Having spent over eight years living in China where I was an English teacher, I have now returned to the UK, at least for a while. As I no longer have a home in England, I have had to stay with my daughter and my son. My daughter has two teenage daughters at home and my son one teenage daughter, and it's been really trying, staying with both.
What really bothers me is that none of my granddaughters will speak with me, unless I speak with them, not even a hello if I don't say it first. Is it too much to ask, just to have some polite words of greeting or even curiosity about the life I've had? After all, what do they know about China? Shouldn't they even be a tad curious?
When I mention this to others, they just shrug, laugh and say this is how teenagers are but really is this how they should be? Why is it we make excuses for teenagers and yet if they grow into rude or unhelpful adults, we complain bitterly about them? Why are young people not taught about respect for elders and in fact, respect for each other?
Of course, I was young once but I can't remember if I was the same. If I was, then I must have been incorrect and impolite too. Surely we should train the young generation to communicate and then they will become better adults, and the world will be a better place.
BTW Chinese children are far more respectful of older people and their teachers.
We take for granted our need for friends but really what is a friend? Well, on one level a friend is the opposite of an enemy, so anyone on your side could be considered a friend. This might be so in war but in peace, we are far choosier about who becomes a friend. Of course there are many people we might call friends but only because we hang out with them from time to time. And then there are those who we are acquainted with and who are our peripheral ‘friends,’ that is to say those on the outer circle of our social network. Then of course there are our on-line friends who give us an illusory sense that we are not alone. But who counts as a real friend, someone who will be with you when you do have a battle to fight, when you have a real struggle going on?
Being a foreigner in China these past years (no longer) has meant I have had to rely totally on friends to help me survive and so I have done my best to cultivate friendship. I haven’t had family to call upon and because my Chinese is so poor I have had to rely on friends a great deal. The practical help they have given me has been invaluable and for which I am forever grateful. However, there has been one level of friendship which has been much harder to come by and that is a friend whom I could share my heart and soul with.
We all have difficulties and problems with this life but who do we share our deepest concerns with? Who do we share our feelings with when we are at our lowest ebb? Now, you might have a partner, husband or wife who can take on this role but what if you can’t share everything with them because to you, they are your problem? Only a very good friend can be your confidant in this situation.
Each one of us needs a true friend who we can share our insecurities with, someone who we can trust. Only a true friend will not share with others the problems we have. But my question is, why is such a person so difficult to find? And even if we do have one, is one really enough?
It’s weird isn’t it? Looking at all these faces and wondering which one’s you should contact and which ones you won’t.
How is it, we can make such choices and can we be sure we will be absolutely right? Of course, we can’t but something within us dictates our preferences. Is it that the person we choose will share some physical features with our own, or is it that we have an idea of aesthetic beauty and decide from there? Do we see the face and wonder if the one looking out will like what he or she sees in us? Do we wonder if the person looks like a friendly mother or father figure, or a self-obsessed independent career minded type? What’s more, does the face really reveal the character within and do we overlook truly wonderful people just because of their looks?
Maybe there should be a blind date website, where you only choose the person by what they say about themselves – no pictures to distract you. Now, that would be something wouldn’t it – you fall in love with the words and ideas of another, only to find out he or she would be one you would never choose, if your first judgement was by looks alone. Could you still love them?
Everyone in this world wants love but why is then "There's not enough love to go round"? 'Sympathy' Rare Bird.
The way I see it is, what we do with the light of our love, where does it go? We tend to focus this light on just one person - a partner or lover, or we just focus it on our family. And if we don't have either we focus it on ourselves but this doesn't make us feel loved. For love to be activated and felt, there must be more than one person, just as with music there must be a listener for it to be appreciated.
What we should do is shine this 'light of love' on all we come into contact with, and even those we don't. Our love should not be a single beam of light but like a lantern which shines all around. But how to create that amount of love? Well, you just have to feel it, want it and want the world to be a better place for all, then visualise this inside your own being. You have to create the energy within yourself. The love you have is just the polarity of your energy and how you focus your attention on it, how you think of it and how you see it. We are all co-creators with the creative force of life.
Actually there is enough love to round, just like there is enough daylight to go round but in the middle of the night we don't see it.
It often appears that time passes very quickly. We look back over the weeks, months and even years and wonder how far away certain events now seem. It doesn’t seem so long since we were looking forward to Christmas and yet now it seems so far gone. How quickly life seems to pass us by. Are we standing still and time is passing through us or are we moving forward/changing and it is time which standing still?
