Mobile pacers and ass scratchers

What different creatures we are on the phone.  My nephew Richard paces frantically while on his mobile.  If in a house he enters and exits every room as he talks.  In our two bedroom flat he marched up and down the living room restricted only by the walls at each end.  I am reminded of Richard because below me on the rocks here in Malta I see another pacer on his phone.  He is also on his mobile but is bare footed.  Despite the pain of the hot sharp rocks, I recognise his tip toeing awkward stance as he attempts to cover distance with his phone to his ear.

Has there been a study I wonder of phone habits?  One girl on the bus, headset in place, held her phone like a soup plate under her lower lip.  It was an odd position but it was hers.  On my flight to Northern Ireland this summer a young Goth girl used her mobile as a mirror for almost the entire journey.  Picking up tiny strands of her fringe, straightening it and then placing it in microscopically different positions.  Each adjustment was examined in her iPhone to check for effect.  It was a nervous condition; I’m sure, as she did it for almost three hours.  I was more concerned that all her nail beds were infected with huge weeping blisters.  At such times I feel Easy jet is taking real chances with our health by insisting on cramming us in like greasy sardines.

I have one son who has to scratch his ass while talking on the phone.  He hardly notices but it is a compulsion.  We all have our own, I fear.  I saw a young lady hugging her phone like a baby to her ear, using both hands.  She caresses the receiver as if the caller will feel the extra attention bestowed.  In case you feel this is unusual a recent study found that

“The users who we observed touching their phone’s screens or buttons held their phones in three basic ways:”

·       one handed—49%

·       cradled—36%

·       two handed—15%

So her cradled approach is the second favourite method of holding the mobile. 

In London, I noticed a young business finance type, headset in place, strutting along the street with a definite swagger.  Pausing at times to raise one finger to an earpiece and bellow his recent triumphs to all and sundry. 

Tourists no longer lie on sun loungers listening to music, instead they paw their screen with two fingers, texting, reading, responding.  In amazing places but connected umbilically to this lifeline.  

Couples sit across romantic tables mobiles on the table, checking their screen.  Conversations, when they happen at all, are interjected with vibrations, pings, music and each one causes a response.  Different in each but always accompanied by that contented look, someone wants me.  I am needed, linked, not forgotten.  

The mobile phone has become an addiction we cannot live without.  A recent study found that

84% worldwide say they couldn’t go a single day without their mobile device in their hand.

What does all this mean?  We are beginning to understand how addiction influences other aspects of our lives.  Academic studies http://file.scirp.org/Html/36417.html (Open Journal of Preventive  Medicine) suggest that Internet addiction is associated with loneliness and mobile phone dependence in students.  Other found that sleep quality worsens with increasing addiction level.  

The more one reads the more disturbing it is to see how technology has so quickly influenced cultural norms/relationships and even family dynamics.  It would appear mobile pacers, ass scratchers are just symptoms of a much deeper malaise.

What do you intend doing with it?

Death comes to all of us.  We like to deny that.  We think that someone’s careless diet, inappropriate drug use, excess of alcohol consumption, unfortunate genetic inheritance was at fault.  Sloppy life choices are blamed as if avoiding death was as simple as choosing not to engage in dangerous sports.  Why do we love to point the finger?  “Well he was a worrier, that lowers your immune system.” Or “The stress levels he had to deal with this past year, must have weakened him.”  It is natural, I suspect, to want to blame something/someone for the indigestible truth that death happens.

Suicide is referred to, at times, as if the victim has committed a frontal attack on society.    Deserving thus of stigma, shame, castigation.  I prefer the recent definition of suicide “it is when living is not longer a viable option.”  If the victims felt they had any other choice it’s probable they would have taken it. Robin Williams will be missed, a great talent, deserving of respect and much loved by so many.

Why does it suits us to point the finger at those who die.

1.      By blaming the person death becomes no longer relevant to us

2.      We can distance our own death by allocating a reason/fault we do not intend making

3.      Our own perceived immortality is back in our own hands

4.      Such attitudes allow us to proclaim, it had nothing to do with me, it is their fault

5.      The meaningless practices of our own lives seem suddenly life sustaining

6.      Our own death becomes not the full stop at the end of every life sentence but more like a comma one can insert or leave out at will

In the context of physical life being all there is, dying is the cruel end game we choose not to contemplate.  Those who die around us remind us, all too clearly, death is the ultimate destination.  If we are prepared to consider death at all, how should we think of this dying business?

