About creativity

What is it that distinguishes human beings from all other forms of life on this planet?
Surely it is our capacity to be creative.

We know that some species of animal life can be and are 'inventive' as we are, to a very pronounced degree.

Creativity however, bringing something into being purely for the joy or desire or irresistible urge to do so, is something else and is, as far as I know, only a facet of human life.

About trying to help a friend

For quite some years, I used to call regularly on a friend who struggled to deal with the 'clutter' of everyday life. I attempted to help her as best I could, understanding and sympathising to quite a large extent, finding these things difficult myself.

After more than 10 years, the situation had not advanced one jot, going, perhaps, 40 steps forward, then 39, or even 41, steps backwards! In the end, sadly, I had to stop going because I found it frustrating and upsetting, helping neither my friend nor me.

We have stayed in touch over the years and, during a chat on the phone, when I expressed my sadness that I hadn't been able to help in any permanent way, she said the following, which made all the difference.

"You kept my head above water. You stopped me from drowning. "

It meant so much that I wrote it down straight away and have been meaning to share it on a post because it showed me that we never know how we may be helping someone, even if we think we are failing.

Maybe it's the effort and not the outcome that is important. 

About our opinions

Our opinion of others should be more important to us

than their opinion of us.

I say this as one who is far too bothered about what people think of me.

About being different

Being peculiar, odd, strange or different, in one way or another, is probably not that unusual, I suspect.

As with most aspects of our lives, things are rarely either/or, yes/no, black/white but are points on a spectrum along which, our particular ways lie

.
What matters, I think, is what we do with our different ways; how we use them for others; what we make of what we are.

A popular saying from many years ago still holds good for me at least, and that is

                                            VIVE LA DIFFERENCE!!

About a 'dairy free' diet and its connection to inflammatory bowel diseases

These are the key points I took from excerpts published in the Daily Mail, in May 2000, from 'Your Life in Your Hands' by Jane Plant, based on the original Chinese way of eating.

• Milk is a whole food for babies.
• We are the only mammals who continue to consume milk, in any form, after weaning.
• We are the only mammals who consume the milk of another mammal.

The following points were gleaned from a dairy-free cookbook, which had a long foreword on lactose intolerance.

• At the age of about 4, we no longer produce lactase, the enzyme that digests the milk sugar, lactose. (See below) 
• By the age of 50, approximately 70% of adults are lactose intolerant.
• This is the age when many adults develop inflammatory bowel disease of one kind or another.

These points led me to give up all dairy products. From that time on, I have had no recurrence of the symptoms of ulcerative colitis which I had had for thirty years since my mid-twenties. 

When I mentioned this to my consultant at the time, he told me that there was some scientific evidence of a correlation between dairy products and inflammatory bowel disease. 

NB  I read somewhere that because our consumption of milk has been a part of our diet for maybe thousands of years, our bodies can continue to produce lactase for years but by the age of fifty, this begins to tail off.

About Paul Merton - and 'the huns'

I have enjoyed following the motor-homing escapades that Paul and his wife experienced on their first-ever trips but was very disappointed by their long drawn-out, supposedly comic, references to the above.

It occurred when the couple visited Ladybower Reservoir in Derbyshire. They had a long chat about its connection to the 'bouncing bomb' which was tested there. I realise that the circumstances of war lead inevitably towards such actions as that bombing but it is now known that thousands of innocent German lives were lost that night in a horrible way.

This was sad enough but was made much worse by the following jokey references to 'the huns'. I thought those days were past. I found it personally offensive and upsetting. It was a shame that such an agreeable series was tarnished by that episode.

To those of us who feel the pains and injustices of the world

We must tell ourselves that we cannot carry them
on our own shoulders.
All we can do is seek to redress all we can,
in our own way 
and in our own world.

About being too busy to................

If we are too busy 
to do the important things in life,
whatever we deem them to be,
then we are too busy.

