h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

An oasis is an island of life in a sea of desolation, a gift to be treasured.

JTG

Oops...

Well hello JTG!

*Sigh* ... this oasis seems to have dried up. Well it wasn't my idea and frankly I always felt a bit cynical about it ... the people whose idea the whole thing was apparently seem to have lost interest in it...

Hi there.

That's a shame. It seemed a nice idea. I don't know whether an oasis ever really dries up though. I like to think that it's always there, somewhere, bubbling beneath the sand and waiting for a chance to start anew when the dunes have drifted away.

JTG

(Think I'll watch Lawrence of Arabia tonight)

I'm still here Willem, I didn't know you were though.

And yes, I am still consciously living my life trying to treat all my fellow-beings with love and with respect.

And yes, you were right to be cynical, because these things do start with a rush of enthusiasm which drains away; but the impulses which drive them in the first place still remain. Consider them like sudden and rather florid flowers on otherwise unremarkable plants. The strength of the metta is in the rest of the plant but it is, as I said, unremarkable.

Ben

Hi Barton! It's good to still see you here indeed! Yes I'm still here and likely so to remain.

You know there is actually a less cynical way of looking at this. An 'Oasis' is only of great value in a desert. An Oasis in the midst of abundance has no special value. Maybe this oasis is not really needed because there is enough love and companionship elsewhere on h2g2. The site does seem to be doing fairly well, still ...

In my own case, enthusiasm doesn't drain away. I'm still enthusiastic about the same things I was enthusiastic about when I was three or four or five years old ...

Sorry for calling you Barton, Ben! Just saw my mistake right now!

No worries, Willem.

I think you are right that the Oasis analogy is better than we knew at the time. I am also certain that the original Willem Love Collective are as loving and supportive now as they were then, but that other people in need have crossed their paths. (Does that make sense?)

How are you, and how are your family? I was very moved by what you wrote about your father's experience with the thief a couple of years ago.

Ben

Hi again Ben! The idea was, if I have it correctly, this place would be to serve h2g2 in general ... I've been fairly active here and there are definitely some people in need here, still. The people who started up this place ... many of them seem to have just evaporated into thin air!

Anyways, I'm not too bad myself, and neither is my family. We've an addition to the 'family' (actually extended family) in the form of my sister's new boy Christiaan. He's a bit older than a year by now.