Reflections

Facing a blank screen and wondering what to write about is something all Bloggers have to endure. Shall I write about what I have planned in future, or what I have already been doing? No, neither. Why? because when we breath out we don't actually know if we will breath in again, do we? So, whilst I have a lot of past, and it has shaped the me I am today, I can only thank it and not blame it. Oh yes, there are times I could fall into the trap of blaming fate, destiny, others or none. In actual fact, I tend toward the Fate school of thought.

I found how to use Twitter last August, in spite of the fact I had created an account some 2 years before that. I had tried at first, but was completely confused as to how it worked. I was suspicious of the term 'follower and following' as it has connotations I was not comfortable with. Then along came some news article and the word Twitter was being used extensively, so I thought I would take another look.

I followed willy nilly every famous name I came across. I read topics from the 'trending' lists and was horrified at the amount of disgusting language that was being used. In fact, I felt sullied when I had read some of the posts and their totally unnecessary use of the words I still see as disgraceful when used in front of strangers (and most of them were what I had always considered were 'bedroom' terms anyway!)

However, I got hooked. I weeded out every person who didn't ever answer any tweets (that got rid of 99% of the famous names!) and all the people who were so inarticulate that they needed to use expletives the whole time and multiple times in each tweet. I reduced the number I was following significantly with that clean up too.

I sorted out the topics I was most interested in, and then doors really started to creak open. It was wonderful to read other peoples considered opinions - and many unconsidered ones too. It was the interaction with people of similar or diverse opinions that really caught my imagination then.

I started to read some of the sayings I had lived by all my life, and then remembered that I have a rather extensive collection of pithy sayings that I have gathered myself over the long years of reading philosophy and collecting jokes. Distilling the sense of a long diatribe into one short sentence is challenging, but so satisfying when you have done it. The real joy came in sharing those sentences with others on Twitter and even better, seeing people send those same words on to their followers as being worthy of being shared.

I love having laughter around me - who doesn't? What really pleases me is to know that others can read the words and smile, or nod in agreement, or simply store them away for their own enjoyment at a later date. Like the ripples on a pond, we don't know how far those words go, but we can be fairly sure that they will bring some comfort or pleasure or amusement to some other person somewhere in the world - and it doesn't matter where or when. 

There are so many who violently disagree on the subject of God or religion, and I am not the person to try to argue with them. All I know is that I have a deep sense of faith, but not strictly a religious faith. I have faith in my fellow man, that they are inherently good and well meaning. That they would rather help than hinder and for the most part prefer to give than to receive. Of course, there are exceptions to this, but you only have to look at the number of people on Twitter who are happily putting themselves to all manner of challenges to raise money or awareness or both for those less fortunate that the rest of us.  Many of those are ones who would never dream of accepting the very idea of a God of whatever ilk. So long as they live in the way they do, wanting to help others and to not damage the precious world we live on, surely that is all that matters?

We all have things in our lives which test us, but I am so certain that we are not tested beyond what we can do, just to see how strong we can be. Being bitter about events that are past and gone is futile. There is no worse cancer than bitterness, because whilst cancer eats at the physical body, bitterness destroys the most precious part of us, our soul or whatever name you want to use to describe the person we are inside our bodies. If we can't, or don't want to change things, and there are some things I just don't want to change, at least I don't advocate keeping it alive. Let it drop and ignore it.

I feel the same about religions. Why look at the things that divide, when there is a golden thread which runs through every religion in the world. Concentrate on the things that unite and divisions disappear. It matters not a jot who said what - we don't have recordings of anyone to prove one way or the other what was meant, merely someones interpretation of what was said - like Chinese whispers, they are probably not remotely like what was really being meant.

Rather like those people who try to tell us what the artist meant when they painted this or that masterpiece or the composer was attempting to portray in their glorious music. Only the person who created it really knows, so if we can't speak directly to them, we should just accept it as it is, and not try to either put our own interpretation onto it, or even worse, listen to what anyone else considers was meant. Have the strength to believe your own thoughts and stand by them. You will find that the small quiet voice in your head is more often correct than not. Call it conscience, call it instinct, call it anything, but just learn to listen to it and act on it. If you don't act on it, and it was a good idea, you can be sure that before long the same idea will have found fertile ground in someone Else's head and they will be the one who makes it work.

We all have the power within us for good, and we can change the world little by little, but if we never start to do it, it will not change on its own.