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.