stream of consciousness
I am by no means educated enough to make decisions on who should be in office. I did not vote, nor am i registered to do so BECAUSE first of all, i do not believe any of us know the real story. Secondly, if someone cannot pass a basic knowlege test on a subject, should they go on to a higher difficulty level? Likely not. Everyone on every friends list and status update has been telling me to go vote...wether or not they were rooting for their own beliefs in the process. It kind of makes me want to say, "I pooped today!! It's healthy for my body and I feel lighter in my steps!! GO POOP TODAY!!"
My voice is better served helping people I come in contact with. My hands and care are better served making people feel better about themselves in a world of uncertainty and fear mongering. I am at a job where I make little money, not because I am not good at it, but because I genuinly want to make people feel good about themselves. Perhaps it's a selfish endeavor, but unless I make someone click their heels from their hair color or cut...I just don't feel good about myself.
I get upset when I share vital information to facilitate people making INFORMED EDUCATED decisions on topics like vaccinating their children and home birth and i get comments like "i can't even read this because I am psycho about my kids health and I might not do what i'm doing now if I read this article.." DO YOU KNOW HOW IDIOTIC THIS STATEMENT IS?!?!? You just said that you would GLADLY choose total ignorance over your child's best interest and safety. You are choosing to be blind and let your "health care provider" lead you around by the nose, telling you how to raise your child. Don't try to convince me you are psycho about their health if in the same breath you choose to be uninformed about the decisions you make when it comes to what it being injected into their tiny bodies.
I know how I feel isn't popular. I understand that a lot of people probably think I'm an idiot, uneducated, unsafe or unfit to have a child...but damn it, at least I am trying to think outside the box!! I used to be a very angry person. I stood up for things I had NO IDEA about, made an ass out of myself more than half the time, and i wasn't happy. It was easy to make a fool out of me and I became very familiar with the taste of my perverbial foot.
I am still somewhat angry, however I do not stand up and yell about things I have no idea about. I do not vote on issues I have no understanding of. I do not yell and fight about my views. I prefer to live and let live, and to make every effort to do no harm. It is better to stand up for injustice than to try to change one's cores beliefs (in my humble opinion). I grew up watching my dad scream at the newspaper and the TV and call people fags or bigots or whatever. Yelling about things makes you look foolish, and it certainly doesn't get your point across. It makes people defensive, it makes them feel wounded. What you give out, WILL come back to you. Every religion and school of thought remarks on this point...it is a natural law that no one is above no matter their beliefs.
I want to live a quiet life. I tune even my husband out when he gets on his political or religious rants. I have some parallels with his core beliefs, which is why we are able to get along. Most of what i believe feels to me as though it comes from things I have already experienced in past consciousness, or some form of a past life (if you will). As I mature and come more into myself and make my own decisions about things, I shed the completely polar opposite schools of thought of my parents. The more I think for myself and allow the voice within me to be heard, the more i am able to clearly see things for what they are.
I took a lot of flack for a note i wrote on FB about the whole recent "purple shirt, gay day" thing. A Buddhist friend of mine had said something about how remarkable it is that we feel the need to have special days devoted to celebrating our defferences, and that she believed we should always be accepting of others and help one another and things in this thought process. The sentiment resonated with me. A few days later I had just rolled out of bed and was on FB, a grumpy pregnant human being, and I read the "straw the broke the camels back comment". It inflamed me, and I made several comments about how I don't fucking care about your purple shirt, (angrily, I can admit that) that if we take ALL this time to celebrate differences, we are taking away from more important issues, and that it is not our differences but the acceptance of these that bring us together and we should look for what makes us alike rather than being in people's faces about how different we are and how THEY SHOULD DEAL WITH IT!
I got a comment from someone I feel is pretty radical in a lot of their commentary on things...I have a lot of these kind of people in my life and rather than make judgments I do try very hard to dismiss my immediate disdain for their opinions and realize they are free to have them. However I kept this comment in my head for several days after this and mulled it around and came up with this "pearl" (tho to some it may still be a bit of annoying sand in the panty). She said that she thought I, of all people, would want to be celebrated for my differences and not how I am just like everyone else. She would never want to celebrate me for how I am the same as everyone else.