Extolling the wonders of whatsapp

Social media receives quite a bashing for many reasons which are, of themselves, easily understood and acknowledged.

It's rarer, I find, to hear praise so I want to raise a cheer for WhatsApp.

We have a family group through which we published all the deliberations, from the hotly debated but scrupulous choosing of the teams for a sweep on the World Cup last year, through the decisions as to what the prize categories should be, down to banter concerning the prize giving ceremony!!

There was so much humour (well, I think and hope it was humour!!)  How simple, how brilliant in bringing together all the wings of the family, wherever they are located in this country and abroad and bringing out the comedian in so many of them. (That aspect passed me by, I'm sad to say!!)

And, of course, it's free, as far as I can see!! A win/win situation, for definite!!

About being older

There are so many things we could say about this, but these particular thoughts came to me this morning.

My feelings and passions are the same as ever they were.

My body, brain and, most especially, my memory are not!!

As a badge, which came off a birthday card of mine, from some years ago even (the cheek!!) and which I recently rediscovered in a drawer (shows how often I sort them) said,

"Young at heart -
Old everywhere else"

It made me laugh then, which is why I kept it, and makes me smile now. 
Just as well, as there's more truth in it today.
Am I bothered? No!! Most bis are working more or less so let's all just hang on in there, I say.

About dealing with the grief of loss

Let us try to learn
not to waste our lives
mourning all that we have lost,
but rather, to be thankful for what we've had,
to appreciate what we have now
and to trust in what is to come.

About favourites and favouritism

Having favourites is natural.

Our 'favourites' are often people we find very easy to connect with and they with us.

Showing favouritism is wrong.

About the development of the capacity to give and receive love

In order to feel and give love, we have to have been given and felt love beforehand. This stems from childhood. As long as someone has truly loved us, we will develop that capacity within ourselves.

In those, very rare, cases where this has not happened, or, more commonly, where the loving is impaired and/or, as in most cases, imperfect, there will be an effect.

It could be coldness, an inability to connect or to relate to others. 

This is a very sad situation to have to deal with but, if we have been affected by this in our own personal relationships, it does help if we know and understand someone's background.

About feeling guilty for not liking my Grandma

For many years, I felt guilty about thinking, let alone saying, that I didn't like my grandma, my mum's Mum, very much.

As a child, I couldn't have said exactly why. It was a feeling that she didn't really 'know' you, and not just because she would real off the names of your cousins before alighting on yours. I know this is common amongst distracted grannies (and mums!) but Grandma didn't seem to 'know' you as a person, to connect with you. 

She was a very 'good' mum and grandma in most respects. I'm pretty sure that my uncles and aunts loved her and I know my mum did!  So that made my feelings more of a puzzle!

Perhaps it was just her nature to be always caught up in the practicalities of everyday life, cooking and baking for her large family. After all, who could forget her jam pies and Christmas puddings with the spotlessly clean sixpenny pieces in, the tizer and cream soda with the amazing 'sprung top' stoppers, kept in the larder?!

Fortunately, the older I become, the more I understand and appreciate her good qualities, something about which I'm very pleased.

About life's essential quality

Life's essential quality is, I believe, 
a good and a true heart.

About the causes of happenings

I am always looking for consolations and philosophies to help me to deal with the everyday ups and downs of life, let alone the major problems and tragedies that we all seem to encounter at various times in our lives.

One great consolation, for me, is to believe, as I do, that everything that happens has a cause or has been caused by what has gone before, a sequence of events and circumstances which we may never fully discern but which are, nevertheless, there!

We are not the victims of blind fate. There is no such thing as luck, good or bad, as I have written about previously.

Why is this a consolation?? I don't know - but it is!!

About our life's work

Let us learn to share what we are,

what we have

and what we can do

in the best way we can.

About the concept of infinity in the worlds of mathematics and science

Watching a Magic Numbers programme on BBC4 a few years ago, set me thinking about what I make of the concept of infinity.

