The Waiting Game

What is anticipation to you? Because it seems to me that sometimes anticipation is a good thing, and sometimes it is the worst thing in the world... perhaps better labelled here as 'dreading'.
I wonder if you enjoy the anticipation before a birthday for example, the build up, the present list... the knowledge that on such and such a day you are having a party and you begin to plan out what you will wear, how you will do your hair, what food there will be etc etc. Do you enjoy that kind of anticipation?

What about when it seems that anticipation is just making an already bad thing much worse. I remember the second time I had to have impressions done of my teeth after my brace was taken off. The first time was aweful, I gagged, the dentist told me to shut up and it was perhaps the worst sensation in my mouth ever. Even worse than custard. But the second time?!?! It was pure hell. I knew exactly what to expect and as the appointment date got nearer and nearer I just about lost it completelty. And you know that people try to convince you that you remember things much worse than they actually are... I discovered they only say that to try and stop you panicking. It was just as bad if not worse because of all the anticipation. What do you think of that kind of anticipation?

And then I wondered whether somethings in life are only good experiences because of the anticipation. There is a slightly different angle here from my first thought because a birthday would be fun even if it were a total surprise. But what about those things that you count down so excitedly, each day crossing off the date on the calender getting closer and closer to that date you've circled in red biro... Would Christmas be as much fun without Advent? What about a holiday without all the pre-holiday preparation?

My final thought was whether sometimes when you're waiting for something you can't have yet and it feels like 'bad' anticipation because you're not just excited about an event but you're willing the days to go by thus wasting the 'here and now', whether when you finally get to where you wanted to be the waiting will have been worth it. I don't know if that makes any sense but here's a slightly trivial example. (Some of you may have guessed this isn't the thing that triggered off these thoughts of 'the waiting game')

A few years ago my parents bought me a beautiful woolly coat in November to be given to me at Christmas. It was, and is absolutely gorgeous. So unusal and warm with that lovely smell you get with proper wool. I wanted it soo badly there and then, the weather was pretty grim and I didn't have a coat anyway so I pestered my parents constantly to give it to me. Of course they refused; it was a Christmas present to be opened at Christmas. Full stop. Anyway, when Christmas finally arrived and I finally got this coat I'd been dying to have for over a month, I was dead chuffed. I reckon I could say I'd wasted time going on at my parents to give it to me when I know they wouldn't but did that change the happiness I got on Christmas morning when I opened it?
I honestly don't know. But what I do know is that sometimes I love waiting for things to happen, and sometimes it just totally sucks.

Happy Bifday to Me!

Just had to say, thank you to everyone wishing me a happy birthday... meant to much to have so many texts and Facebook comments. Thank you! I had a lovely day and am beginning to come to terms with the oldness of 21!

I'll udate again soon with something more interesing, but right now I have to go and pack up my entire room of stuff into one suitcase. (Is it just me or does that sounds totally, logically and physically impossible?!?!?!)

Love to you all. xxx

Tangible.

tan‧gi‧ble  /ˈtændʒəbəl/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[tan-juh-buhl] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation

–adjective
1. capable of being touched; discernible by the touch; material or substantial.
2. real or actual, rather than imaginary or visionary: the tangible benefits of sunshine.
3. definite; not vague or elusive: no tangible grounds for suspicion.
4. (of an asset) having actual physical existence, as real estate or chattels, and therefore capable of being assigned a value in monetary terms.

–noun
5. something tangible, esp. a tangible asset.

So, it seems that something that is 'tangible' is something that really exists, something that you can touch something that is not suspicious, something that has physical existence. This whole idea of something that is 'real' isn't actually as simple as it may seem. Because how are you proving that that thing is 'real', as opposed to imaginery, or fictional?
If you say all that is real is able to be touched, what about emotions... you can't touch jealousy or happiness or fear... but if you were experiencing any of those things you certainly would say it was real.
What about saying that something is real if it seems logical... but when a bumble bee flies around it seems to defy all laws of physics in actually taking off from the ground, but you wouln't say it wasn't real.
Maybe something is real if you can see it, we often say we don't believe things unless we see them with our own eyes... but when someone tells you about something that's happened in their day, you tend to believe them. Of course unless they say something like they'd been eaten alive by a savage wolf...

I know this isn't rocket science and I can't even remember the fancy-pants terms for all the different kinds of proof etc. My point is simply just that 'real' is actually a difficult concept to define, and I know that I often dismiss things as not being real... things that people tell me, feelings that I have... maybe it sometines is worth thinking quite carefully about what real is, and what is real to us by whatever definition we want to use. It seems to me that though it's a pretty difficult thing to pin down, it's also a pretty important thing to get to grips with!

nb. Tim said I should write this blog on 'tangible' so appologies for whatever you make of what I came out with!

Sveden!

Tim and I just got back from our cheap little mini-cruise to Sweden. It was certainly random, but I had a lovely time. We didn't really do much! lol but I had a really great time. Lounging around on the deck of a ship with just the ocean and the sun... I loved it. It was quite an amusing paradox of the beautiful scene I just described... paralled with the hilariousness of our cabin. 'Cabin' being the operative word here. About 3foot square, below the car deack... and the sea level, gaps above and below the walls to circulate the air, noisy Japanese tourists next door... priceless!! Actually no, not priceless, but very cheap!

Still, lovely times, I love the sea. It's hypnotic for me, in any form. Day or night. I could just stare at the sea for endless hours. It is yet another reminder to me of how amazing my God is for creating it all.