First of all, my opinion differed from hers, and she was not celebrating it. So no, she does not want to celebrate me for my difference. :P
This brings me back to my study on cats. I have read many books about cats. Not intentionally...just over the years I have found myself with these books in my hands or watching intense tv films about them. I have cats so it works out. Anyhow, I found a very interesting book about dancing with cats. This sounds stupid. I am aware. It is not the easiest thing to initiate. Cats are fickle creatures, bent to their own will and needs. HOWEVER, when you want to initiate a dance with a cat, the book said that you must aline yourself with the cat...mimick their movement, and lead them into mimicking yours, and with the right music, this eventually escalates into a dancing relationship which is supposedly very empowering to both owner and cat and I read the effects last for days. This is not something I have much experience with, I didn't find that I had the patience for it nor the space to initiate such play.
Basically what I am trying to say is that in order to initiate a new relationship with the animal, JUST as when dating or making a new friend, we find resonance with the things that make us the same. We become closer due to our similarities. Why do we get married in the first place? Because we find someone we are similar to. Why do we divorce? Because we cannot resolve our differences.
I have plenty of "minority" status friends. The ones I tend to get along with are the ones who live their lives, and don't expect anyone to treat them any differently because they are gay or because they are black or because they are poor.
My own personal way of getting closer to people is to find similarities so I can relate to them. So that I can understand their experience. I'm not saying I wouldn't adore them for being different than most people, in fact most of the people i get along with aren't the norm. I like wacky personalities or eccentric tendencies. But I'm not going to tell everyone in my friends list to wear a teal shirt and say people who don't tolerate them for being awkward or eccentric are stupid.
Maybe I'm running around in circles here, but basically, all I'm trying to say is that there are issues in this world that are more important to worry about. Slavery was cruel and injust but all of those people (slave or owner) are dead. Jews know more about slavery than any race and they have found a way to deal so why do I have to devote a whole month to "black history"? We are all Americans, so why can't that be enough? Why is it so amazing that a people that was opressed turned out some of the world's most intelligent inventors? (taken from an interview with Chris Rock) Opression has been proven time and time again to create the drive in people to rise above (not that I'm condoning it, just not giving generations of people a right to blame someone's ancestors for their current life situation) and to lead and be powerful and strong.
I don't have many convictions but those listed above are pretty set in stone for me. If you don't know about something, don't make decisions based on "what everyone else thinks you should". If you choose to pump your kid full of stuff, KNOW WHATS IN IT AND WHAT IT COULD DO TO THEM. If you choose to celebrate someone for their difference, remember that someone's differing opinion is their choice and they are entitled to it, like it or not. Don't contradict yourself or you will look like an idiot. Pretty simple stuff.
My voice is better served helping people I come in contact with. My hands and care are better served making people feel better about themselves in a world of uncertainty and fear mongering. I am at a job where I make little money, not because I am not good at it, but because I genuinly want to make people feel good about themselves. Perhaps it's a selfish endeavor, but unless I make someone click their heels from their hair color or cut...I just don't feel good about myself.
I get upset when I share vital information to facilitate people making INFORMED EDUCATED decisions on topics like vaccinating their children and home birth and i get comments like "i can't even read this because I am psycho about my kids health and I might not do what i'm doing now if I read this article.." DO YOU KNOW HOW IDIOTIC THIS STATEMENT IS?!?!? You just said that you would GLADLY choose total ignorance over your child's best interest and safety. You are choosing to be blind and let your "health care provider" lead you around by the nose, telling you how to raise your child. Don't try to convince me you are psycho about their health if in the same breath you choose to be uninformed about the decisions you make when it comes to what it being injected into their tiny bodies.
I know how I feel isn't popular. I understand that a lot of people probably think I'm an idiot, uneducated, unsafe or unfit to have a child...but damn it, at least I am trying to think outside the box!! I used to be a very angry person. I stood up for things I had NO IDEA about, made an ass out of myself more than half the time, and i wasn't happy. It was easy to make a fool out of me and I became very familiar with the taste of my perverbial foot.
I am still somewhat angry, however I do not stand up and yell about things I have no idea about. I do not vote on issues I have no understanding of. I do not yell and fight about my views. I prefer to live and let live, and to make every effort to do no harm. It is better to stand up for injustice than to try to change one's cores beliefs (in my humble opinion). I grew up watching my dad scream at the newspaper and the TV and call people fags or bigots or whatever. Yelling about things makes you look foolish, and it certainly doesn't get your point across. It makes people defensive, it makes them feel wounded. What you give out, WILL come back to you. Every religion and school of thought remarks on this point...it is a natural law that no one is above no matter their beliefs.
