Remember This Memorial Day

Let us remember. Let us work to end warring and the sacrifices it requires. We must use the words and actions of diplomacy to work out our disagreements. War is not the answer.

What Do You Hope For?

"HOPE can be defined as the desire for something combined with an anticipation of it happening. In short, hope is the anticipation of something" Psychology Today

It is far too easy to give up hoping for better things. People today are pummelled with bad news and negativity until hope seems like it isn't worth the effort.

But, really, what do you hope for? Hope implies some anticipation, however limited, of it manifesting in our lives, All too often our fear of being disappointed keeps us from even hoping.

We may dream, without any anticipation. Therefore we have no hope. However, without hope we are unlikely to do anything that might move us toward manifesting our dreams. 

Hope is SO important for us to move forward. Giving up hope is surrender. Now is not the time to surrender. We must look at what we hope for with the eyse of one who can see the first step we must take. Open your eyes and ask what one thing you might do to make something begin to happen that you hope for. 

Maybe it is simply the step of acknowleging that you want it. Maybe it is taking time to make a plan, step-by-step. Maybe it is asking someone to help.

What ever that first step is, you are worth the effort to hope.

Is It Technology?

People don't seem to go visit anymore. When I was growing up in the fifties and sixties, Sunday afternoons usually included either visiting family or friends at their house or having them visit at ours.

My mom would fix a big Sunday dinner and everyone would gather aroung the diningroom table. Or we'd go to my grandmother's for dinner. I remember how she loved watermelon and deserts. 

People didn't all have televisions and no one had smart phones. Our phones were big clunky black things, sometimes on a party line. I don't remember spending much time on the phone until I was a teenager. It was rather unusual for the phone to ring, actually.

There was always lots of chatting and laughter. Now when there are folks to dinner they can't seem to be separate from their phones. They aren't even talking on them. They are texting or playing games. I feel rather disrespected by it. There isn't as much chatting with everyone at the table and the laughter is less frequent.

And when was the last time you received a personal letter via the postal service? Email makes contacting much easier and quicker. But I miss the excitement of getting hand-written letters. It feels more personal than getting "mail" through a computer. When someone takes the time to write me a letter I feel really connected, personal, even special. 

I confess I seldom write letters anymore, only email. So I'm guilty of taking the easy way. Yet I do feel less connected.

And then there is social media, certainly not personal or private, even when people seem to forget that and put all kinds of personal information on it for anyone to see. It always bothers me when people go on social media and talk about their vacation while they are away, letting the world know that their home is uninhabited and ripe for theivery. I only talk about vacations when we are back home.

Yes, technology has changed the way we do a lot of things. Sometimes that's positive and sometimes not. But it is here to stay, so we need to use it to bring us closer together rather than apart. Drop a note or a card to someone in the mail and make their day. Turn off your phones when you are visiting/dining. And invite folks to Sunday dinner for some chatter and laughter. We can have both personal and private contact as well as technology.

Are You Serious?!?

Are you Serious?!? People say that when you tell them something the find hard to believe is true. But I'm asking about your demeanor. I am serious too much of the time while I'm recouperating from this injury. It is hard to keep a sense of humor when I'm in so much pain.

But even when I'm not in pain I tend to be a serious person. Oh, I usually have a sense of humor. I can laugh if something is funny. On occasion I can even be silly. But I an inhibited by my concerns about what others might think. My sense of humor is more likely to be present around people I trust - my spouse, my offspring.

When I was working I was in an environment that was very serious. I worked in male prisons. In one job I worked in a psychiatric unit in a prison. So you can see that having a sense of humor might make one vulnerable. Not a condition I wanted to be in. Just being a female authority in a male prison was vulnerable enough.

What about you? How's your sense of humor? Does it help you? How?

"Humour or humor is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids in the human body, known as humours, controlled human health and emotion.

People of all ages and cultures respond to humour. Most people are able to experience humour—be amused, smile or laugh at something funny—and thus are considered to have a sense of humour. The hypothetical person lacking a sense of humour would likely find the behaviour inducing it to be inexplicable, strange, or even irrational. Though ultimately decided by personal taste, the extent to which a person finds something humorous depends on a host of variables, including geographical location, culture, maturity, level of education, intelligence and context." [YouTube]

What makes things funny? Check out this TedTalk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysSgG5V-R3U

Check out what is funny today. Check out when you were funny today.