Posted on

Alone to My Liking? – Serenity

Image of Bhudda statue flower and stone pile showing serenity
In this fast day and age being with others is often considered to be the most healthy way of being.

Some even look with suspicion on those that like to withdraw and are busy just doing the things they love.

I am one of those people: For a long time I observed human behaviour, life and cultures as well as customs. I have accumulated a good pile of knowledge and a moderate one of wisdom.

I know when and how I like to talk to people. When not. I am lucky in this region and with my qualifications to be able to use the internet to advantage and connect to similar minds.

I think the basics of such behaviour are in two things:

    • You have a good idea of the value of time spent alone. You do not feel bad about being alone, as if that was a problem.
    • You have experience with those aspects of life that are connected with the above idea of ‘to be with people’. You know about ‘going out’, be with friends, relations, a spouse, a child/children. In other words:
      You know your needs.

One of those similar minds has done a nice little blog entry I came across just recently and I share it here, because it says most of it in good wording:
People who like to be alone have these 22 special personality traits

There are more – like minds and like texts.

Since this subject is discussed hotly sometimes, I include some more links:
Reference of a Harvard Study on the Power of Being Alone
British Journal of Psychology on Relation Between Population Density and Happiness
Forbes Magazine Online Article on 7 Reasons Why Alone Time Is Healthy

A hearty greeting to all who feel similar!

Posted on

“To Kill a Mockingbird”

photo of north american mockingbird
courtesy Wikimedia commons (R. Hagerty)

“To Kill a Mockingbird” – is the title of the Pulitzer-award-winning novel by American writer Harper Lee. The mockingbird of the title is used in the story as an image to describe how cruel it is to kill such a bird / creature:
These birds are there singing and thus providing joy to all who hear them, solely.

The death of the 13-year-old in Vienna the other day is dreadful.

It is tragic too, that these things happen at all. Although statistics show that rates are sinking at the moment, each and everyone of them is one too many.

My heart goes out to the parents and relations of such victims.

The story I mention contains more: It not only deals with killing, literally and figuratively.

It makes abundantly clear how dreadful the killing of any innocent creature actually is – by slander (‘word of mouth’) or actual deed.

Let’s not confuse issues. But be strict to any perpetrator of a crime, of any nationality.

 

Posted on

The Princess, the Hero, the Dragon – Romance? – or: Romantic Love as a Life-long Project

drawing of book with 3D image of castle inside
Fairy stories have them all: The ‘romantic’ types of love that come with a sudden realization, or a ‘meet cute’ as they call it in Hollywood or on TV, or the hero slaying the dragon to save the ‘lady in distress’.

They are sweet, sometimes the rendering in stories is wonderfully done.
Yet, they end with the smile of two, or more, protagonists: Curtain.

Real life begins after that.

The idea of romance can have at least two types, it seems to me:
One is the image made up of ideas that recur at least since the middle-ages, including a couple of different archetypes as C.G. Jung identified them. It causes people to ‘run around’ with stars in their eyes.

The other is romance that combines the longing for true closeness and passion by knowing oneself and the other – and better over time.

At this point I’d like to reference a fine book here that ‘has it all’ for anyone who cares to read:

Steve and Shaaron Biddulph: The Making Of Love, 1999 and later, Doubleday Australia / Wie die Liebe bleibt (German)

Steve and Shaaron Biddulph, Australian couple of psychotherapist and social worker published their first edition of this truly funny, smart and warm-hearted look on love and how to keep it during the 1990s. It’s been revised a couple of times since then and is still one of my favourites on the subject.

Quote: “Love starts out as a blessing, even a fluke, but it continues as an achievement!”

What we tend to overlook in view of all those glittering pictures is the fact that we spend a lot of time and energy on the romance in the beginning – and then feel: ‘Ok, this is done. Let’s get back to business.’

Love is an achievement, knowing yourself, knowing the other – and it needs time and energy in order to work.

Know yourself and what you expect from a relationship – and then find and keep your partner in life.

Posted on

The Conquest in Passion – Hearsay and Reality

photo of unpeeled pomegrantes

Almost as long as patriarchal society exists hearsay about the male conquest of women exists as well.
‘Get her’, ‘make her’, ‘have her’, and similar, some far ruder expressions are used by a certain type of male: The ones who believe in fairy stories, the adult kind – that are actually based in so much swaggering.
The numbers of conquests some men pretend to have made. And the ways and means they purportedly use to reach the ‘goal’…

I’ve posted about similar aspects before – yet this seems so present all around me, in marketing, online messages, some movies, ‘social networks’ – especially hearsay and hidden misunderstandings, I feel like putting it here again.

There are those who ‘prove’ their ‘masculinity’ by taking photos and showing them around. In former times they might have collected them in albums like stamps… These days it’s probably mostly the smartphone.

Some even install devices to watch their next-door neighbours with telescopes or even more sophisticated tools these digital days.

Another breach of privacy, crude and cruel in some cases, too.