I want to live a quiet life. I tune even my husband out when he gets on his political or religious rants. I have some parallels with his core beliefs, which is why we are able to get along. Most of what i believe feels to me as though it comes from things I have already experienced in past consciousness, or some form of a past life (if you will). As I mature and come more into myself and make my own decisions about things, I shed the completely polar opposite schools of thought of my parents. The more I think for myself and allow the voice within me to be heard, the more i am able to clearly see things for what they are.
I took a lot of flack for a note i wrote on FB about the whole recent "purple shirt, gay day" thing. A Buddhist friend of mine had said something about how remarkable it is that we feel the need to have special days devoted to celebrating our defferences, and that she believed we should always be accepting of others and help one another and things in this thought process. The sentiment resonated with me. A few days later I had just rolled out of bed and was on FB, a grumpy pregnant human being, and I read the "straw the broke the camels back comment". It inflamed me, and I made several comments about how I don't fucking care about your purple shirt, (angrily, I can admit that) that if we take ALL this time to celebrate differences, we are taking away from more important issues, and that it is not our differences but the acceptance of these that bring us together and we should look for what makes us alike rather than being in people's faces about how different we are and how THEY SHOULD DEAL WITH IT!
I got a comment from someone I feel is pretty radical in a lot of their commentary on things...I have a lot of these kind of people in my life and rather than make judgments I do try very hard to dismiss my immediate disdain for their opinions and realize they are free to have them. However I kept this comment in my head for several days after this and mulled it around and came up with this "pearl" (tho to some it may still be a bit of annoying sand in the panty). She said that she thought I, of all people, would want to be celebrated for my differences and not how I am just like everyone else. She would never want to celebrate me for how I am the same as everyone else.
First of all, my opinion differed from hers, and she was not celebrating it. So no, she does not want to celebrate me for my difference. :P
This brings me back to my study on cats. I have read many books about cats. Not intentionally...just over the years I have found myself with these books in my hands or watching intense tv films about them. I have cats so it works out. Anyhow, I found a very interesting book about dancing with cats. This sounds stupid. I am aware. It is not the easiest thing to initiate. Cats are fickle creatures, bent to their own will and needs. HOWEVER, when you want to initiate a dance with a cat, the book said that you must aline yourself with the cat...mimick their movement, and lead them into mimicking yours, and with the right music, this eventually escalates into a dancing relationship which is supposedly very empowering to both owner and cat and I read the effects last for days. This is not something I have much experience with, I didn't find that I had the patience for it nor the space to initiate such play.
Basically what I am trying to say is that in order to initiate a new relationship with the animal, JUST as when dating or making a new friend, we find resonance with the things that make us the same. We become closer due to our similarities. Why do we get married in the first place? Because we find someone we are similar to. Why do we divorce? Because we cannot resolve our differences.
I have plenty of "minority" status friends. The ones I tend to get along with are the ones who live their lives, and don't expect anyone to treat them any differently because they are gay or because they are black or because they are poor.
My own personal way of getting closer to people is to find similarities so I can relate to them. So that I can understand their experience. I'm not saying I wouldn't adore them for being different than most people, in fact most of the people i get along with aren't the norm. I like wacky personalities or eccentric tendencies. But I'm not going to tell everyone in my friends list to wear a teal shirt and say people who don't tolerate them for being awkward or eccentric are stupid.
Maybe I'm running around in circles here, but basically, all I'm trying to say is that there are issues in this world that are more important to worry about. Slavery was cruel and injust but all of those people (slave or owner) are dead. Jews know more about slavery than any race and they have found a way to deal so why do I have to devote a whole month to "black history"? We are all Americans, so why can't that be enough? Why is it so amazing that a people that was opressed turned out some of the world's most intelligent inventors? (taken from an interview with Chris Rock) Opression has been proven time and time again to create the drive in people to rise above (not that I'm condoning it, just not giving generations of people a right to blame someone's ancestors for their current life situation) and to lead and be powerful and strong.
I don't have many convictions but those listed above are pretty set in stone for me. If you don't know about something, don't make decisions based on "what everyone else thinks you should". If you choose to pump your kid full of stuff, KNOW WHATS IN IT AND WHAT IT COULD DO TO THEM. If you choose to celebrate someone for their difference, remember that someone's differing opinion is their choice and they are entitled to it, like it or not. Don't contradict yourself or you will look like an idiot. Pretty simple stuff.