Below Belief

From Mr Land:

FOLLOW THESE 14 SIMPLE TESTS BEFORE YOU DECIDE TO HAVE CHILDREN.
If only I had known ! !
Test 1
Women : To prepare for pregnancy, put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front. Leave it there for 9 months.
After 9 months remove 5% of the beans.
Men: To prepare for children, go to a local chemist, tip the contents of your wallet onto the counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself. Then go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office. Go home. Pick up the newspaper and read it for the last time.
Test 2
Find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels and how they have allowed their children to run wild.
Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behaviour.
Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.
Test 3
To discover how the nights will feel:
1. Walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 4 – 6kg, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly.
2. At 10pm, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep.
3. Get up at 12pm and walk the bag around the living room until 1am.
4. Set the alarm for 3am.
5. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2am and make a cup of tea.
6. Go to bed at 2.45am.
7. Get up again at 3am when the alarm goes off.
8. Sing songs in the dark until 4am.
9. Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up when it goes off.
10. Make breakfast.
Keep this up for 5 years. LOOK CHEERFUL.
Test 4
Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems:
1. Buy a live octopus and a string bag.
2.. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that no arms hang out.
3. Time allowed for this: 5 minutes.
Test 5
Forget the BMW and buy a practical 5-door wagon..
And don’t think that you can leave it out on the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don’t look like that.
1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment and leave it there.
2. Get a coin. Insert it into the CD player.
3. Take a box of chocolate biscuits; mash them into the back seat.
4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.
Test 6
Getting ready to go out :
1. Wait
2. Go out the front door
3. Come back in again
4. Go out
5. Come back in again
6. Go out again
7. Walk down the front path
8. Walk back up it
9. Walk down it again
10. Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes.
11. Stop, inspect minutely and ask at least 6 questions about every piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way.
12. Retrace your steps
13. Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbours come out and stare at you.
14. Give up and go back into the house.
15. You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.
Test 7
Repeat everything you say at least 5 times.
Test 8
Go to the local supermarket.
Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child.
A full-grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat. Buy your weekly groceries without letting the goat(s) out of your sight.
Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.
Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.
Test 9
1. Hollow out a melon
2. Make a small hole in the side
3. Suspend the melon from the ceiling and swing it side to side
4. Now get a bowl of soggy cornflakes and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon while pretending to be an aeroplane.
5. Continue until half the cornflakes are gone.
6.. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor.
7. You are now ready to feed a 12-month old child.
Test 10
Learn the names of every character from the Wiggles, Barney, Teletubbies and Disney.
Watch nothing else on television for at least 5 years.
Test 11
Can you stand the mess children make? To find out:
1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains
2. Hide a fish behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flowerbeds and then rub them on clean walls.
4. Cover the stains with crayon.
5. How does that look?
Test 12
Make a recording of someone shouting ‘Mummy’ repeatedly.
Important: No more than a 4 second delay between each Mummy – occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet if required. Play this tape in your car, everywhere you go for the next 4 years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.
Test 13
Start talking to an adult of your choice.
Have someone else continually tug on your shirt hem or shirt sleeve while playing the Mummy tape listed above.
You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.
Test 14
Put on your finest work attire.
Pick a day on which you have an important meeting. Now:
1. Take a cup of cream and put 1 cup of lemon juice in it
2. Stir
3. Dump half of it on your nice silk shirt
4. Saturate a towel with the other half of the mixture
5.. Attempt to clean your shirt with the same saturated towel
6. Do not change, you have no time.
7. Go directly to work
You are now ready to have children, ENJOY!!

So my mate Rob is building a new business. It’s going to be called Bloom Psychology and it’s about helping you to find yourself. All those athiests, scientists, rationalists, theists (go on then, you struggle with existentialism too…) who have at some point struggled to find meaning and purpose in their lives, raise your hands. I think we’re pretty much all there.
Sooner or later if you believe that life is an accident and we’re all just living out the destiny of our selfish genes, then life can get you down. In fact life can get you down regardless of whether you understood the previous sentence.
Rob’s point is that a lot of people in this world struggle with finding meaning. And the cause (and the solution) are different for everyone. His business plans to help fix that – by providing a mixture of courses, training, mentoring, coaching and therapy (that’s therapy of the rational, here’s why it works variety, not the “place these crystals by your toilet” variety…) which bring people closer to happiness. Or at least contentment.
I think there’s a big market out there for just such services. And I think it’s untapped. Got toothache – you go to the dentist. Not feeling too well – you go to the doctor. Need to sort out your finances? Go to an IFA. Struggling to feel happy? Hmmm. Not sure. If it’s clinical depression (which is far more common than you might think) then you might be referred to a psychologist for help. But if it’s a bit of existential agnst or struggling to deal with lifes day-to-day stresses, there is no one I can think of to help – other than friends and family.
I’ll keep you posted and in the meantime, here’s Rob on 2008 resolutions:

So the new year is upon us, and now we look forward to 2008. Only two years of this decade remain. I was impressed by what Seth Godin had to say about this:

Here’s a question that you should clip out and tape to your bathroom mirror. It might save you some angst 15 years from now. The question is, What did you do back when interest rates were at their lowest in 50 years, crime was close to zero, great employees were looking for good jobs, computers made product development and marketing easier than ever, and there was almost no competition for good news about great ideas?
Many people will have to answer that question by saying, “I spent my time waiting, whining, worrying, and wishing.”

This is why I am so in favour of new year’s lists. They get a bad name, but I think this is because of poor execution rather than anything else. Lists represent action and change. They are a tangible attempt to improve our future. In so doing, they symbolise hope. And without hope we are nothing.

So, I’ve started my list.