Constant Crisis

I’m wondering, as most likely you are too, what the New Year will bring… as I reflect on the year that has been, I can’t help thinking that is was a year marked by CRISIS! Economic, environmental, political and social crisis of one sort or another impacted on each one of us. And yet I also know that there are communities that have been in constant crisis for generations!

Indigenous communities of many countries experience unacceptable levels of drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, over representation in prisons and poor unemployment and education outcomes. Yes, this is most definitely a community of peoples in crisis. But do we ever wonder why our Indigenous people are in crisis???

I want you to consider how you would be feeling right NOW if you were taken from your home
and made to live somewhere else. How would you be feeling if you were not permitted to speak your mother tongue. Can you even imagine what it would be like if your children were taken from you, because the authorities believed they would be better off being raised by strangers?

Imagine too, if you were conscripted to fight for the government in war but you were not allowed to have a beer in the local pub. How would you feel if you were not allowed to give birth to your children in a hospital? Then when they grew older, your children were only allowed to attend school until the 4th grade, and that is if the other parents didn’t object to your child being there.

Now tell me, if you will, how would you feel if your government had you and your loved ones under the authority of the National Parks, Wildlife and Fisheries…registered along with the flora and fauna, not even given status as a person but as a native species!!!!

Would you be feeling dispirited??? In crisis???

This is not ancient history..this was the recent reality for the Australian Indigenous
community, the traditional land owners of this country up until 1972!!! Yep, this happened during your life time or at least your parents.

I think, unless we address the issue of what it means to be human and have the decency
to consider one another’s differences with respect and dignity, what is the point of addressing all the other crisis???

Even God himself is not partial when it comes to humans : “For a certainty I perceive that God is not partial, but in every nation the man that fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him” (Acts10:34, 35).

Then why can’t we accept one another regardless of the shade of skin we are in??? Just sayin’

 

Are YOU in Control of Your World???

We would all like to think that we are in control of our own ‘world’; in control of our personal life, our finances, our thoughts (well most of the time) and our future. However, if we stop and reflect on the year that has been, we may need to re-think just how much control we really do have and therefore what are our prospects?

 

Here are some events that NO-ONE had control over in 2011:

In the USA alone there were no less than 3,000 record breaking weather events! And while Texas wild fires destroyed over 1,000 homes, Thailand, Argentina and the east coast of Australia were being deluged by floods affecting hundreds of thousands more people.

Who will ever forget the images of the earthquakes in Turkey, New Zealand, and Japan with the devastating tsunami that followed?

Then there were the shocking images of drought, famine and starvation impacting on millions of people and wild life in the Horn of Africa..

And there was more….. 2011 had many significant political upheavals, particularly in the Middle East; changing the lives of entire nations.

Then of course economically none of us were in control through the Great Financial Crisis, which is still far from over,  as the US and European economies continue to labour under massive debt and mismanagement with seemingly no way out.

 

These are just some of the events that have impacted on many of us this year. It would  be just too depressing to mention the numerous random senseless killings and shooting rampages on the innocent that occurred this year as well!
 

Then on a personal level, even when we have done everything we can to guard the health of ourselves and our loved ones, anyone of us can be struck down and debilitated through disease and illness.

But I thought it was quite curious that in the meantime, scientists are spending millions of dollars and are so excited about trying to find the “God Particle” in beams of protons that are accelerated around a 27-kilometre ring at close to the speed of light before being smashed into each other! This seems really quite meaningless to me given the events listed above when maybe, we should really be looking for God (beyond colliding protons) who can turn all of this around and really improve our prospects.

I really like what Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) had to say in what came to be known as “Pascal’s Wager”. He stated that; “God is or He is not”!

Pascal was a mathematician, physicist and moralist. He also lived at a time that the existence of God was being searched for and contended.

Here is his very thought provoking argument:

 

“God is or He is not. But to which side shall we incline?

Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is.

Let us estimate the two chances. If you gain, you gain all;

If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that HE is”.

[Thoughts -1670]

As we are clearly not in control of our world, we need to side with someone who is…just sayin’

“What is Communication”?

If you were to consider the amount of communication that transpired electronically this year, you may argue that we are indeed great communicators. Here are some statistics that I googled today:



Tweets – 107,639 per minute
Face book posts – 2,716,00 in 20 minutes
Emails – averaged 294 billion each day
Text messages – 7 trillion from 4.8 billion mobile phones this year.

Interestingly, the most googled phrase this year was “what is love”? But what I would like to ask is, “what is communication”? While we clearly have a penchant for electronic communication, when it comes down to face to face communication with our fellow humans we don’t seem to be so willing.