Infinity is a mathematical construct which I always found quite easy to comprehend and explain as far as the level of my maths teaching required. However, it seems to have turned out to be extremely useful in the modern world and major developments have arisen from its applications.

But as to infinity, it just doesn't exist in the 'real' physical universe, to my way of thinking anyway.

We say, mathematically speaking, that there are an infinite number of rabbits in Australia because we cannot physically count them. And even if they could be counted in some super-tech way, in what we now call 'real time' (an interesting term in itself), by the time we arrived at an actual number, an unmeasurable number of baby rabbits would have been born and other rabbits died!

Surely all of us know that, in reality, there are not an infinite number of rabbits rollicking around the Australian outback, so this 'infinity' is merely a mathematical aid. (And who wants the exact number anyway!!) Infinity, in this case, represents 'uncountability'.

The wonder is that scientists, in seeking to know and understand the workings of the universe, from its heights to its depths, from the largest star to the smallest particle, are aided by the devices that mathematics offers, to fathom those depths and to scale those heights.

Therein lies the wonder and the glory of both.

About the annoying obscurity of names of official things

Why is it that so many official bodies seem to want to wrap various headings, titles and the like, in obscure and obscuring language? 

For example, a walk-in centre has become an 'ambulatory' something or other! What is that? Do we need an ambulance or something to do with a perambulator? Mystifying; are we supposed to 'amble in' to the hospital department so labelled?

Behaviour therapy, which I first heard of many years ago in an amazing television programme, seemed to morph into Cognitive Behaviour Therapy at some point along the way. What's that supposed to mean and how are we poor mortals supposed to understand it? 

What happened to the drive for more inclusive language in all sorts of areas such as in legal and official documents and letters which sprung up in recent times and made a real difference to everyday communication?

I honestly believe that these examples - and there are many more - are a way of making things look more important or that the full understanding of them is for a few exalted people and not just for the many.

Please can we return to a simplicity of style and meaning in every form of titling and labelling? Afer all, this is the age of inclusivity, isn't it.

About the rain on my window

I love the rain as I listen to its music on my windows 

and relish its splashing on the roofs next door as it washes the world 

and quenches the thirst of the soil 

and nourishes the growth within. 

About learning to be patient with ourselves and others

What we all need to try to learn to do is to stand in humility before anyone who is trying to do his or her best in life in general.

Some people are just being who they are and that's fine. Others are really trying (sometimes, in both senses of the word!!) and that is something to be noted and applauded.

We also need to apply this to ourselves, because, often we are our own worst critics, and that can be self-absorbing and counter-productive.

About the locks in our hearts

Let those of us that have them

try to keys to unlock them.

About mindfulness and mindlessness

Maybe the present interest in 'Mindfulness' is good but I reckon I should be aiming for some 'mindlessness'. 

I'm sure my mind is so overfull of 'all-sorts', that there's no room left for being aware of what I'm actually doing. 

PS I think this could possibly mean that I'm not fully aware of what mindfulness actually is because, when I think about it, 'mindless' is not a very nice word.

About one of my best friends

We are best friends to this day, although two more different people would be hard to find.

We meet a few times each year and are immediately back on the day of that first meeting.

We have a totally honest relationship.

We do not feel the same about many things but our friendship is an indelible constant in our lives.

About the mystery and miracle of creativity

Creativity is, by its very nature and definition, not utilitarian.

From cave painting to Banksy via Constable,
from playing the recorder to the violin,
from Beethoven to the Beatles, 
from dancing, be it the conga, the jive, tango or ballet,
the miracle of creativity is displayed.

For all of us who have the gift of a life which gives us opportunities, 
to show in our homes, our gardens, in what we choose to wear,
in a myriad of different ways, 
our individuality, our identity,
this is the gift of creativity and individuality.
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About being or feeling shipwrecked

We are washed up on the shores of each other's lives.

Maybe remembering that will help us not to feel so alone or isolated.