Bigger issues than me this day

Do you accept that there are things you just have to accept, things about which you can do nothing? Of course you do, and for "you" read "we". You/we cannot alter the course or the temperature of the sun within the universe or dictate the compass course of an earthworm's tunnelling.

In fact the only things we can do something about in these time-flicker lives on earth of ours are facets of our own behaviour. That is, our own individual behaviour. We might on rare occasions influence, but neither you nor I can actually do anything about the behaviour of each other or of others. My telling you stuff like, "I want you to take up karate - because ... / give up alcohol - because ... / become a Hindu - because .../ read my book - because ..." are going to elicit responses from no-response (polite) to the unprintable (impolite). So it goes like this ...

* I can definitely behave (or believe) as I myself want to behave (or believe).

* I can try, for whatever reason, to influence others to behave (or believe) as I would like them to behave (or believe).

* I can do nothing about the mega trillions of 'things beyond'.

Our species is the only one (so far as we know) with the actual power to alter its own behaviour for its own good and / or the good of other species and/or the planet it inhabits. But the power is weak and such alterations do not happen or happen with excruciating, even fatal slowness.

There are too many of us and each of us wants (and many of us already have) more than this place can deliver in total. We all know this - or we should if we've been listening.

What or who is going to turn we human lemmings from the death-cliffs of extinction? And how? Knowing is one thing. We all know. Doing is another, and no-one knows what to do - yet.

Good Reading

My new novel Going with Gabriel, out a month ago today, has now been reviewed 20 times on the Goodreads.com web-site. It has an average rating of 3.65 although 6 of those reviewers rated it 4 (very good) and 6 others as a 5 (excellent). I must admit to some disappointment - until, on a whim, I looked at the ratings for the past seven Booker Prize winners.

Going backwards in time they rated at:- 3.91, 3.74, 2.98, 3.24, 3.35, 3.79, and 3.44. Furthermore I noted The Da Vinci Code's 3.56 rating, Hemingway's Nobel winner The Old Man And The Sea at 3.50 and Gabriel Marquez' (also a Nobel) Love in a Time of Cholera at 3.78.

Now I don't feel so dissapointed! Many of these famed literary creations had hundreds, some thousands of ratings, but there does seem a strange uniformity about such results, and my guess would be that their average rating would not have varied much after the first couple of dozens. Furthermore I think there's something of the Aussie 'Tall Poppy Syndrome' about it. e.g. man walks through poppy field, knocking off the head of any that stand above the rest.