Tackling destiny head on
> We must grab our future with both hands and actively seek to shape it to our ideal
ASPIRITUAL friend advised me: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” So now, I have to work out how to become a giant killer robot and inspire other guys to be the same.
My idea is that if men are occupied fighting tournaments encased in Gundam-style robot gear, the whole masculine aggression thing will be channelled into a healthy sport, and women can get on with running the planet.
We must actively shape our future – and a news link forwarded by reader Sunita Chou gave the perfect example.
A householder was fed up with motorists driving dangerously fast in his district.
When authorities in the US city of Cleveland, Ohio, ignored his complaints, the man dressed up as a road-worker and spent the day installing more than 20 official-looking speed limit signs in the area, becoming a hero to his fellow citizens.
I pinged my regular contributors to see if there were examples from elsewhere.
A barber in Chiang Mai, Thailand, started opening for business on Wednesdays, despite a superstition that barbers stay shut on that day.
Furious protesters said he’d bring a curse on the community.
But the barber had discovered that the practice had nothing to do with ancient tradition or luck.
Some barbers had at one time got into the habit of reserving one day a week for haircuts for members of royalty – a practice no longer needed.
Talking of Thailand, one of my neighbours bought a Siamese cat so I said: “Sawatdee khrap” (hello) but it just sat there, baffled. Should I tell my neighbour it’s almost definitely an imposter?
But back to our topic. The most shocking example of a man grabbing his destiny was a news item from New Zealand, forwarded by a colleague.
Doctors told a man named John Griffin that his heart was beating in an irregular rhythm and he would have to get on a waiting list for electrical treatment to jolt it back to steady beats.
So he went home, strolled over to his neighbour’s high voltage electrified security fence and touched it.
Zap! Electricity surged through his body – and fixed his heart problem. Doctors were horrified.
The moral of this story? The Universe has a wacky sense of humour and will sometimes reward people who do stupid, dangerous things.
This is extremely important for the male sex, as we seem to have evolved to do that stuff.
When I asked a university scientist friend why, he said that evolution in the long run doesn’t make mistakes, so guys are meant to be extreme risktakers.
He also told me that a risk study at Nanjing University last year revealed why guys treat the eating of spicy food as a competitive sport.
Researchers gave volunteers a test to measure their appetite for risk. Then they gave half the group spicy food and repeated the test. The chilli-chompers had become risk-takers.