Loving Language: Part 1: The meaning of Love

Loving Language: Part 1: The Meaning of Love

Language and in particular the nature of language has always played a very important part of my life. I have naturally been studious about words and the definition of words and above all things, the usage or perhaps to put it more accurately, the mis-usage of language.

As I have got older, I have become more and more aware of how abused the English language has become. There are so many people out there who have no real conscience of even a consciousness of what comes out of their mouth. I have suffered very deeply because of this. I have had so many people in my life speak to me in a rather upsetting way.

There are so many people in our lives that we claim to love. We say "I love you" to our parents, grand-parents, children, grand-children, aunties, uncles, nephews, nieces, husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends and sometimes even just friends, but how many of us actually know what love is? Let's look at what "love" really means.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, there are no less than 5 different definitions of the word "love".

1). A strong feeling of affection.

2). A strong feeling of sexual linked with sexual affection.

3). A great interest and pleasure in something.

4). A persoin of thing that one loves.

5). (in tennis, squash etc) a score of zero.

The last definition is one that is reserved for racket sports so I wont go into any details about it as it explains itself quite clearly, however, the rest of the definitions may feel rather vague to some people so lets try it make sense of them.

The first 2 definitions use the word "affection". Affection is a synonym for love and romance. There are many others we can add like "passion", "compassion" and "warmth". So "love" can be any words in one. The forth definition refers to the usage of the word "love" as a noun, for example,"My love" or "Your love".

At a deeper level, we realise that all of the 5 definitions above could have been definitions for other words. Definitions 1 and 4 could have been a definition for "warmth" while definition 2 could been for "attraction" and definition 3 could have been for "passion".

After reading all this, you might be asking yourself "Isn't there an easier way to understand what love really is?" Well personally, I believe that there is an easier way to understand what love is.

To put it simply, love is about positive emotion. When we "love" someone, something or some activity, it means that the subject in question is giving us positive emotion.

This for me is the real meaning of love. Positive emotion.

"Life is too short": What does it mean?

Life is too short: What does it mean?

Misunderstanding

A quick confession. If you told me what "life is too short" meant before this month (October 2017) I would have interpreted it in a very bad way. I would have confused the term for something like "your life will end shortly". The difficulty I have always had with phrases is that they are just a short way of saying something that often needs to be explained in depth in order for it to be understood properly.

However, this month I have received the November 2017 edition of the American Buddhist magazine, "Lion's roar" and it explained everything in a beautiful and touching way and in a way where everything simply made sense. To put it simply, we are impermanent. If we look at our lives carefully, a lot of us have a habit of clinging on to something and try to give it a feeling of permanence. this is an illusion that we like to give ourselves. We try to hold on to life even though we know deep down that it will all come to an end one day.

Mental Baggage

Throughout our lives,we are given both by ourselves and by other people different names, identities. personalities, titles and other descriptions of the self. However, when we are born, none of these things existed. When we are born, we were just a being. That was literally all we were. Just a sentient being. Just something that breathes and moves. There was no version, definition or perception of us. We were just ... well.. us. As life progresses and we get older and get more attuned to the world, we are given "Mental baggage" from other people. We are told that we are this, that and the other, that we have this,that and the other and that we can or cannot or even will or will not be this, that and the other.

Here is the poem that i discovered in the final page before the back cover of the magazine mentioned above. I love this poem, because it helps us realise the purity of being.

I Knew You Before

by Karen Maezen Miller

I knew you before were a victim

before you were a wreck, a mess, and a bomb.

Without a crowning success or crippling failure.

Before you had an issue, an axe, or a cross.

No disorder ,no syndrome, no label-

undiagnosed,

without a blemish or scar.

Before that night and the morning after,

before the fall, the crash, the crime,

without an upgrade or makeover.

Version 0.0

No story,

no narration, no closed captioning,

no footnotes and no bonus features,

before you remembered to forget and forgot to remember.

I knew you before you were what you say-

what you think,what you fear, what you know.

Do you know yourself before?

The one thing that came to my attention when reading this poem was that this is the way we were when we were born. without any agendas. This is also the way we will be when we die. Without agendas. When we die, all conceptualisation of ourselves will cease. In other words, when we die, we are free from concepts and we are just who we were when we are born. Empty. Empty of concepts. We came into the word with nothing an we leave the world with nothing.

Equality in death.

A friend of mine told me that death is the ultimate equaliser. When we are dead, we are all the same. No one is superior or inferior to any other person when we all die, because superiority and inferiority are both concepts of the mind. Therefore, death is a liberator that makes us return to our true self. Once we realise all this about death, we lose our need to hold on to life and we can live our life to the full.

Moral of the story: Live your life! Live your dreams! Don't be overwhelmed by what life throws at you! Don't listen to your doubters, your haters our you criticisers.

I will leave you with Prince EA.

EVERYBODY DIES, BUT NOT EVERYBODY LIVES.

Decisions,Un-decisions and Re-decisions

Decisions, Un-decisions and Re-decisions

In my own personal life, making decisions is a very hard and sometimes even a painful process. I often spend months, even years working out wherever a certain decision is good for me or not.

