The View from the Hill Three

By Terrence Aubrey

The View from the Hill 3

The view from the hill 3 is a collection of observations of life. I have tried to take a far from the madding crowd perspective. It is, if you like a view from afar, an appraisal, a stock take.
These observations whilst covering a wide spectrum of modern day woes are not in truth modern. They are, I would suggest, timeless and cut through many of our concepts of life in the new millennium. Are they valid, worthy of sharing and considering? Obviously I think yes, but you the reader must draw your own conclusions.
We all happen to be alive at a crucial moment in time. Life on earth is under threat from myriad directions, why? Simply because the road we have followed is a dangerous one. To put it simply, we have evolved in a very unbalanced way. We have either presumed, or assumed that our actions are independent of the very World we share. Whilst increasing numbers of people are now questioning, our audacity in treating Mother Earth as little more than our personal warehouse, we have left it very late.
Why we find ourselves where we are right now forms the basis of my observations. Whilst I accept that many will disagree, I hope that at the very least, the alternative perspective I present here is worthy of your consideration.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Terrence Aubrey
• Release date: Feb 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301395309

Terrence Aubrey

Terrence Aubrey was born in Bristol, England, the only son of a Ballet dancer mother and composer father. Rebellious of nature and from an early age, he abandoned his education at the earliest possible moment, fifteen. He showed no inclination of following in the artistic footsteps of his parents during his formative years. Preferring a self enlightening process, he set off upon an adventure that led him to experiment with understanding the mind and the development of self awareness. During that period he enjoyed extensive World travel across the countries of Europe, the America’s, north and south and the FSU. He found those travels, enriching, mind opening and educational and in equal measure. He discovered both a passion and love of writing by chance, while establishing a website. It was a website than required a lot of varied content. That ultimately led him to the writing of many articles upon diverse subjects. That in turn led to him creating a blog. The leap from blogging to writing full length novels was a gradual process. Many of his novels reflect his environmental concern for the way we, the human race have evolved and the consequences that path has led us towards. Whilst many of his novels are dramatic, even apocalyptic, they also show a way forward. Whether you believe that way to be better or worse than the current status quo is for you to decide. Terrence Aubrey currently lives on a farm in southern Spain and cultivates Avocados. He has four sons, three dogs and writes. He has now published several works of fiction and they can be found on Smashwords.

Book preview

The Legacy

John Montserrat felt troubled as he lay in his hospital bed, he was 85 years old and the doctors told him, as they had for countless years, that he had driven himself to hard, that he needed rest and all would be well. John was not so sure, he felt tired, very tired and he felt for perhaps the first time in his life feelings of uncertainty, that somehow, somewhere along the way he had overlooked something, something very important. He had led an industrious and successful life, so why these feelings of uncertainty? He would be leaving behind a legacy to be proud of, or would he?

He had been born in New York to parents of humble origins, his mother English and his father French and whilst his parents were not wealthy they had provided well for John and his two sisters. From a young age the fire of ambition has raged within John Montserrat, he could see that his parents had done as much and then more for him and his sisters. The small corner delicatessen that was the means by which his parents supported and provided for their family was actually very good, people from distant neighbourhoods would travel to buy the goods available and it was open 12 hours a day and seven days a week.

No. he felt only admiration for his long departed parents, both for their courage in taking the chance to immigrate to the then embryonic land of America. He also realised they had done their best and had worked hard to provide a better life for their children. John’s ambitions had begun at an early age; he’d watched his parents work so hard for such modest returns and was sure there must be a better way. Only four blocks away he would watch the limo`s pull up at the latest fashionable restaurant, club or disco, he beautiful people, as they flaunted their wealth and good fortune.

John had bought into the American dream at the age of nine, he was going to do it, make it and become one of the beautiful people. The reality was that whilst John was in no way stupid, he was neither academically inclined, but this hindered his burning ambition not one tiny bit. When he left high school at the age of seventeen he had achieved ok results, not enough to continue his education, but enough to hold his head high. He had decided years before that he was going to build. He was going to construct the most beautiful office and apartment blocks within New York. He found himself a job within a medium sized construction outfit as little more than the office gofer. It was the beginning, he was diligent, hard working and ambitious and within three years he became department head, but this was only the beginning. He had been watching and learning within those three years and perhaps most importantly he had been making the right contacts. At the age of 21 he set up his own company, Montserrat Construction. At around the same time he met Annette the girl that 4 years later would become his wife and bear him 2 sons and a daughter.

John had worked hard and diligently 12 hours a day 7 days a week and slowly his company grew, became increasingly successful. He was a good husband to Annette and a good father to his children, even though his growing business interests consumed more and more of his time. Over time all three of his children worked within his growing empire of companies, each within different capacities and the future seemed assured, but always at the back of his mind was the feeling that he was missing something, a thought that due to his ever increasing commitments he set aside for another day.

Now it seemed that day had come, his youngest son Peter, the least ambitious of his two sons had started following a spiritual teacher at the age of 22. He would often try to share with his father the teachings. In truth John had never really had the time, or inclination to listen and always diverted his son’s attention to matters of his company’s finances, Peter was head of finance.

As he lay in his bed snippets of those conversations with Peter now kept coming back to him. We the human race are dangerously out of touch with the nature and the world upon which we live, he remembered Peter saying one time, so long ago. We are lost, completely lost and because of this we are destroying everything around us. We are here to understand something really important.....these snippets of thought reverberated within his mind. John was finding breathing increasingly difficult,

I can be proud of the legacy I will be leaving behind he tried with increasing difficulty to convince himself, my family will be well provided for, my businesses are more successful than ever, but, but and then John breathed out for the last time and Johns face set into an expression of surprise.

The movie of his life flashed past him so fast, so quickly, 85 years seemingly compressed within a moment, but it did not dwell upon the countless huge and successful deals that he had struck within his life. No it dwelt upon what he had learnt as to the very purpose of his having been blessed with a life and to Johns surprise; it was very little, very little indeed. Somehow he knew that next time he would devote his time and efforts to understanding this why! John’s legacy was not as he had hoped.

The bottom line

What is your bottom line, the minimum that you expect, no need, to consider yourself viable? We all of us need to feel viable, yes, that our life has a purpose, a reason to be? The tragedy of life on planet earth in 2013 is that one mans definition of being viable could well be another's definition of hopeless despair. For the modest man, a regular job and income is enough, just enough to provide for his family and he will content himself with that. For the entrepreneur a day without a deal is as a failure.

An American's economic nightmare, no, a first World persons nightmare, is probably an unachievable dream for many. We now live in a World of eight billion people. That's a lot of people, let’s try and put it into some perspective. Were the Worlds population to gather in say England, or New York, these places would probably sink under the weight.

My point, we hear, consider and pontificate on the concerns of a tiny fraction of this Worlds population and can that be right? Personally, I like to follow the news. Normally it is Spain, my country of residence, Europe, then America and Russia, at the edge maybe China, but only because I'm surrounded by their products. I doubt if these countries added together, even reach a population of one billion, China excluded of course, so the rest? That's quite a gap between us, the first world folk currently feeling hard done by and the rest, no? What I am trying to suggest here is that while we might feel that things are difficult, tough, right now, perhaps we over estimate our difficulties. Maybe seven billion people on planet earth would gladly exchange their difficulties, with ours; I doubt any of us would accept the exchange. No, sure, things could be better, much better, but equally, things could be worse, much worse. Perhaps, even in what we consider a difficult moment, we should consider our Worlds imbalance and be grateful