For instance, as I walk past my colleagues at the same time each morning, very few will even look at me let alone say a greeting, Even though I have known them for years…and this upsets me! I have noticed also that as I pass the same neighbours each day, I endeavour to smile and greet them and again little or no response, this too makes me sad. Actually, I had one neighbour I use to pass each morning when I took my dog for a walk. We seemed to meet at a very narrow bridge each day, and we would practically touch each other as we passed and yet do you think this man would respond to my ‘good mornings’???

I was beginning to wonder if it was just me! Then I recalled a wonderful insightful poem written and recited by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993.
Whereby she powerfully and symbolically expresses the nuances of the human condition with poignant poetic prose,and touches on the many issues that impact on us, but what touched me the most was her conclusion:

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

For me, this so beautifully synthesizes and combines into a coherent whole..what communication is!
I think it is only when we are able to communicate at this seemingly so simple level, that we can truthfully say we are good communicators…..just sayin’

Life Change

The incessant hum of the traffic lulls him into a dreamlike state, as it usually does, of unconscious awareness. Just the thought of the word traffic sends shivers down his spine. Reflecting on a recent trip to the Philippines, William Naylor still finds it difficult to comprehend the abject poverty of the majority from this island archipelago. The reality that not only is there traffic from the car chaos in Manila, but the fact that humans too, have also become commodities, trafficked as such, in nothing short of a modern day slave trade. He contemplates what Abraham Lincoln would think if he knew that in 2011 we still didn’t believe ‘that all men are created free and equal'.


His view from the fourteenth floor of the office building, where William has been an IT Specialist for the past 15 years, over looks Sydney’s Central Station. His attention now turns from the traffic he can hear to the people he can see coming and going and he wonders who they are. His eyes are drawn to a group of teenage school boys waiting for the traffic lights to turn green. They appear to be singling out one of the smaller guys. This is painful for William to observe as he recalls his years at high school and reminds himself, “I did enjoy primary school [public] but once I moved to high school [an all-boys private school], I was bullied extensively. I was so small for my age and didn’t know anybody. I will never forget that experience at the start of year 7. We did a test, algebra. I had never seen algebra before! I couldn’t comprehend what letters had to do with numbers, I got 9/100. The teacher pulled me up in front of the class and told everyone that I was really dumb. I ended up in remedial maths class.” But he refuses to dwell on this scene from the window or the one in his mind and engages his eyes elsewhere.


William is determined to make something of his life and has worked hard to get where he is today. Ignoring his father’s wishes for him to become a mechanic, and specialised in IT. However, even this seems somewhat futile, reasoning; “It becomes harder to look at server event logs and walk around the office to fix printers or find that document that someone had lost”. At the age of 41 he has got use to some things staying the same and use to other things that have changed. But William, like so many disenchanted generation X’ers, is seeking a meaningful change. Not just a ‘sea change’ or ‘tree change’, it’s not even just a ‘career change’. But William is seeking a ‘life change’ not to be defined by his past experience but to be refined by it. Not to just take what he can get out of life, but make a contribution, to give back. This is why William Naylor wants to become a writer.......just sayin' .

Relationships…… One Thing I Don’t Get!!!

Now just to clarify, I do know a little about some things…but after having already lived half my life, there is one thing I have not got my head around; and that’s relationships! The evidence of this is that I have been single for over 12years now, so whatever I am doing..ain’t working!


While I do get that quantum physics demonstrates that quantum equations describe something that is real and out there. And instead of thinking that a photon takes a single straight path through space, we can regard it as taking all possible paths through space, and adding the amplitudes for every possible path... I get that!


I also get that apart from the fact that it looks really pretty, the science and significance of studying the human genome will go a long way in helping us understand how it is we work...I get that!


I also understand, that now is not the time to experiment with Nash’s Game Theory in the forum of economics, as in this current economic climate nobody can win...I get that!


And I have also finally just been able to figure out how to use most of the features on my mobile phone..

But I knew I was really in trouble when I had sent an email to a male friend of mine, when up popped an ‘add’ that said (based on key words typed in my doc.) “Relationship Killers: 8 Things You Should Never Say”!!! Well it was that moment of 'truth' that made me realise I was not going to figure this one out on my own.

So I consulted some online “Relationship Guru’s” and here in part is what they had to say:

“Have you ever taken the time to sit down and really and truly picture and imagine what it must be like to be an attractive and ‘masculine’ man?”

Well of course I had to admit I never had and was concerned that the feeling had never occurred to me!!!..(LOL).

Another “Guru” explains;

“why women have had the experience of feeling like they've finally found something "real" with a man, and sharing themselves both emotionally AND physically, only to have him suddenly PULL AWAY. Very best tips and secrets for creating a deep and lasting attraction inside your man are here: It all comes down to understanding just a “few” (italics mine) important things about men”!

OK, but yet another ‘Guru’ says:

“After years of research, and talking to hundreds of both men and women about what is important to them in a loving, connected relationship… I’ve found that there are 5 things a woman MUST understand in order to make a man feel those special feelings for her”…

And again he states: “This motivated me to spend the last few years studying, researching, and observing to build a clear map and picture of how attraction works---in both the short AND long term---so that I could share my understanding and help others”.