The Breach of Privacy

The strange thing about this is that the watchers and ‘collectors’ ignore ‘magnanimously’ that is not only a breach of privacy but is a crime by the Human Rights Declaration. There exist countries who have laws that punish this kind of behaviour if it becomes known.

The Damage to Mind and Body

Even sadder are the long-term effects of such behaviour: It damages mind and soul. Of the ‘actors’. Simply put.

The mistake is in the premise:
Ever since Charles Darwin published his theories about the evolution it seemed to be clear that human beings are not far from animals themselves. The consequence seemed to present itself smoothly: They therefore would or even should behave the same way.

People who believe it in these simple terms tend to overlook that human beings are in possession of complex feelings, basic emotions and a mind.
Such people also tend to believe the stories and images and movies that have existed ever so long as well, from Zeus to Don Juan, over Casanova to the average ‘erotic’ story.
These stories are make-believe of a society that creates them to ultimately ‘market an image’.

It’s been proven by this time that the ‘mindless banging’ will end in depression and often even drug-addiction, alcohol or worse.

Why?

Because anyone practising this, men or increasingly women too, will have to consciously detach their mind from their ‘heart’, the outer sign of (passionate) emotions.

This amounts to schizophrenic behaviour in the true sense of the word and just as the actual condition is a sickness of the mind, so is the effect of such ‘banging’ over the course of time.

King Henry VIII.

A very famous example of many is king Henry VIII. of England: Shortly after the love of his life was abandoned for reasons of family lineage (male prince and successor), partly by the advice of his counsellors at court, he started doing just that: He not only seduced as many women as he could get hold of; he also drank and smoked without restraint or real joy…

During the past 10 years or so in historical research the diaries his doctors and his servants kept were revealed: All the ailments – and there were quite a number! – are easily attributed by modern doctors to his lifestyle.
A BBC documentary summarizes these findings nicely.

What Women Do (Not) Admire…

There are cases, alas, among men, who are or will be lost to this kind of realization.

Because they have been raised that way. Because they are too much afraid to not belong – ‘belong’ to the apparently large number of ‘real men’.

One thing is true, too: Smart women will not take this kind of behaviour seriously into account. Ask them, if you will…

Posted on

Learning and Knowledge – Simplistic? The Democratic Change

ancient printing press and printers
No large numbers of readers without the printing press

‘If they all loved research, who would do the baking?’

What I mean? Consider this quote:

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

Sounds familiar? It’s said to be a quote of the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates.
Complaints of one generation about the next are an age-old phenomenon. Be that their behaviour – or quality of education.

“Knowledge is power.”

This is true too.

The Power of Knowledge in Religion

That is why for centuries the bible would not be translated into German (from Latin). In German speaking countries, Martin Luther, founder of the protestant religion, was the first to translate the full text. After more than 1000 years of the Christian religion’s existence! Between 1522 and 1545 he worked on that, not alone, but it was his initiative.

The Christian faith had been used to manipulate people and keep them in fear of the church’s dogma before that. The majority of people would not be able to read even then. But they would start to understand the text itself.

Luther’s motives were mainly religious, and he ‘only’ wanted to ’empower’ believers into choosing the right preachers. Into understanding instead of following the priests like a flock of sheep.

This example makes it a case in point: Knowledge and understanding need to be spread. Appropriately.

Learning and Knowledge Degrading?

Recently we hear and see (written) complaints about knowledge becoming too simple, too lightweight, as it were.
That people for the wealth of media to consume forget how to read properly, for example.

But let’s remember for a few minutes: The general ability to read and write was not available to the whole of a population until only a couple of generations ago.

Basic Democracy

The general compulsory education was not introduced until well into the 18th and 19th century in many countries!

It also meant a very basic education, mostly. When the civil society really took a stronghold politically. When more and more leaders of countries, emperors, kings, local potentates, started to realize that an educated population ultimately strengthened innovation and the future of business – and thus their power.

People did not have computers, but they had theatres, with lightweight comedies, too. Types of ballads / dramatic songs (according to regional tradition) with images that were sung to the audience or explained by those that displayed them. Ghoulish songs and fairy stories, some more some less deep…

There will always be those that love to do research. Who love to read heaps of books from cover to cover. Who love to be scientists and answer the basic questions of mankind.

But not everybody wants to be a scientist. Just as some love to repair cars or bake bread for a living.

If they all did research, who would do the baking?

Posted on

Noise and Its Consequences – or How Some People Seem Deaf and Dumb to Anything

sad-woman-suffering-disturbed-by-noisy-neighbors-covering-her-ears-with-pillow

What makes me extremely angry are people who are not the least bit sensitive to their surroundings or indeed the idea of a community: When there’s a building meant for people to live in and instead you get drilling, hammering or other kinds of construction almost around the clock, weekdays, weekend, early morning till late in the night.

And science as well as mordern law know that this kind of noise makes people sick!

Noise that’s unbearably loud, completely out of place and takes time at any odd hour does that!

