FA+
Shop
look at the birds
10 years ago
I was 90 seconds late into work today. 1 and a half minutes. The boss was already waiting for me at the door to inform me i was late by 90 seconds. I already knew.
I was late because on my way to work walking through this wooded back alley there were these two teeny tiny birds i think they might have been a species of wren. Anyway they were hopping around on this log so i stopped to watch them for a little bit. Ive never seen birds so tiny and it was kinda amazing to see.
So my boss asked if i had an excuse and i actually told her i was watching birds. I explained that it was a species i hadnt seen before and if you cant take a moment out of your life to enjoy something special then really what was the point in anything.
That sorta took the wind out of her sails and she sorta looked at me confused and told me not to do it again. End of lecture.
****this is where you can stop reading if you want...if you want to contiune reading and if you want to debate whats below feel free but be respectful that different people have different views****
The whole thing that happened in france on friday just hammered home how precious life is and that really one minute youre having a great day the next minute your life is snuffed out. Gone. Over. Byebye.
So sometimes we need to take a minute out of our day to enjoy the birds to look up at the sky and be thankful that weve gotten this far in life. To be grateful for the friends and experiences we have and maybe to think that we are lucky to have made it this far.
Being free to walk down the street safely without fear is something as a british person I know ive taken for granted. Other places its not so safe or simple and its easy to forget that when im tucked up in my bed with food in my tummy and a roof over my head that there are others out there who dont have those things.
Attacks like those on france shock the world because they happen so rarely and because its a westernised peaceful country where unarmed civilians who are just going about their normal activities are under attack.
But civillians are dying every day in other countries. Civilians dying because of conflict in general is a horrific concept.
Here in the uk there is a worrying amount of media coverage about how all the muslims should leave and theyre the reason our country is so messed up. And this mob mentality really scares me. It makes me fairly confident that the human race as a species is ultimately doomed and i should just enjoy myself whilst I can cause we are all going down the drain. LoL....
I view myself as an individual. Im pretty sure you view yourself as an individual too.
So im not sure why a chunk of the public here have tied all muslim people together into one entity and decided theyre all a plague of some kind. Each person is unique. It doesnt matter what religion they are. Because each individual interprets their religionin their own individual way. They can use that interpretation to do good or bad things depending on how they see fit.
Theres a friend at work who is muslim and hes one of my favourite people at work he is kind and funny a hard worker and watches anime and plays computer games like i do so we have a lot in common. I dont like the idea of him being branded as a problen in our country or as some kind of suicide bomber. Because some extremist nutjobs want to cause misery and destruction.
The one thing we ALL have in common is that we want to live a fairly stressfree normal comfortable life and to have the priviledge of stopping to watch the birds once in a while
I was late because on my way to work walking through this wooded back alley there were these two teeny tiny birds i think they might have been a species of wren. Anyway they were hopping around on this log so i stopped to watch them for a little bit. Ive never seen birds so tiny and it was kinda amazing to see.
So my boss asked if i had an excuse and i actually told her i was watching birds. I explained that it was a species i hadnt seen before and if you cant take a moment out of your life to enjoy something special then really what was the point in anything.
That sorta took the wind out of her sails and she sorta looked at me confused and told me not to do it again. End of lecture.
****this is where you can stop reading if you want...if you want to contiune reading and if you want to debate whats below feel free but be respectful that different people have different views****
The whole thing that happened in france on friday just hammered home how precious life is and that really one minute youre having a great day the next minute your life is snuffed out. Gone. Over. Byebye.
So sometimes we need to take a minute out of our day to enjoy the birds to look up at the sky and be thankful that weve gotten this far in life. To be grateful for the friends and experiences we have and maybe to think that we are lucky to have made it this far.
Being free to walk down the street safely without fear is something as a british person I know ive taken for granted. Other places its not so safe or simple and its easy to forget that when im tucked up in my bed with food in my tummy and a roof over my head that there are others out there who dont have those things.
Attacks like those on france shock the world because they happen so rarely and because its a westernised peaceful country where unarmed civilians who are just going about their normal activities are under attack.
But civillians are dying every day in other countries. Civilians dying because of conflict in general is a horrific concept.
Here in the uk there is a worrying amount of media coverage about how all the muslims should leave and theyre the reason our country is so messed up. And this mob mentality really scares me. It makes me fairly confident that the human race as a species is ultimately doomed and i should just enjoy myself whilst I can cause we are all going down the drain. LoL....
I view myself as an individual. Im pretty sure you view yourself as an individual too.
So im not sure why a chunk of the public here have tied all muslim people together into one entity and decided theyre all a plague of some kind. Each person is unique. It doesnt matter what religion they are. Because each individual interprets their religionin their own individual way. They can use that interpretation to do good or bad things depending on how they see fit.
Theres a friend at work who is muslim and hes one of my favourite people at work he is kind and funny a hard worker and watches anime and plays computer games like i do so we have a lot in common. I dont like the idea of him being branded as a problen in our country or as some kind of suicide bomber. Because some extremist nutjobs want to cause misery and destruction.
The one thing we ALL have in common is that we want to live a fairly stressfree normal comfortable life and to have the priviledge of stopping to watch the birds once in a while
And what made it worse was when I noticed how badly everyone started reacting towards Muslims. Even in London of all places, where I'd thought (rather naïvely) that racism/prejudice had been beaten by multiculturalism, people have attacked others for sharing a religion with some nut cases.
I just... I don't know how to deal with the shock in all honesty. Imma go cuddle with Mima.