Retail Therapy

How and why does it really work? Seriously, all you girls out there, when you are feeling really down and just a little bit rubbish, buying something really truely does help you to feel better.
Surely that's a really stupid thing, that parting with your well earned money for something that may be pretty but certainly isn't essential and will probably get thrown out in a couple of months when fashions change... it actually makes you feel like things are ok again. I am right aren't I ladies?

I just got back from town with my mum who announced just before lunch "I feel really down and I need to buy something" So off we went to town where she's shifted a hefty lump of cash. And now she's all happy and smiley and trying on all her lovely new clothes for my dad... who in turn is sitting on the sofa, trying to watch Crocodile Dundee occasionallynodding and uttering the required "yes dear" after any question. I swear that I am not being stereotypical here. Ok well, maybe I am, but those stereotypes have some grounding you know!

I just don't really understand how and why retail therapy really does honestly make you feel better when you're down. I don't get it. But it sure as hell works for me!

look at the sky.

seriously, no matter how you are feeling, looking at the sky is always amazing. It doesn't matter what the sky looks like... cloudy, rainy, sunny, blue, grey, night-time, foggy, starry... anything. The sky is always beautiful and somehow by looking up it takes you out of your little world and into something much bigger, much more peaceful and much more beautiful.

My mum used to say this to me to remind me how you can look at everything from two sides (at least!)

Two men looked out through bars
One saw the mud, the other saw the stars.

Rumours of another world...

There is an article in this month's Reader's Digest (oh yeah I'm cool) about Near Death Experiences and whether they can offer us any kind of proof about life after death. Dr Melvin Morse, one of the most prominent researchers in this feild has said that sometimes it seems as though the universe itself is preventing him from finding answers to his questions. He says that labelling this area of study a 'grey area' is the best answer we can give.

I recently had a conversation with a very close friend on a similar topic. She was saying that she's terrified of dying because she says that no-one can ever really know what will happen after we die. She thought that even people with the strongest beliefs could never know 100%. She was positively shocked to discover that my mother, father and myself are all totally sure of what will happen after we die.

You see for me it makes sense. I believe in the God of Christianity as a God of unending and unconditional love. I believe that God loves me, and I believe that there are lots of things that prove this to me. (But that's a different discusion!)
I also believe that my dad loves me. And because I know that he lvoes me, I tend to believe the things he tells me. So if my dad says we're going on holiday to France next year, I would believe him. He's never done anything in my life to make me doubt his word so I have no reason not to believe the things he says.

So you see, this God that I believe in loves me more even than my dad does so I believe in a life after death because that's what it says in the Bible. I believe the Bible to be true because I have never had any reason to doubt what it says. It's all believable and truthful as far as I'm concerned. So when it says in the Bible that there is an eternity of life with God for those who love him and accept Jesus as the saviour of the world... I believe it.

There are loads of references to heaven in the Bible, but here are just a fwe to demonstrate why I believe so confidently where I'm going when I die...
Luke 10v20 'rejoice that your names are written in heaven'
2 Corinthians 5v1 'We know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven built not by human hands.'
Philippians 3v20 'but our citizenship is in heaven.'

For me, this is anything but a grey area.

Important Decisions

I'm thinking of buying an ethically made hoodie to replace my Mary's one because I don't like the fact it's made by Fruit of the Loom who I recently discovered to be unethically making their clothing in Mexico. And I was thinking the other day what it is that pushes us to make decisions. Of course the answer is 'many things'. Decisions are made by things that interest us, people who inspire us, events that influence us (these aren't all deliberately beginning with 'i'!) and of course our beliefs, passions and personalities. The thing is though, that all these things are selfish. We chose a film to watch because we like it, we pick out clothes because we like them, we eat food because we like it, we go on holiday to a certain country because we want to go there. In an ordinary day, I wonder just how many decisions, even down to the tiniest little thing, are made totally selflessly. How many times can you say "I did that completely for someone else, there was nothing in it for, and in fact I actually lost out because of it".
Of course philosophers have argues over the centuries whether it is even possible to do something completely selflessly and whether we are actually inherently selfish beings. But this is something that I think about alot. I once read a reccommendation, to do at least one thing every day for someone that they don't know about, it's teaching a lesson in humility because most of the things we do for other people are in reality done with at least a partial aim for acclamation.
Everyone knows that I get all passionate and excited by Fairtrade and ethical trading, I can't help it, it's something that interests, inspires and influences me and of course I struggle to understand why people wouldn't be passionate about it. But of course we're all different people and we all get moved by different things. The thing is, I think we all need lessons in selfless acts, because, seriously, how difficult is it just to work out what your actions do to someone else, even and perhaps especially if you will never meet that person.

I am sorry if this comes across as judgmental or 'fairtrade-bashing', two things I have been acused of doing in the past, and two things I desparetely don't want to be. I just felt that I needed to be straightforward and say what I think. I would never judge anyone else on their decisions, that really isn't my place. But I want people to know what moves me to make my decisions. That, truely and honestly is the only aim of this blog.

5 reasons...

why hamsters are rubbish...
1) they are incredibly boring, you cannot interact with a hamster and ours never even goes on its wheel.
2) after about one week on not cleaning the cage, they smell really really gross.
3) they wee. everywhere, and for such a small animal they have a surprising amount of wee.
4) you can't even hug a hamster, you'd probably squish it.
5) seeing as they aren't much fun alive you might think they'd be good to eat, but they're so small and scrawny it wouldn't be worth it.

so there, hamsters are officially rubbish. well at least by my dodgy logic!