Now I figured that if it took this GUY, years of studying and research to understand other guy’s, what hope do I really have..???

And just when I was beginning to get my head around all of this I’m warned:

“Lots of male behaviors are actually harmless displays of male “resistance” and withdrawal to deep connection and true intimacy, but they’re only harmless IF a woman knows what these are and isn’t freaked out by them”….Huh???

And then I’m consoled with yet more research on the part of another ‘Guru’:

“And now… after several years of research and conversations with men, women, dating experts, scientists, and everything else in between… I’m pleased to say I’ve FINALLY figured it out…Did you know that a man can express affection, caring, generosity, and act “loving” without having
ANY IDEA as to whether or not he wants to be with a woman in the future”?

Is it just me??? And on that note I will give up!

What all their expertise and advice boiled down to was that when you are seeking a relationship with
a man..you have to be deceptive, fake, play hard to get, don’t show any emotional need or intimacy, tell him you are in other relationships (even if you are not)..and whatever happens under NO circumstances use the terms ‘we’ or ‘us’ or the “L” word…!!!

And all along I was thinking that a relationship was about finding someone you can talk to, be yourself, trust, be honest, plan a future, want to only be with them and dare I say love…I am obviously way off track..just sayin’

“The Precious Present” – Enjoying the Moment!

Modern living comes with many challenges that can leave us feeling that our lives are in chaos and despair.

And when we do have a moment to reflect on our lives we may become anxious about the future as it all seems so volatile andunpredictable.  Fear grips every decision we make even when it comes to little things.

When we are not worrying about the future we begin to agonise over our past mistakes, decisions and regrets. These feelings leave us emotionally crippled and disabled. But rather than letting these thoughts define who we are – we need to let them refine who we are.

One expert on being peaceful had this to say about anxiety: “So never be anxious about the next day, for the next day will have its own anxieties”!  (Jesus of Nazareth)

  

Rather than using our time to worry about the future or agonising over the past we need to just embrace today.  

Try to:

Take a ‘moment’ to see the good that you have, the good that you are and the good that you can do.

Take a ‘moment’ to stop and smile at a happy thought, happy face, be friendly and acknowledge your fellow man.

Take a ‘moment’ to enjoy some of the pretty things you have today, flowers, garden, kids, family and friends.

Take a ‘moment’ to make new friends and remember to love old ones.

And who knows the’ moment’ may last an hour, a day, a year or a life time.

This poem was given to me by a special friend who had the courage to enjoy the moment and truly understood what it means.

"Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return."  (Mary Jean Iron)

Take time to enjoy the moment, for it is the precious present…just sayin’

Life Was Never Meant to Be Easy – Especially for Parents.

This weekend I read in the newspaper about a married couple who were so overwhelmed with the behaviour of their 7yr old daughter, her mother expressed that she hated her and they were considering how they could put her into care!

Now I will not argue that parenting would have to be one of the most difficult, and in many instances, the most thankless challenge a person will undertake.  However, it would be really beneficial if before undertaking this challenge that ‘would be’ parents are not only prepared but willing to be committed to it.

Right from the start, I would like to point out that parenting in not just a 20year project, as some have suggested in the past. But it is a commitment for life – their life!

I’m not quite sure where the concept of “hopefulness” plays a part in parenting either. As it seems MANY, like the couple with the 7yr old, just HOPE that they will give birth to an all knowing, agreeable, co-operative and pleasant human being and they will innately understand their place in the scheme of things, for example; I’m the parent – you’re the child and comply!

Our children, from the day they are born – through to adolescents in particular (this is the 20yr part of it), require 100% commitment from you! It is not enough to spend a couple of hours at each end of the day and expect to have an amazing attachment and relationship with them, and this works both ways.

I am not going to speculate on the in’s and out’s of the above mentioned couples parenting skills but one thing is an absolute certainty – all children need time, attention, discipline, guidance and most of all love from YOU- the parents  (and not just quality child care).

How do I know this? At present I work with 24 adolescents who have been deemed as highly at risk of;  not completing school, engaging in risky behaviour, drug and alcohol abuse, not engaging in employment, not behaving in a sociably acceptable manner and are most likely to be incarcerated! And I know they are difficult children to love too!

And yet, even at this late stage of their “parenting” (because that’s what I am in fact really paid to do); I have seen the most remarkable results! But this has been through hard work, establishing trust, reasonable boundaries…yes boundaries, discipline when required, and above all - time and love – and yes I do love them most of the time: ).

So parents turn it around! There is so much talk and emphasises on investing in our future financially and environmentally and it is true that life is not easy….. but what we really need to do is invest in our children –just sayin’