Think of Helen Keller and what she achieved in her life in spite of being both deaf and blind from early childhood. This brilliant woman was such an inspiration and really makes you think that almost anything can be overcome or at least that we can cope with almost anything life throws at us.
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Source: All the World Is Full of Suffering. It Is Also Full of Overcoming – Helen Keller | TheSeeds4Life.com
Can you think of any other examples?
Did you know if you give paper wasps multicolored construction paper, they will make rainbow-colored nests instead of the usual gray? A biology student did just this, and the results are colorful!
Almost makes me want wasps around so they can decorate my porch with rainbow colored nests. Well…almost.
Here’s the whole article with all the pictures. Enjoy.
When Given Colored Construction Paper, Wasps Build Rainbow Colored Nests
I’m a nostalgia junkie. I’m nostalgic about the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. I can’t decide what my favorite decade of those four is. They were all pretty awesome in their own ways. Hell, I think I’m even beginning to drum up a little nostalgia for the ’00s (what do we call that decade anyway?) even though it pretty much sucked (will it suck as much in 20 years when it seems a lot less recent?) I’ve even been known to get nostalgic over decades I didn’t even live through–the ’20s, ’40s and ’50s come to mind.
I don’t know if some people are more prone to be drawn to nostalgia than others. Maybe it’s something that happens to you when you get older, but I know plenty of twentysomethings who are REALLY into the ’90s, which if they remember any of it at all, they only remember it from the viewpoint of a very young child. Most twentysomethings were BORN in the ’90s, for heaven’s sake. But compared to today? The ’90s seem innocent, even quaint. Maybe they’re pining for that last breath of societal innocence before all hell broke loose after 9/11 which coincided with the massive shipping of good jobs overseas while those here became increasingly uncaring about their workers. Making things worse was the complete loss of any sense of privacy due to new technologies that made it possible for anyone who wished to spy on you or find out things about you you’d rather no one know.
Some cynics who look askance at those of us drawn to nostalgia think it means we’re depressed or unhappy and must always escape to the past to cope with present life. I don’t think that’s true, and let’s be honest, the past WAS better than the present. At least for those of us in our second half of life, in the past not only was everything better, WE were better, at least physically. We were still young and attractive and healthy and the future seemed filled with endless possibilities. The older you get, the more your options seem to narrow. The more you find that age discrimination is a very real problem.
Time seems to speed up the older you get. The gap between say, 1974 and 1994 seems like an eternity, while the same gap between 1996 and 2016 seems like a blip. The strange thing is, even Millennials are saying time is speeding up for them too. Like us oldsters, they also think of hardly any time passing since Y2K when it’s actually been 16 years.
One possibility is that things really haven’t changed that much since 2000–or 1996 for that matter–and that’s what makes it seem like time isn’t moving. Or at least not the popular culture and the way people dress. The outer trappings may have changed very little, but if you look deeper, there have been massive changes in technology and the overall way we live. In 1996, the Internet was brand new, so new most people weren’t online yet. Being online was nothing like being online today. It was an entirely different experience, and a lot more exciting for being so new, even if what was available online was limited and not all that interesting. In 1996, hardly anyone had a cell phone, no one sent texts, there were no GPS devices; Facebook, Twitter and all other social media we take for granted did not yet exist. People still used Usenet and Telnet (DOS based) chat and gaming rooms. You had to get off the Internet to use the house phone.
Connecting with my younger self.
I think for me, my attraction to nostalgia is a way of attempting to connect to my past, so I can connect with my younger child-self. Raised in a fractured, dysfunctional family that constantly moved, where nothing was permanent, where people shun and disown each other and don’t speak to each other for years, where family pictures–even entire photo albums and lovingly drawn child-portraits–are thrown away as if they’re nothing more than out of date newspaper circulars; where old toys, magazines, books, and records were callously given to The Salvation Army because it was just “clutter,” where the past had no meaning or sacredness, where reminiscing is haughtily dismissed as “wallowing.”
Unlike in normal families, where an adult child can often count on returning to their childhood room while visiting the home they were raised in, where their old toys and photos are lovingly kept stored away but can easily be retrieved for reminiscing, my past was as temporary as the homes we lived in, something to be forgotten and tossed out with the trash. I might as well have been a foster child.
I have exactly 15 photos of myself as a child and teenager that I managed to salvage. Right, just 15. (I have a few more of me in my 20s). At one time there were probably hundreds of pictures, since I remember my dad took pictures any opportunity he had, but neither of my parents have any idea what happened to them. None of my toys, books, schoolwork, awards, or records were saved; what I didn’t take with me got given or thrown away. A very large pastel portrait drawn of me at age 6 has somehow been “lost.” Really? I wonder about that. How does a family “lose” such a large object that once meant so much that it hung over the mantel in the living room?