The thing that makes the decision-making process even worse for me is that when I finally have made a decision, it often gets challenged and questioned by other people.There are time when I am told to re-think ore even change me decision . This is very annoying  for me as I often take a ling time to make decisions for me as I often take a ling time to make decisions in the first place. One thing for sure is that if I am not allowed to make my own decisions at the age of 31 the there is something seriously wrong with the society that I live in.

I've realised now trust sometimes you have to trust your own heart when it comes to your own decisions. If it doesn't feel right, the it probably isn't.

I have spent the most recent years of my life being encouraged to re-think and undo certain decisions. In the end, I eventually do what my heart tells me to do. The mind can be a great tool for making rational decisions but when it comes to emotional well being, your heart is your teacher and director. I think I need to balance mind-orientated thinking with what the heart tells me. 

When you make decisions, do you listen to your mind or your heart? Here is American spiritual teacher Ram Dass who gives his thoughts in this lecture.

A Toxic Relationship

I have decide to do this entry at the spur of the moment so I do apologise if I sound a bit emotional.

I received a phone call on Thursday 14th September 2017 before the clubs AGM which was taking place the same evening. I did not attend the meeting. Why? Because I was so overwhelmed and overloaded by the things I heard. This phone call lasted almost an hour. It was about an e-mail that I gave to this person who was an important member of my chess club basically saying that I did not like his verbal etiquette. I also mentioned that I did not want to play for him in the forth coming season because I've realised that I am easily overwhelmed by his behaviour. He often speaks dismissively about people and has previously said some upsetting things about how I captained the club's rapid-play teams.

Initially, this phone call was about the idea that I will be payed to play for his teams because I mentioned that I didn't like the idea of working for him without payment. Because I mentioned the word "payment" in this e-mail he thought that I actually wanted to be payed for playing in matches for his team. What I was trying to explain was that my chess was not officially paid work and yet I am having to be overwhelmed by his way of speaking and general aura.

Over the years, I have heard all sorts of people tell me things like " You have to make allowances" , " You've got to make leeway" , "Relationships have to be worked at" , "Oh, sometimes he is just like that" and "He has had a hard day/week/life".

While I do accept that all people have flaws and occasionally make mistakes, it also seems that society is creating more and more excuses for the mistakes. It is almost as if we have given up trying to improve ourselves.

I just think that there comes a time when enough is enough and I feel like this person is just wearing me out with his inability to talk in a responsible way. It is clear to me that he is not conscious speaker. Why should I continue working for a person who in the long-term only makes me and other people suffer?

I believe that my life deserves better than to be around a person who only feeds me with negative energy and makes me and others feel bad about themselves.

I do my best to work with others and most of the people that I have met in my life have been wonderful and have been of great help to me in many different ways. However, every now and then we meet a "rotten apple" who ruins our experience of life in some way.

This have been an emotional entry so I do apologise if I sounded over-the-top in certain parts, but at the same time, a bad relationship is like a fire. It will burn you inside if you don't get out of it before too long.

At the end of the day, we all deserve to be treated with respect and I just don't see the point in spending of my life working for a person who is disrespectful to others.

I wish you all well in your relationships.

7 tips for dealing with loneliness.

1). Realise that loneliness is an illusion of the mind.

Loneliness is an illusion off the mind and confuses us into thinking that we are on our own. The thought of loneliness happens often when we believe then there is no one we can relate to or get on with. However there are billions of beings on this planet and we all connected with each other. In the end, we all want one thing. Happiness. 😊

2). We are all connected.

As mentioned above, we are all beings are connected to each other. All of life is dependant on one another. Our plants provide us with oxygen. Our parents provide us with basic knowledge, wisdom and love. Water provides us with hydration. Nature provides us with unconditional love.

3). Live in the moment.

If you are feeling lonely, it could be because you are despairing from the past or worrying about the future. In both cases, you have lost touch with the present moment. When we are in the present moment, when we are in the NOW of life, we realise that we can be happy right NOW. Learn to live in this moment. The past was what it was and the the future will be whatever it will be.

4).You do not need other people or things to make you happy.

We live in a very materialistic world and it creates an illusion the the more we have, the happier we will be. This however is a dangerous psychological trap. We start to accumulate things that we actually don't need. More to the point of this blog, some of us believe that we that we have to be popular to be happy. This is a lie that society likes to tell us and believing it leads to a lot of stress, pressure and for many of us, a lot of misery. Remember, you can be happy on your own and you do not need to depend on anyone for happiness. It is better to go on the right path on your own that go on the wrong path with everyone else.

5). Realise that there are 2 versions of the self.

I have realised recently in my own spiritual journey that there are 2 versions of the self. The inner-self and the outer-self. The inner-self is your internal world. The inner body and your honest thoughts and feelings. The outer-self is your outer body and the way your present yourself to others. Try to have a relationship with yourself and see if there is a connection between the inner-self and the outer-self.

6). Remember that you are NOT what other people think of you.

One of the causes of loneliness is believing everything that other people say to you without questioning the validity of what was said by the other person. remember that other people's opinions, comments, and statements are more of a reflection of the other person than it is about you. To put all of this in another way; don't try to please everybody.