For all kinds of reasons too. The attack could be seen as a wake up call but we must not let it distract us in a way of fear, rather take hold of the opportunities we have and use our every day life to make the world better. Every moment counts, every small kind jester can make a difference. I hope I'm makin since too. XD
I wish all the awful stuff would end.
oh, yeah. I agree 100%. People are always curious as to why I'm so reckless with my life, and this is that reason. A big-ass meteor could hit the earth 2 minutes from now and kill us all, so why hesitate to do anything anymore?
On the Paris attacks, the thing that always scares me afterwards is the group of people who come out of the woodwork to yell about Islam and how it's causing all of this. It has to just be a very loud minority, but a small group of people can do terrible things if they set their minds to it, as proven by the attacks themselves. I know Muslim women who are afraid to leave the house wearing their head scarves because they're scared to draw attention to their faith. A lot of us can feel safe in the UK and it's a nice feeling, but every attack makes life in the UK harder and harder for our country's Muslim population, and we have to try to stop this from happening. It's why I'm going into teaching - more knowledgeable kids means more knowledgeable adults, and eventually I hope people in this country and other countries affected by terrorism will stop using Islam as a scapegoat for violent extremists.
Some workplaces, nay some bosses are just anal retentive about such things.
I take all this with a grain of salt. I try to live my life with no regrets just in case the worst should happen we could all get snuffed out tomorrow by some freak comet noone sees coming so why live with regrets at all
"I was out for the weekend, and during that time, insanity seemed to grip the world yet again -- as it tends to do.
So I don't care where you're from...
What race you are.
What religion.
Orientation.
Gender.
Creed.
Etc.
It doesn't matter the war, the protest, or natural disaster.
Take care of yourself.
Take care of your family.
Take care of your friends.
Take care of your neighbors.
And all of your loved ones or pets.
Or strangers.
Whatever.
Cause love -- like dirt, water, and air -- is cheap.
It's everywhere, yet practically invisible to our eyes.
That's why, in those rare moments, its absence makes headlines.
But, like the ground we stand on, it's the very foundation on which we build our lives. Is it any wonder, then, how easy it is to take it for granted?
So don't forget the little things when times like these strike.
Cause you have to start somewhere.
And we're all in it together." - Rob Walker
As for the view on life... yes, I try to enjoy it when I can. I'm old enough to know how fragile it is - buried a child, lost friends, etc - so I try to take its pleasures where I can.
One thing I've found helps me is doing one new thing every day. Stop at a new restaurant, buy a book you normally wouldn't, try a different way to work, etc. It may not always work out, but you've tried something new.,.. learned something new. And you'll always be the better for it.
The attack on Paris at The Eagles of Death Metal show was absolutely horrific. It brings me great pain to see these kinds of things happen...people are all too willing to spread innocent blood as if it was as meaningless as spreading jelly on toast. It sickens me. People need to stop fighting over who created this world and work together to stop the ones that are destroying it. I'm not prejudice against any religion or race, or anything. It's rediculous how trivial things like those, to some people are reason enough to kill.
But, the reason doesn't really matter. What matters are the lives forever lost, and changed by what happened.
And you make a valid point it's all too easy to take our safety and freedom for granted.
That's my motto and I plan on sticking to it even in times of sadness
On the larger scale: As a general rule I treat all people as idiots until proven otherwise. Sounds harsh, but there's a reason for it.
Only a small number of people are "bad apples" that do horrible things, be they as severe as this or the much smaller things in our everyday lives. The BIGGER problem is the lazy, the cowed and the easily swayed people who say nothing, who do nothing, or worse believe them.
Obviously there's bad on both sides, such as those crazies who are saying all Muslims are bad and that we need to get rid of them. But what's worse the few crazies spouting such nonsense, or the MILLIONS of good-for-nothing sheeple who believe them so easily, who refuse to think for themselves or challenge the ideas of their pastors, politicians, family, leaders, etc?
Surveys, particularly political surveys are one of the greatest things illuminating this overall lack of sense or wisdom in the masses, and dear lord the results of some lately..
http://metro.co.uk/2015/11/17/man-j.....07675/?ref=yfp and the whole of his facebook post is really sad and basically echoes exactly what you've said.
The gist is that he had his researchers pretend to be drunk or ill on the Subway to see how many if any people would help them. He used both black and white researchers to account for race; and while it was a significant variable just like drunkenness vs sickness was; the most valuable result came in the magic number of people it took to surpass bystander apathy.
If nobody tried to help within the first 2.5 minutes; nobody was going to help period. The likelihood of help increased slightly after the first and second person offered help; but only once 5 people within the first five minutes offered help would the overall attitude suddenly shift and cause the entire subway car's occupants to offer help. (I'm including the older lab results not talked about there; I used to have the whole thing in my social psych textbook)
Ironically this all feeds back into the argument of true altruism as you'll find if you read the conclusion/explanation section ; which is something you yourself posted a journal about not long ago.
http://evolutioncounseling.com/?s=death
For some reason, it hit me hard around halloween and i didnt know why. I figured out it was a midlife crisis, a wake up call to a wasting away of my life as things became too routine and monotonous. Aristotle said that the unexamined life is not worth living, and this was part of that. I never really questioned anything going on in my life beyond the little innocuous things that had become habit.
Imagine five years going on like that, and it gets scary, especially to the point where you begin to fear your little time you are given to do things and experience. When you are stuck in a routine like a robot, your memories blend into one timeless mass and you wonder where all that time went. The only way to break that chunk is to spice life up with things that you won't forget and where you can live in the moment.
Studies show that the less time you have, the happier you are. In the elderly, it's shown that because they are retired they have more time to enjoy the small things that pass most other people by in their daily bustle of jobs, eating, and sleeping. Another study I read up on was the consistent quality of near death experiences; how everyone has almost the same experiences in this regard, and once they are revived from that state, they are so comforted by the experience that they never fear death again for the rest of their lives.
My thoughts. Hoped that helped.