I wonder at such people:

  • Children in kindergarten understand when you tell them, the lunch nap and quiet time takes place between 12 pm and 1 pm.
  • Children in kindergarten understand when you tell them that playing outside is meant to be between 1 pm and sometime early in the evening.
  • Children in kindergarten understand when you tell them that dinner will take place at 7 pm.
  • Grown-up people with an education all complete do not understand the simple concept of ‘no construction noise’ on weekends or after 4:30 pm, on weekdays?

I’d like to add you find this type anywhere, any region, any country, alas.
These seem to be either ridiculously simple, or ‘dumb’ – or inconsiderate to a degree that borders on the insane.

Talking to them in some hard cases even does not really help: They will whine and fidget and tell you there’s no room for those tasks in their everyday life. When it’s so easy in most modern surroundings to plan and schedule carefully.

Show me any legal craftsman or -woman who will work in such surroundings in illegal working times, namely:
On weekends or after 4:30 – 5 pm in the evening – and I’ll show you one who will be liable to a fee.

I wonder why it seems so difficult to understand that there’s a time and place for everything.

Posted on

The Clowns’ Principle: Laughter With a Bleeding Heart

woman in Venetian carnival costume against the wall

The flower ‘bleeding heart’ is called after the human situation many know well: Feeling sad or facing tragic or difficult situations, the real emotion is hidden inside. The idea being that you may spare others the sad face…

Men, depending on the respective society, often are forced to behave that way, no matter what, to show they are ‘up to it’.

And there’s the type of people who resemble clowns in the circus: Whatever they feel, they will make jokes, the clown will behave clumsy on purpose and appear like the proverbial yokel, in order to make people laugh, make them happy, thus lightening the sometimes almost unbearable situation.

It is once more the principle of the kaleidoscope to me, the ‘as well as’ of all colours, side by side. Not negating, but accepting the inevitable, finding a positive outlook of:

“Laughter helps to relax and strengthen – now what do we do?”

Posted on

The Mistaken Rumour About Victims

unique-characters-wooden-background-inclusion-concept

They tell you these days that certain types of people are predestined to be victims… Apparently explaining something… Victimized as the geeky kid, the odd one in the group…

But look closely, because: How large is the group, really?

How many make a lot of noise and ‘chase’, and how many don’t say anything, at all?

You will find the numbers at odds, too:
The majority – or rather the ‘loud’ ones – often are only those that fit into the ‘official picture’ that is prominent at a point in time.

During the 1960s and 1970s in Europe a new generation had raised an idea and made part of popular culture, what now has become part of marketing:

Dare to think different.

The previous generations had – often just by not caring – allowed millions of people be killed in two world wars that were actually ‘good’ for a few only, the rich, the wealthy – and the conglomerates.

Later, as I mentioned, until well into the 1980s, being careful, considerate and kind was actually ‘en vogue’.

These days it seems, it is ‘en vogue’ again, to be rich and famous…This in turn seems to call for a certain type of thinking, behaviour and mindset. As homogenous as possible. Any deviations from the ‘typecast’ creating irritation. Being different apparently allowing the apparent ‘majority’ to blame, chase or make victims of those that seem not to ‘fit’ what is called ‘mainstream’…

But, and here comes the ‘but’: Is it really?

Are all those people who do no agree with these ideas but keep quiet, perhaps the ‘silent majority’?

If that is true, we should rethink the currently prominent idea of the ‘victim type’, the ‘natural target’, as it is cruelly put sometimes, because that concept is the ‘devil an’ all’:

It blames the victims for being victims!

It aquits the real culprits from all responsibility: “I couldn’t help doing it, they are that type…”

It is important to have rules in a community to prevent harm, or even crime done!
In that respect we need to observe such rules, each and everyone.

Other than that, the call for conformity to an ‘ideal’ of behaviour or appearance can create mindless and even heartless human beings who live ‘exclusively’, instead of ‘inclusively’.

Perhaps people teasing and torturing others are the culprits, after all?

Posted on

The Miracle of Human Understanding

group of people and coloured arrows showing speech direction

Most of us past teenage years have seen and experienced misunderstandings. Some can be tragic, some can seem funny even, looking back, some are funny – and some are rather mundane, really.

What can make it difficult can be situations such as the following, a nice example I came across the other day, paraphrased here:

A group of people were scheduled for a training of communication. Everybody arrived in time, wore casual clothing as per agenda and was quite relaxed, chatting and waiting for the training to begin. A little while into the day’s itinerary, a young man who everybody had been wondering about, arrived far too late. He was very quiet, wore a business suit that obviously had been expensive and showed a rather withdrawn behaviour.

The group decided that he seemed rather arrogant and they felt annoyed and treated with a lack of basic politeness.

It took a while to find out that he had been to a funeral, unexpectedly and of a close person and barely had found time to arrive at all…

This little anecdote makes it clear nicely how easily unrelated events can be made into a chain of misunderstanding.

Keeping an open mind and realizing that our interpretations can be wrong in spite of appearances can be the first step towards real understanding.