“It’s a miserable day, isn’t it?” he said. I looked outside and it was raining. It was not miserable. He was miserable.
“Bloody rain,” he said. "How are we gonna go out in this weather?”
We had planned to ride our bikes. The forecast had said it was sunny, and he always trusted the forecasts.
“The forecast said it would be sunny! It’s not supposed to be raining!”
No matter how many times he was let down by the weather forecast, he was always surprised when they let him down again. The forecast was truth, as far as he was concerned. He planned his life around it. The forecast was God.
“Well, at least our plants will be getting a good water, they need it,” my mother said, walking into the kitchen.
He did not respond. He didn’t care about plants. He just wanted to ride his bike. His plan was his priority. He did not care about the plants, the food, the reservoirs.
“Don’t complain about rain, Dad,” I said. “We are lucky. Do you know about the countries whose people pray for rain, hope for rain?”
“Lucky bastards,” he said. He was joking, but it was a dark joke.
It rained all day and he was in the garage all day, doing anything to keep busy. He loved to keep busy, even if he wasn’t really doing anything. As long as he was doing something.
By the next day it was sunny, and he was complaining that it was too hot.
I have noticed now that my brother is sounding like my dad. He says the same things, thinks the same way. It is not just genetic, I don’t think. It is so easy to become sucked into the worldview of those who are closest to you. Parents are a big one, because in the back of our minds we are still indebted to them for our lives. They gave us life, they were here first, and so surely their worldview could not be one big elaborate lie?
But of course it is, for the most part. Every worldview is an interpretation, it is made up, and is usually largely founded on the family that a person grew up in. Your parents teach you what their parents taught them, and so on.
Unless of course you have awake parents, or awake friends - people that do not go on living in a world that society gave to them. These people are usually the lightest, the freest, the most energised.
It seems it is important to question how much of your thinking is like a download of someone else's mind, just because they are close to you; to see how much of your thinking is fresh, creative and inspired, rather than an old tape that someone fed you through their own voice. If it goes unquestioned, you might be living as a clone…
BEWARE OF THE CLONE LIFE