7). Learn to love yourself.

Remember that you ARE worthy of love. There isn't a single person that is not worthy of love. Everyone has value. Everyone has something to give and gain. Practice self-love, self-appreciation, self-acceptance and self-forgiveness. Learn how to be your own best friend by understanding your inner world and how it affects your outer-self and the outer-world and inner peace will come naturally.

I will end this blog with a beautiful message from the universe. I hope these messages will be helpful and healing to all who read them. Good Luck and Thank you for reading.

Richard Davis.

My road to Chess glory: Part 2: The mystery illness.

At this point in time, I was starting to get fed up of chess and I desperately wanted to take a break from the game as I continued life in a dysfunctional state. I ended 2010 feeling weak and feeble, with headaches, colds, sleeping problems and fatigue threatening to ruin the quality of my life forever. My frustration got worse with every defeat as I was going through a phase of "Chess Blindness" were I was struggling to see certain details of a chess position. Despite all of this, I still found myself playing 5 games for my county in the 2010/11 season. I remember feeling weak in each one of them. The long trips in other people's cars and the conversations that I had no interest in just sapped my already limited energy even more.

In Early 2011, I was taken to an appointment at Queen Mary's Hospital in Roehampton for a CAT scan to see if there is anything wrong with my brain in order to try to find an answer to why I was getting frequent persistant headaches. Eventually, the doctor confirmed that I actually had a healthy brain but also diagnosed me with sinusitis. They said that it was blockage in the sinuses that was causing the headaches.

By the spring of 2011 I was seriously contemplating retirement as I was consistently and persistently suffering from ailments.

I would normally play in the Surrey Individual tournaments during the summer, but in 2011 I decided to take a break from the game as I continued to feel dysfunctional with my seemingly never-ending symptoms. This was the kind of break I waited all season for. With all of my struggles both on and off the chessboard, losing game after game, losing so many days at work, losing trust with my own body and ultimately, losing my confidence in life.

So what else to do during the summer? During the spring of 2011 I was made aware about a 6-week course called "Loving Life" by my local Buddhist centre where I had been attending meditation classes since early 2010. It was a course that was based on a meditation practice called the "Metta Bhavana" or "The development of loving kindness". The aim of the course is to explore positive emotion for ourselves and for other people. Every session was on a Tuesday night from 7 to 9:30 pm. However, I remember feeling faint after the second session and one of the ordained Buddhists who was co-leading the course giving me a glass of water to help regain my conscience. Despite this experience, it was an enjoyable course overall where we really looked into the meaning of love, compassion, self respect and inner peace.

In July 2011 I was invited to my local hospital Croydon University Hospital. (Formally Mayday Hospital) to see an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist. She tried to stick a small telescope in my nostrils. (Sounds painful and it was) I was so sensitive to the telescope that before she could see anything inside my nostrils I reacted with a violent irritation. Shaking my head and rubbing my nose at lightning speed. The doctor eventually re-diagnosed me with allergic rhinitis, better known as hay-fever. Finally my mystery illness had a name!

My road to Chess glory. Part 1: Wernick win to persistant illness.

On Monday the 15th of May 2017, I was confirmed as the 2016/17 CCF Division 1 Champion. This was only my 2nd major individual title in my over-the-board Chess career. My first since winning the Wernick Cup in 2009. This season I have also been the captain of 2 championship winning teams. My "Dragon Kings" Long-Play team won their division in the Super-League and promotion to the top division, The "Premiership" while at my home club, South Norwood, I lead them to winning the Ellary Williams Memorial Trophy.So what has been my secret? Why has it taken me so long to win individual title number 2?As far as my own individual success is concerned, I found that the best way of playing in tournaments is to prepare for different tournament situations. I now have a way of playing when I am ahead in tournaments, a way of playing when I am chasing the lead in tournaments and a way of playing a "must win" game. This structure has helped me stay competitive in tournaments and is based on a repertoire that fits to my strengths as a chess player. I also apply this structure to team tournaments. I always want to know what kind of situation my team is in so that I know how to approach my own game when playing in a team.However I have also suffered many illnesses in the last 7-and-a-half years and has heavily affected my chess performances and my functionality in general. In January, I had a serious flu in 2010 and I could feel my functionality both physically and mentally severely affected. I couldn't walk properly, I couldn't breathe properly and I couldn't think properly. Everyday was as if Mohammad Ali knocked me out the previous night. Little did I know that that was the start of 19 month period of continuous illness. Every day from January 2010 to July 2011 I felt unwell to one extent or another. If it was not one thing it was another. Headaches, flu symptoms and fatigue dominated my life at that point in time. I thought it would never end. Not even the doctors seemed to understand what I was going through at the time. To make things worse. I had to move home. I the summer of 2010, my neighbours and I who were at the time living in shared accommodation in nice houses were busy packing their belongings to move South Croydon to Norbury. That same summer, I recorded my worst ever tournament performance in the Felce Cup, scoring just half a point (one draw) in 6 games.On Monday the 11th of October 2010, we all moved into single bedroom flats.