So, you see, my connections to my past are extremely sparse. Besides those 15 photos and a few odds and ends (a newspaper article about me and a few other kids in a “silly hat contest” when I was about 6, a few letters from summer camp ’71 addressed to my parents, a mimeographed day camp newsletter in which I remember being so excited to be a “published author” because they published a single sentence I wrote about an arts and crafts project I had done; a single framed lithograph of my zodiac sign I’ve had since I was 12; and bizarrely, a sterling silver and mother of pearl baby rattle given to my mother by someone when I was born), I have nothing from my distant past, no tangible reminders of my early years. I’ve noticed since I’ve been in therapy having more desire to have these long-lost things, I think because having these visual reminders would help me remember key events and bring them into the present for me so they can be worked on. Maybe that’s another way my family sabotaged me–by making my journey to wellness more difficult by eradicating anything I could connect to my past.
I often look at nostalgia sites, reading about music, fashion, news events, old ads, and popular culture from when I was young or younger. Lately, I’ve been doing it more frequently than I ever have. I don’t think it’s really because things today are so much worse or because I’m getting old; I think my fascination is my attempt to find an alternative route to connect with myself at an earlier age. In leiu of being able to do this through personal mementos and old family photos, I have to resort to public nostalgia sites and old TV and music videos. It’s still lots of fun though, even if the presence of useful triggers that could be used in my therapy are missing.
I’ve always wanted one, and I got the last one today at Dollar General. It only set me back $27. I had to have it!
That’s the laptop on which I communicate with all of you to the left of the chair.
I’m having a problem, which I’ve contacted WordPress’ Wordads program about, but it will take a few days for a reply. My ads aren’t showing, except for the banner ad up on top. I checked my settings, and nothing was inadvertently changed. My ads are supposed to be in three places: as a banner up on top, in the sidebar, and under the first post. But the sidebar and embedded ads are showing up blank! I don’t have ad blocker either.
If you’re reading this and you don’t have ad blocker, can you please let me know in the comments if the ads are showing up? Not just the banner ad, but also in the other two places. I know it’s a weird question, but if the ads really aren’t there, that lowers my impressions, which affects the very small income I make from this blog. I appreciate your help.
Envy, by Marta Dahlig, Deviantart
I’m about to write a painful, bitter post. It’s about something brings me a great deal of shame, so much shame I hesitated writing about it at all. It’s about what’s probably my very worst quality. But my need to be honest on this blog (because it may help both me and others), no matter how ugly or socially unacceptable my feelings may be, overrode any misgivings I had about what I’m about to write.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been an envious person. Having been programmed by my FOO to be a perpetual victim, honed and chiseled by master artisans to become a dysfunctional, self-loathing adult unable to achieve even the normal comforts, supports, and pleasures non-abused people enjoy and take for granted; seemingly set up to always fail (and then get callously blamed for my failures by the very people who programmed me to fail), another unpleasant side effect of being programmed to be a “loser” is a nasty tendency to envy others for having those things that should have rightfully been mine too.
I’m not talking about winning the lottery or acquiring a new Ferrari (though those things might count too). I’m talking about envying those who achieve or acquire normal good things that most people who were raised in loving families take for granted–landing a great job, acceptance by a publisher, a place to go and be supported unconditionally when their luck is down, a wide circle of friends, an inheritance earned through simply being who they are and being a member of a family that cares about them unconditionally.
If such a good thing happens to a person I always knew had those things, someone who never seemed surrounded by darkness and always seemed to have things pretty easy, I envy them a lot less than if those things happen to someone I had met when they were still on “my level”–in other words, a fellow victim who suffered abuse and is still reeling from its fallout, struggling (and failing) to find their footing in a world that seems so cruel and cold, the way I continue to do and feel like I will be doing until the day I die. If such a person’s fortunes suddenly change, I fall into a slimy, nasty cesspool of envy. Instead of feeling inspired and encouraged that yes, the good thing that happened to them could happen to me too and I should just be patient, yada yada yada, I just feel consumed by that bitter, horrible emotion that does no one any good, least of all its bearer.
Coveter-in-training: being a hybrid mini-me/scapegoat/golden child to someone I knew even then I could never aspire to set the stage for my tendency to envy others.