Time is indeed precious and yet it is something we cannot hold onto; all we can try to do is hold it in our memories but do we? Perhaps one reason time seems to pass so quickly is that we so easily forget much of what has occurred during the days, weeks and months gone by. Much of life doesn’t seem memorable, so why bother thinking about it? And yet it is the simple ability to forget which means that time itself disappears in as if into a black hole.
If however, we take the time to remember, even the small details, then we fill up absent time and bring it to life and therefore extend it. A problem we have is that we have so many distractions to occupy our thinking mind that we perhaps don’t bother remembering. We have TV, radio, computers, smart phones, books and magazines, not to mention so many after work activities we can absorb ourselves in – why try to remember anything except the major highlights of one’s life? And even then we tend to only remember them in loose detail. Ask yourself this question, “What did I do yesterday?” And try to remember it in as much detail as you can. How much can you remember? Tomorrow might be a fresh memory but what about the days before?
Of course the past is gone, so what’s the point of remembering? So let’s move on. Perhaps only older folk talk about the past more and it’s called reminiscing; for younger people this would be considered a boring pastime. And yet thinking (remembering) is no different than talking, it’s just talking requires the use of voice and hearing, whereas thinking only requires the mind to talk with itself.
With so many things to occupy our time we really don’t need to spend time remembering and bringing out the detail of the past. But this means we lose the time that has passed us by and life becomes shorter or feels like it is speeding up.
What does a person do when they return from a holiday or travel? They bring out the photos, that is if they haven’t already posted them on Facebook or Instagram. These photos represent their memory of the trip and even replace their memory. Who regales others with detailed stories of their travels and exploits these days? Probably very few; instead we quickly flick through the pictures on our phone, eliciting little comment from our friends, or just a thumbs up on Facebook.
Only a few centuries ago the average person could only have a life expectancy of half that of which we have today and yet we could speculate that their time of being was as long as our own today, simply because they had plenty of time to think, contemplate, remember and discuss. Time therefore, might well be not the minutes and hours on the clock but our memory of what we took note of and what we can recall.
We cannot remember time, that’s impossible but we can remember what fills the time, and that is a lot. And yet we choose not to because it seems all too dull, and so we forget it. Therefore all we do is remember odd events in sparse detail – no wonder time goes by so quickly and we grow old so quickly too. Am I just speaking of myself – what’s your view?
Imagine for one moment, there is a power cut and that the electricity doesn’t come back on. Where would we be? Just imagine no TV and no Internet. What would you do? What would everyone do? Go to bed and hope the power would come back on in the morning?
The fact is, as we all probably know, the magic boxes have taken over our lives and in many cases have become substitutes for friends and even family. We talk about the ‘virtual world’ and ‘virtual friends,’ and everyone raves about Internet friends but where would they be in a power cut - which never ended? God forbid! We’d have to learn to play musical instruments to entertain ourselves and we’d have to write letters on paper and then wait a week before we got a reply, and even worse – we’d have to talk to neighbours and relatives.
I’m not writing this to proclaim the evil of television or the Internet but that we substitute them for real people and that without them, so many people would suddenly find themselves very lonely indeed. No more jolly news presenters to talk to them over their cornflakes – a friend in the corner of the room; no more gooey entertainment to absorb and distract them; no more of anything to cover up their loneliness and inability to share their lives with others.
How can we ever really be real people again, if we don’t raise the level at which we communicate with each other? Human intercourse! I could say, we are in danger of becoming an extinct species in our own time; that we metamorphose into some sub species where only electricity keeps us alive. Am I being over dramatic? That’s for you to decide?
What do you think is the best part of a loving relationship? Is it the sharing, the intimacy, the sex, the security it gives you, the feeling of being wanted?
For me, it is all these things but above all it is waking up to someone lying next you. I say this because in my last relationship this barely happened. The relationship lasted eighteen months and during that time my girlfriend stayed just one full night in my bed; I stayed two nights in hers and we shared a hotel bed four times.
Ours wasn’t a normal relationship because although she was separated from her husband and didn’t live with him, she wanted the relationship to be a secret to all, and so we didn’t spend too much time together. In the early days we would see each other twice a week but then she wanted to drop it down to one, which I was not happy about.
What I was more unhappy about was that she would always, apart from once, go home after our love making, generally around midnight or one. She said it was because my bed was too uncomfortable but perhaps it was more to do with the fact she was a night owl. In fact I called her Night Owl because she would generally go to bed in the early hours – three, four or five in the morning, then she would sleep until early afternoon.
