 years old.

King Croesus of Lydia wanted to know if he should invade the great kingdom of Persia.  The Oracle told him, “If you attack Persia, you will destroy a mighty kingdom.”  He was delighted, attacked, and then was utterly defeated.  The mighty kingdom he destroyed was his own.

These examples, though, demonstrate the tricky nature of predictions.  If the prediction is unclear enough, you can always go back later and find a way to make it seem true.  If the man who was responsible for Nero’s death hadn’t been 73, then perhaps he would have walked 73 miles to get to him, or killed him 73 months after the prediction was made.  Or perhaps he would have had 73 coins in his pocket.

Using the Brexit vote as some kind of Oracle has the same problems.  It is easy to claim to know what the vote means (beyond the simple desire to leave the EU at the time the question was asked), but it is impossible to prove or disprove anything further.

Here’s another warning for Theresa May, or high priestesses, or fortune-tellers generally.  Be careful not to upset the client.  When the Oracle at Delphi criticised Emperor Nero for having killed his own mother (and warned him about 73), he had the high priestess taken out and burned alive.  And when Alexander the Great asked the Oracle if he would conquer the world and the Oracle refused to answer, he went into the temple, pulled the high priestess out by the hair and threatened her until she said, “You are invincible!”

I predicted that Britain would vote to remain in the EU, and that Donald Trump would lose the Presidential election.  If I’m going to succeed as a fortune-teller, I’m going to have to make my predictions a bit vaguer.  So I’ll start with this week’s blog title.  Notice the use of the word “may”.

Vocabulary:

have a care – Take care; be careful

one’s downfall – the end, death, defeat etc. of one

to bribe someone – to make corrupt payments to someone

weird – strange; supernatural

mystical – having a spiritual significance beyond human understanding

vague – unclear or poorly defined

gullible – easily fooled or tricked

apt – appropriate or fitting

utterly – totally; completely

tricky – difficult

invincible - unbeatable

Too childish to live in 2016, too logical to live in 1620 －2016年に生きるには子供っぽすぎて、1620年に生きるには論理的すぎる－

“Their very imagination was dead.  When you can say that of a man, he has struck bottom...  There is no lower deep for him.”

Mark Twain, in “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s court” (1889)

“When I was a young boy,
My momma said to me:
There’s only one girl in the world for you,
But she probably lives in Tahiti.”

Wreckless Eric, from the song, “Whole wide world” 

The past is like a foreign country.  And if you can visit a foreign country, why can’t you visit the past?

Everyone must surely have had this fantasy: You’ve stumbled across a time machine.  You grab some commonplace technology like binoculars and an instant camera.  Then you stroll through the door into the past, amazing the locals with your wondrous goods.

Precisely where the fantasy goes from there depends on your personality and preferences.  Perhaps you set up shop in the 1920s, getting rich from your camera patents and hanging out with Louis Armstrong.  Perhaps you go further back, and use your technology to become a great king.  I like to imagine travelling to Tahiti before the first Europeans arrived.

It might seem like quite a childish fantasy, and I suppose it is.  But some great minds have indulged the thought as well – so it must be all right.  A good example is Mark Twain’s, “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s court”.  He imagines an American engineer from the 19^th Century finding his way to the court of the ancient British King Arthur.  The hero then sets up a printing press and telegraph station and enjoys being treated as a magician greater than Merlin.

The trouble is that recently I have been losing the ability to hold together a fantasy.  To put it another way, I struggle to suspend my disbelief.  Anyone who watches movies or reads fiction learns to suspend their disbelief.  You know that the characters aren’t real, but you try to forget that fact until the story finishes.

I’ve become annoyingly logical.  I’m just stepping out of my speedboat onto the 17^th Century Tahitian beach.  I should be reassuring the grass-skirted locals and taking out my gifts (of Scotch whiskey).  So why am I suddenly getting worried about approaching too closely?  In my mind I’m getting concerned about diseases.  I’m thinking that a man from the present day has no resistance to diseases which ceased to be common long before he was born.

[Pop!]

My fantasy has burst and I’m back in 2016.  The baby is crying and my wife is shouting something about dishes in the sink.  And she isn’t wearing a grass skirt, either.

 

Vocabulary:

to strike bottom – to reach the lowest point

to stumble across – to find by chance

commonplace – ordinary; unexceptional

binoculars – two lenses connected together, which you place in front of your eyes to make distant objects appear closer

a patent – of an invention, legal recognition of ownership (ie. If you copy the design, you must pay the holder of the patent)

to indulge – to allow oneself to enjoy the pleasure of

logical – rational; using clear thinking

resistance – the ability to fight against

 

Still waiting for my Superman hearing －スーパーマンのようなヒアリングをまだ待っている－

“How are you getting along since your blindness?  I suppose your other senses have gotten better to compensate.”  “William, can I ask you a question?  Has your hearing really improved since you lost your eyesight?”

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard people say the above, or something similar.

I always want to reply by saying, “Yes, now that you mention it, my hearing is much better – oh, hold on!”  I would cock my head to one side, listening intently to something in the distance.  “There’s a boy trapped in an abandoned mine in Western Australia!  We’d better call the police.”

Or I could say, “Yes, my other senses are much improved.  My sense of smell is really coming along.  I’ve just gotten a new job at the airport, finding drugs hidden in suitcases.”  I would then turn towards them and start sniffing.  “Is that a new body scrub you’ve been using?”

I don’t know where the idea that a blind person’s other senses will get better comes from, but it seems to be a very popular myth.  I was given an audio book as a free gift at Christmas by Audible, a website I use to download books.  The story featured a blind detective, who solved crimes without being able to rely on his eyes.  In the story he was given a coin which he was able to identify as a valuable Roman antique simply by running his finger over it.  In reality, I sometimes have difficulty feeling the difference between a 10 yen coin and a 100 yen coin, if the 100 yen coin is old and worn.

And why is this logic only ever applied to blind people?  If someone had to have both their legs cut off after a terrible accident, would the doctor say to them, “Don’t worry.  Your other limbs will get stronger to compensate.”

And should the newly legless patient then say, Oh!  I suppose you’re right!  I can just pull myself around the floor using only my arms.  For a moment there I was feeling a little down.  Thanks, Doctor!”

I’m going to leave now.  But be careful what you say about me.  Any day now my Superman hearing will develop and I’ll be able to catch any criticism from miles away. 

Vocabulary:

to compensate – to reduce or negate some negative effect by providing a substitute effect

to cock one’s head –  to move one’s head to the side, pointing the ears towards a speaker or sound, so that one can hear better

a mine – a tunnel or series of tunnels dug into the ground in order to take out valuable minerals such as gold

a myth – a widely held but false belief or idea

a detective – someone who tries to solve crimes

to be worn – to be overused and in a bad condition

a limb – an arm or a leg