 We should look forward to it, as one looks forward to reaching the final destination of a long journey.  While on earth we are like a bird in a cage.  Restricted, caged, imprisoned in a physical space.  Death breaks that cage and frees the soul

I like to think that every good deed, spiritual quality of kindness, charity, love creates a spiritual seedling in the next life.  Just as the baby in the womb has legs, arms, eyes which it develops in preparation for world outside.  So to we must progress so that the spiritual attributes required are in place.  We cannot see our seedling but we can, here on earth, prepare the soil, tend the fragile seed and water it with prayers and supplications while on this earthly plain.

Our destiny is to create noble fruits.  Our endeavours in this mortal life will either nurture that tree of our real existence or become a veil between us and our own heart.  Selfishness, meanness of spirit, jealously, hurtfulness, spitefulness, materialism, disunity, cruelty etc – all these deform our development and stunt our growth.

If we deny the purpose of our lives we lose the light.  In the dark every path looks the same.  Each one as pointless as all the others.  Choosing to turn to God, is as nurturing as the sun is to the flower.  In choosing the light, we are replenished daily.

The mistakes we all make become tests that we learn from.  Rather than focus on the faults of others we address instead the meaty issue of our own defects.  Removing the beam from our own eye has always been the priority.

Our approaching death, that full stop at the end of this life, our physical disintegration should bred an urgency, not an indifference or apathy.  If, we admit it is there, then we can focus on the really important issue remaining.  What do you intend doing with the hours, days, weeks, years that that lie ahead?

Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Remembering one we lost this week - missing your smiling face and laughter

87 year old - fish fantasy

Joyce reciting her fish poem, such a treat meeting up with my writing buddies, from years ago, in Northern Ireland this summer.  What a lovely bunch to be creative and have fun with.

Stalked to death by LinkedIn - apologies everyone

I am on holiday in Northern Ireland visiting family/friends here.  It has been a lovely 6 weeks and I am about to fly back to Malta.  However, I must apologise for the harassment I inflicted on all my contacts via LinkedIn.  It was totally not what I wanted and I am so sorry for those annoying invites that regularly fly into your inbox. Let me give my side of the sad tale.

I am presently employed on a writing assignment which is for a course and part of it involves using LinkedIn professionally.  As a result I had to sign up and create an account to see how the whole thing worked and try it out for potential students on the course.  

I made my profile and quickly got some rubbish in to get started. Never expecting that LinkedIn would contact every single person in my contact list informing them of my 'new Job', silly titles etc.  But it did and has continued to do so with relentless efficiency almost every day.  I have been on a Google trawl to try and stop it, but it is as if the dam has been broken and no matter how many notifications I turn off, withdraw the darn thing has a mind of its own.  The only comforting thing is that the internet is filled with equally frustrated voices. Such as these

1. I have tried to help this issue by deleting my imported contacts and linked in is still inviting people to become my connection. 

This issue is a terrible way to get people in touch, as it turns out I am just annoying all of my professional contacts without my knowledge. 

and 

2. Same problem and I WISH I had an answer on how to stop this. It is SPAMMING. Here they penalize someone from trying to link to a stranger, but yet it's ok for LinkedIn to send out an invite to someone w/o your permission?

and yet another cry 

3. this is also happening to me. I have contacted LinkedIn three times and, although they have "acknowledged" receiving my e-mail and assured me they would contact me, they have not. I am now getting at least three people a day who have accepted my nonexistent invitation. I am EXTREMELY frustrated. I thought I would be choosing only those people I wanted a connection to!

I joined this as it was a "professional" networking opportunity that I thought could connect me with my peers and would be vastly different than Facebook. Yet here I am with similar issues in terms of privacy and control.

and even more intense

4. This is outrageous and I'm withdrawing my account. As the owner of a very large web site, I will recommend my members do the same.
This is shameful and desperate spamming.

Oh dear, never mind I hope you will all forgive this unwanted intrusion from me.  I would not have done it by choice.  At least I will be sure to include health warnings for students using this resource on the course!  While here I have met so many victims of LinkedIn and all are so annoyed.  Surely such practices eventually backfire on the perpetrators?  Perhaps it is a language thing?  For example Americans need to understand how the British use language is very different and this is a typical guidance.

What the Brits say: Quite good
What the British mean: A bit disappointing
What others understand: Quite good

What the Brits say: Very interesting
What the British mean: That's clearly nonsense
What others understand: They are impressed

What the Brits say: I only have a few minor comments
What the British mean: Please re-write completely
What others understand: He's found a few typos

I’ve added my own

When the Brits say: LinkedIn is prolific

What the British mean: LinkedIn is a bloody nuisance 

What LinkedIn understands: We really network well

I would love to hear from you on your thoughts!

