Just before my trek across the country, I noticed I had forgotten to work on a SHARE-YOUR-WORLD post this week. I think that’s because my post from last week became a major project, with lots of research and about a hundred re-edits before I finally published it.
So this one is a bit of a rushed post. Before I left home to head to the train station I grabbed my lap-top and typed as quickly as I could.
I do love Melanie’s SHARE-YOUR-WORLD questions:
https://sparksfromacombustiblemind.com/2019/08/12/share-your-world-8-12-19/
What makes you laugh?
All sorts! I like a bit of dry humour I have to admit. Just nothing that is cruel. I don’t think comedy should offend people. Clever comedians know how to make something funny without resorting to insults. I love physical comedy too.
A friend of mine showed me a sketch from Peter Kay about biscuits. The long version has some swearing in it, so I won’t post that. This is just a short clip. I remember laughing so hard when I saw the whole thing. I just wish comedians wouldn’t use such filthy language. It makes my skin crawl.
In one sentence sum up the Internet.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
If over time you replace parts on a car, at what point does it stop being the same car you bought? How many parts do you need to replace to make it a new car?
Wow – I so don’t have any intelligent answer for this question.
I guess for it to be a 100% new car you would have to replace all of it’s parts at the same time, making it an entirely different car. Because if you were only replacing parts gradually, it would always be a mix of new and old.
How many parts are even in a car at all. I don’t know??? Hold on, I will ask Google. Google says there are an average of 1,800 parts in a car. Goodness, you learn something useless every day don’t you.
Gratitude is an attitude. Yea or nay? Explain your viewpoint please!
I suppose I would agree with that. I guess an attitude is a pattern of thoughts, a habitual mental response or reaction. An attitude influences your manners, the way you view yourself and the the world, how you treat others, your speech, your conduct, the way you dress and groom etc.
I am a firm believer that when you recognise a thought as positive, it’s a good idea to cultivate those good, kind, wholesome, lovely, grateful thoughts and make them a pattern, make them an attitude, make them your default setting, make them your ingrained inclination.
And when you recognise your thinking is harmful, combat it – like weeds that would strangle the life out of beautiful flowers, pull them right out. They will come back to be sure. But don’t neglect your own mind and let thoughts go wild. Get control of your own head. Nobody can do that perfectly, don’t become obsessed. Just be aware of the patterns in which you are thinking and the effect it is having on you. Gardeners are not out in the garden twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But they are regular in taking care of what they have invested a lot of time and effort into. It’s easier if you keep on top of things, rather than letting them get out of control. Then sit back and relax, enjoy life, enjoy all the wonderful you’ve been cultivating in your mind and in your life.
I find a huge help in doing this is turning off outside noise. When I stopped watching TV completely (I was without a television at all for ten years, and rarely listened to the radio), I found my brain seemed to thrive. Well, that was partly because I kept busy, and I was involved in some pretty amazing projects. I watch a little TV nowadays, but I am highly selective about what I watch, what I listen to and even what I read. Don’t just sit on the sofa. Do useful things. And choose to spend your time with good people, because the people you spend your time with shape you enormously.
What’s the world coming to? (Credit to Mel of Crushed Caramel…)
Fancy me getting the credit for a question like this!!
Well, in case you missed it, I put a huge amount of effort into answering this question last week – am I right Melanie? The simple answer is this, if you love goodness, then you can look forward to a wonderful future, better than anything you can imagine right now. But there are momentous times ahead, and some people are going to make terrible decisions, manifest terrible attitudes and commit terrible atrocities. For them, there will be no future at all.
So you are wise to cultivate a love of goodness now. Because in the future, goodness is going to shape what goes on throughout our beautiful planet.
Rather than elaborating further, I will just give you a link to my SHARE-YOUR-WORLD post from last week:
If you have three hours to kill, you might enjoy reading it, or not! That’s up to you to decide.
My family
But Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Ghana, Gibraltar, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and USA have all had their impact on me in so many ways. Some of the countries I have visited I don’t mention because they were assignments, not holidays, and not even my friends know I was there.
This is an unrelated detail, but the night I had my first kiss with Goldfinch, I had a rum and coke, and also a margarita. We kissed about an hour later, at which point I had a diet coke next to me. I can’t remember what I had eaten before. But I wasn’t expecting to be kissing him, so there may have been garlic involved! Oh…I am tingling thinking about my first kiss with Goldfinch!
I longed to become a full-time international volunteer. I had met many who were, men mostly. But I was given a very realistic description of the challenges that are involved in that role. The accommodation is very basic and modest – well small, very small. There is a a strict schedule and volunteers are often required to work “over-time”. There can be challenges when sharing kitchen and bathroom areas with other volunteers who come from different backgrounds and cultures. You can be sent anywhere in the world there is a need. You may go for long periods living without basic amenities. The physical and emotional demands and difficulties in the various challenging assignments can be exhausting. And for everything you do, you receive food and lodgings but no wages. I am pretty sure the marines are paid some kind of salary.
For many reasons, the number of single men vastly outweighs the number of single women. There are many many part-time roles for women, but the role of a full-time international volunteer is so tough, that it is normally only men who are invited to take up this role. The physical, emotional, mental tests they put you under are designed to reveal if you really can take on a self-sacrificing role and if you really can be sent anywhere in the world and adapt to any way of living. Many men cannot hack it. Yet in general, they are more likely to endure and remain in this role for longer.
A happy mix of healthy emotions. I thrive on all my interactions with people. My family, friends and others. People make me tick. Life is not fulfilling if you are isolated. But fill your life with good people (and yes they are imperfect so there will be some stress at times with working out occasional misunderstandings and overcoming challenges that occur due to imperfection), and you seem to have tremendous energy and always an invitation to go here, there and everywhere.
Dancing in your arms underneath the starry skies – set me up for dreams of you and a hunger for more.
Caramel 