I think I know why it’s easier to envy people who suddenly came into a great opportunity to change their lives than those who already had things easy. It’s a “misery loves company” kind of feeling: when you feel victimized by life and all the people you ever had to answer to, it helps to know that others feel exactly the same way because it means you’re not alone. It’s not that you want the person who’s fortunes changed to feel as badly as you; it’s not even that you’re not happy for them. It’s more that there’s a sense of solidarity in being able to wallow in a communal pit of misery together, and suddenly that feeling of solidarity is broken. It’s that feeling of realizing, “it’s not just me after all! I’m not alone!” being thrown into doubt because that person is suddenly able to lift themselves out of a hellish existence and you are still not. In all honesty, it feels like a kind of…well, betrayal.
I know it’s not really that at all. All of us who were victimized by narcissists all strive to break out of the trap of a life of failure set up for us by our abusers early in our lives. During our wallow in communal unhappiness, we feel strong solidarity. We support each other, cry on each other’s shoulders, feel angry on behalf of each other, and wish each other the best with utmost sincerity, as we wish it for ourselves. But then one one is suddenly lifted up out of the mire, you can’t help but feel left behind. You’re completely unprepared to feel that way, because this person was an angel to you and came to you at a time when she was most needed. You looked to her for inspiration, advice and support. So you beat yourself up over your envious feelings because you know feeling this way is wrong and sinful. You feel like a hypocrite, since in theory, you wanted what was best for this person and still do. You know they deserve good things and there is a part of you that is happy for them, but it’s corrupted by the unwelcome thought, “why not me too?” like mold on a delicious chocolate cake.
You know their reward was not undeserved. We are all at different parts in our healing journeys, and some are farther along than others. The person you so envy is farther along their spiritual and emotional journey than you are. You’re well aware of that fact and it never bothered you. You saw that person as a teacher and guide. You know that perhaps you’re just not ready yet to handle something that good happening to you yet and that’s why it hasn’t happened. First you must learn to better appreciate the things you already have, to see the glass as half full.
Of course you wish this person no harm; your envy is not the sort that wishes to take away anything or try to sabotage the person’s good fortune. But the bitterness and sense of unfairness is still there, eating away at your insides like an unwelcome and potentially lethal parasite. You know better but you can’t help it. Exhausted from your bitterness, you feel tired an depressed. You shout at God in frustration and exhausted rage: “When is MY ship ever going to come in?” You don’t want to take away anyone’s good fortune; you just want to have some for yourself too.
I think it’s hard for ACONs to learn to trust. The people in our lives have proved to be anything but trustworthy. We’ve been hurt, betrayed and disappointed by everyone we thought mattered. We learned to expect the worst from people. Many ACONs turn to God or religion as a respite. Desperate to trust someone, anyone, they fully embrace God and throw their worries blindly at the feet of the Almighty. Their faith seems perfect. Others, like me, have more trouble. How can we fully trust an entity we can’t actually see? How do we even know there’s anything there at all? We overthink everything and overthinking makes faith difficult to attain. I pray for faith constantly, because I know that’s the only thing that will take away my fear, self-loathing, suspicion of everyone, and my envy. The person I envy right now has faith that seems nearly perfect. How can I get to that point?
I pray that one day my envy can be transformed, that I can be genuinely happy for the good fortune of someone else, and even be inspired by it. I also pray that the person this post refers to doesn’t judge or condemn me for feeling envious, but something already tells me they will not. I will always be grateful they came into my life.
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Further Reading:
My Envy
This summer’s weather has been crazy. All of June was very dry in my part of the county (western NC), barely any rain at all. April and May were dry as well, which is unusual since normally these are two of the wettest months (November and early December are generally wetter though–or they seem to be).
My grass was turning brown and my flowers were dying. It’s been nice not having to mow the yard every weekend (or really, at all!) but the prospect of drought and possible wildfires was not a pleasant one. Like people all over this region, I prayed for rain. But day after day passed with not a drop.
I suppose God got irritated with all the constant rain requests, because for the past three days we’ve been hit every evening with not just rain–but downpours of almost Biblical proportions, complete with thunder, lightning, hail, and very high winds. Last night and the night before, we had severe thunderstorm warnings and these storms were a little scary! Last night’s storm produced flooding rain and the wind was gusting at 65mph, enough to blow the lightweight furniture off my porch and knock over a few of my potted plants. My cats came running inside when they heard the clap of thunder, cowering and their poor fur standing on end.
Tonight is predicted to be much the same. Right now, it’s calm but we’re under a severe storm watch and storms are popping up on the radar all over the region. And it doesn’t look like this pattern is going to end anytime soon. Check out this week’s forecast.
Lucky Otters Haven 