When I was a young lad –way back when helmets were optional, seat belts didn’t exist on the back seats of cars, and mothers could tell their children they didn’t want to see them until supper time– I used to get beat up a lot.  As I look back with the sage wisdom of someone cresting their hill (okay, I am only mid thirties but I smoked for years and am overweight) I can’t help but think that it really made sense I got beat up a lot. I was weird. I was that weird kid that picked his nose and often had his hand down his pants. I didn’t want to be weird, I just was. The reason for my weirdness is simple: I am one of those people to whom their rules do not apply. They never have. Unfortunately, when their rules don’t apply, the people to whom the rules are applicable get upset. Its not fair that the rules apply to some but not to others.  But as my mother was fond of saying:  “If I ever gave the impression that life is fair, I appologise.”

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying I am above the law. The brilliant thing about the rule of law is that always applies to everyone. Some people, Conard Black springs to mind, may think that it doesn’t, but it does. The rules that don’t apply to me are the more ethereal ones. I took the wrong courses in high school (basically, entirely humanities) then took the wrong degree (history and classics) only to end up with the wrong job (computer programmer) and the wrong job lead me the wrong country (from Canada to Britain) which eventually found me wrong part of Britain (rural England) kinda doing the wrong thing (raising children and animals). But then all this works in a wonderfully wrong way because actually there are plenty of rural computer programmers living the good life, plenty of Canadians living the UK and plenty of people with a Bachelors of Arts who end up web programmers and new media wizards. Indeed, part of the art of being human is realising that everything balances its self out the same way nature balances itself out (which is to say, not very balanced at all).

The goal of this blog is to give me a chance to explain the art of being human, because there is an art, a sorta knack, to living life and its a knack that often forgotten or lost in idealism. The art of being human includes letting yourself love, but also hate, be happy, but also be sad, to work hard, play hard, but also just to veg sometimes and watch Star Treck, Being Erica, Skins, or some other show.

I am hoping, through the course of this blog, that I will be able explain what it means to fiscally conservative but socially liberal, why the iPhone is life changing, why religion isn’t as bad as people say it is, why I usually eat organic but won’t say no to a Big Mac either, and why milking goats in an important part of everyone’s day. But for now, I will simply say: welcome to Ben’s contribution to the art of being human.

the distelfink (gold finch)