And so, you can see why waking up next to someone means a lot to me, not just to see their face upon awakening but sometimes to continue what we left off the night before – making love.
It seems everyone is looking for that special one, that soul mate, that life partner but isn’t that one and only so hard to find? What each is looking for is someone who will give them 100% and to which they can return the same. But is this the only way it can be - 100% for one person or can that 100% be shared around? For example, supposing you have a lover who can give 40% of what you need, all the intimacy, pillow talk and physical stuff. Then there’s your family which can give you the back-up, a base to go back to with familiarity, we could count them as 20%. Then there are your good friends who give you an alternative view on life and who will listen to your stories and complaints, they can give you say 25%. That leaves 15% for activities, sports clubs or anything else which gives you a buzz. Of course you can alter the percentages all you like, as long as you come up with 100%. That way your life is full of what you need without putting all your eggs in one basket.
So the question is, why should we expect one person to give us everything we need? Of course many people do have a single partner and all the other relationships too and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but at least with the above formula you’ll know you won’t have to expect everything from the one you’re with and if it’s not that great, at least you don’t have to give it 100%.
Everyone is lonely when they don’t feel love but we cover our loneliness and lack of love by keeping busy, doing endless activities and also by resenting someone; anger can be used to drown out the need for love.
It’s quite easy to say “I am not lonely, I like my own company” but really this is a cover up and stops us trying to connect with others. The reason for this is that love is our natural state before life gets its hands on us and we have to grow up. We want to feel the love of another but often we pretend this is not so and find a pet or a hobby as a substitute.
The truth is we all desire love but many people suppress the feeling because they cannot find it. Thinking about needing someone to love and be loved by can be quite depressing when the need cannot be satisfied, so better to be busy and not think about it. Why is it so many people are experiencing depression today or are just not happy with life? The simple answer is they do not feel love. It’s not possible to feel love and be depressed at the same time. That’s like standing in the heat of the sun and feeling cold.
The desire for love is inherent in everyone because love means we are wanted, are cared for and that we are precious. Without these needs being satisfied, what are we? Answer – lonely and sad.
The trouble is, we accept being lonely and not loved as a by-product of life, a natural consequence of it, and we consider it something really special if we find love with another, or indeed with others. Being lonely and not loved seems to be normal and being loved is that which is special but shouldn’t it be the other way round? Shouldn’t love be normal and being unloved as something which is a unique event and special in that it shouldn’t happen?
What we should understand about loneliness is that it should only last as long as to show us that we don’t like it, and not a moment longer. Once we realise we don’t like being lonely and without love, we should do everything in our power to address this and change it. That doesn’t mean going crazy on dating sites to find that ‘special partner’ or ‘soul mate’ but that we realise that if you feel that way, and millions of others do too, there is something majorly wrong with how we are leading our lives all round the world. It’s an epidemic illness which goes unnoticed. Therefore, we have to be the doctors attending to our own illness and the illness of others too.
The answer must be to find out where love comes from and how we can make it an energy force which we can use, not just hope for. Hoping for love to come along is like hoping for a train to arrive if we don’t know if we are on the right platform.
The thinking tends to be that if two lonely people find each other and create love, then that is a wonderful thing and would be so if the love lasted for always but as we know, unfortunately so often it doesn’t. Meanwhile millions of lonely unloved people search for the answer and many sadly give up without succeeding. However, if we don’t find love in one way, perhaps we are looking in the wrong direction? We are on the wrong platform.
I was walking along a street near my home and my gaze was drawn toward the bright yellow flowers planted in the troughs at the side of the road. As I got close I was curious as to whether the delicate flowers had any scent and so bent down to find out, and yes there was a sweet aroma. I took a further deep inhalation to absorb more of this precious scent amidst the strongly polluted air around, full of engine gases and then a thought occurred to me. These little flowers must be pumping out this fragrance all the time, not just when I stopped by to sniff them. And then I was struck by the significance of this – twenty-four hours a day these small delicate plants are emitting a strong aroma but where can it come from? We humans of course emit our own particular aroma (smell) individual to each one of us, just as we do heat, and this is because we have a beating heart and a powerful system which converts food to energy. But what about the flower, it doesn’t have a beating heart and its roots sit in soil which has a completely different aroma. So how does a flower generate such a strong energy? Of course it is not done for us humans to enjoy, it is done to attract the insects which will pollinate it but nevertheless this is quite a feat.
This is just one of the wonders of life which we probably spend little of our time admiring. In fact how much of our wonderful world do we take time to really appreciate?
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