PS I have no new job, no new title and have achieved next to nothing - rest assured you are now updated on my status

Angel in the shuck

She had nothing to speak of
no money, no profession, no property
She kept chickens and always wore wellingtons
Her hair an untamed bush under a crocheted hat
Her skin creased like the folds of an accordion
sun blasted into brown granite
her language a quaint country lilt
Her wrinkles form permanent smile
lines around eyes and mouth
beaming her well meaning at the world
while shooing the chickens from
under her feet in shit splashed boots
You'd mention some old rogue
from the council, corrupt and foul
and her response was ever
"What a lovely man!"
She had no badness to say about anyone
Only good things to appreciate and praise
I once fell in the deep ditch beside her road
She ran throwing her bucket aside
chickens running in all directions
screeching their distress
with her spade hands and peat tipped nails
she hauled me out
smiling at me, the world and her chickens
As a child, I remember thinking
I'd found an angel in the shuck

Note the meaning of shuck - Northern Ireland slang, meaning 

1: a ditch at the side of the road that contains a small stream normally laced with cow shit

Still I Rise

Held a creative writing group in Ballysally, Coleraine today at Focus on Family and really enjoyed it,  Nice to see a room full and to have everyone willing to put pen to paper, share and create together.  Strange to be back in the same place after a couple of years away but it will be only until mid August when I head back to Malta.  Enjoying the cool weather and the crack.  Today we watched a video favourite writer of mine - full of laughter and fire.  She died this year but what a lady in every sense of the word.  Enjoy her telling of Still I Rise.

Dad - A Real Teacher

Was talking on Skype to my uncle in New Zealand and the topic of my dad came up.  It has been over nine years since he died but he is alive in memories and conversations with loved ones.  My uncle reminded me of a holiday in Cranfield when he was just a boy and my father took him with others to examine a bag of cigarettes washed up on the shore.  My father told them all that there was a chance that people were on the look out with guns for this smuggled hoard so their race to the beach was filled with danger.  My uncle remembers the excitement and thrill of the escapade and how Dad turned the whole affair into a huge adventure for them all.  

My brother remembers how one night when he went round to my Dad’s school in Dungiven and in the darkness opened the front door and went down a long corridor.  Empty school corridors at night are spooky, you almost hear the voices of non-existent pupils echoing from classrooms over the squeak of your shoes on the shiny tiles.  Suddenly, at the end of the corridor in the darkest part someone opened fire with a gun and my brother ran for his life while the flashes of gunfire lit up the corridor.  It was of course my dad who had let fire with a sports starting pistol to see what my brother would do.  

It was never boring with my dad around.  He could make every event into an adventure and fun.  Even a walk in the fields turned into a geological field trip, or a visit to a castle, a lesson on history.  Always informing and educating he could not stop probing your intellect pushing you to find out and want more.

In Dungiven in the 1970s there was a divide between Catholics and Protestants and yet he was a voice of reason even then.  It was not popular and I was struck by how ahead of his time, in so many ways, he was.  In the tiny secondary school in the Sperrins he taught children about Geography so well that all could identify every country on a world map.  The only test was who was the fastest as they raced to the board and labelled the world map drawn there. He loved world maps and bought the biggest and best he could.  I get flashbacks every time I talk on skype with my son and see over his shoulder a huge world map on his wall.  This desire for maps must be genetic!  He also taught the children high in the Sperrins isolated from even NI about all the world religions Buddhist, Hindu, Islam, Baha'i, Christianity, Judaism etc Even now forty years later our religious education has not caught up with his wide ranging insights on world religions.

My son found a newspaper article (from over thirty years ago) in which my Dad speaks of his educational philosophy and it resonates still, even fifty years after he practised it in Canada, Australia and Northern Ireland.  It gives me a fragrance of this lovely man who chose the path less travelled.  Here are two excerpts in his own words.

“A relatively small number of teachers of the right calibre could create a school society in which pupils could progress to greater awareness of the world about them, their cultural heritage and a knowledge of their real selves.  Unfortunately, the false values of contemporary society have been allowed to dictate priorities in education.”

“For me the ideal person is the man from Nazareth who lived in a society very much like our own and Who in the midst of all that hatred could say: ‘Love your enemies and do good to those that hate you.’  One thing for sure is He did not learn that from the teacher in the synagogue school.”