I think my time of using this has a place to process relationships is at a standstill, and has been for mostly over a year now. At the time, I really needed to write and to be read. Now, I don't seem to need that anymore. Times change, people change, and it is now my time to move on. Maybe some day I will actively write here again. In the meantime, it is back to the real world for me.
May you know peace.
:)
Lou
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
Great People Day
It is family day today in Southwestern Ontario. Yup, another day to celebrate the sanctity of the family unit. I guess it is in case all the step-moms 'n dads feel left out, all the aunts, the uncles, and the in-laws. Personally, I would rather celebrate great people and leave all the family stuff to Mother's Day and Father's Day maybe just changing their clauses to include extended family and step-folks.
I realized tonight when washing the dishes and thinking that there are not many holiday days of the year that I can actually celebrate. I am a single, British born (now Canadian), non-reproduced, non-military, non-Christian, equalist, earth based belief system woman without a biological mother or father. Lets see...holidays...
Mother's and Father's days - self explanatory (although I do think of my family folks for these times). No biological parents, no kids. Forced celebrations regardless of family status. I always feel bad for those kids at school who do not have parents who have to face all the hubub to do with these holidays. I think it is going to be equally as bad to have Family Day. But I digress...back to the topic at hand.
Canada Day - although I have lived here most of my life, I never became Canadian until about 3 years ago. Ok, Ok...hahaha :) I have always celebrated it because Canada is my home, England holds my roots. But still....point made...I have only been Canadian for the last three years and, thus, can technically celebrate the holiday.
Valentine's Day - I am single. Now, mind you, I often have celebrated this day as being for love in general but it really is aimed at couples and, if you aren't part of a couple, it sure can make you feel like you have something wrong with you. The lore behind this holiday is interesting as well, and it is worth a visit to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine's_Day
St. Patrick's Day - uh huh, uh huh, uh huh. Yup. I am going to celebrate a Christian man who went around converting the Pagans. I believe in freedom of choice when it comes to religion, and do not support "converting" people at all. I think that is wrong and that folks should be able to make up their own minds. I also think it ironic that the day is celebrating by drinking green beer...
Easter and Christmas are Christian holidays. I do celebrate Christmas, but not as the birth of Christ...rather I see it as a time to spend with friends and special folks celebrating the dark time of the year and welcoming back the sun. Yup...I tend to bring in my earthy beliefs.
Remembrance Day. Now, I have to confess, I do not celebrate this day as I do not support war. However, that much said, I do think that this particular day is important to honour the folk who have died for the sake of peace. I haven't quite made up my mind as to what I actually think of this day. I think it safe to say that, at this time, I am torn and straddle the fence.
Now, there is a day I do celebrate...I do celebrate International Women's Day. However, I think it unbalanced in that we do not have an International Man's Day and, since I really do support equality, I think that men should have a special day as well...and I would celebrate that day too. I also support the December 6th Memorial Day which is marking violence against women everywhere. I think it is important to remember that woman abuse is still a very strong part of our social fabric, and that it is wrong to abuse anyone.
I enjoy Thanksgiving as well, and do celebrate it. I look at it as the abundance of the harvest, a time to start settling into the home for the winter, and a time to re-connect with people. I do not like the American way of celebrating the Pilgrims though as that was the destruction of another race of people and I do not see it proper to celebrate that aspect.
I actually do enjoy spending special time for many of these holidays, even though they don't actually call to me personally. I love getting together with family folks, and I love spending time with friends. I can honour the fallen, and can celebrate what is yet to come. I can celebrate in general and just put my own personal spin onto the celebration days at hand. And...that much said...I am going to close my rant on Family Day and spend some time thinking about the special folks in my life.
Peace be with you on this holiday. May you be loved somewhere by someone, and have the ability to celebrate your own specialness.
lou
I realized tonight when washing the dishes and thinking that there are not many holiday days of the year that I can actually celebrate. I am a single, British born (now Canadian), non-reproduced, non-military, non-Christian, equalist, earth based belief system woman without a biological mother or father. Lets see...holidays...
Mother's and Father's days - self explanatory (although I do think of my family folks for these times). No biological parents, no kids. Forced celebrations regardless of family status. I always feel bad for those kids at school who do not have parents who have to face all the hubub to do with these holidays. I think it is going to be equally as bad to have Family Day. But I digress...back to the topic at hand.
Canada Day - although I have lived here most of my life, I never became Canadian until about 3 years ago. Ok, Ok...hahaha :) I have always celebrated it because Canada is my home, England holds my roots. But still....point made...I have only been Canadian for the last three years and, thus, can technically celebrate the holiday.
Valentine's Day - I am single. Now, mind you, I often have celebrated this day as being for love in general but it really is aimed at couples and, if you aren't part of a couple, it sure can make you feel like you have something wrong with you. The lore behind this holiday is interesting as well, and it is worth a visit to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine's_Day
St. Patrick's Day - uh huh, uh huh, uh huh. Yup. I am going to celebrate a Christian man who went around converting the Pagans. I believe in freedom of choice when it comes to religion, and do not support "converting" people at all. I think that is wrong and that folks should be able to make up their own minds. I also think it ironic that the day is celebrating by drinking green beer...
Easter and Christmas are Christian holidays. I do celebrate Christmas, but not as the birth of Christ...rather I see it as a time to spend with friends and special folks celebrating the dark time of the year and welcoming back the sun. Yup...I tend to bring in my earthy beliefs.
Remembrance Day. Now, I have to confess, I do not celebrate this day as I do not support war. However, that much said, I do think that this particular day is important to honour the folk who have died for the sake of peace. I haven't quite made up my mind as to what I actually think of this day. I think it safe to say that, at this time, I am torn and straddle the fence.
Now, there is a day I do celebrate...I do celebrate International Women's Day. However, I think it unbalanced in that we do not have an International Man's Day and, since I really do support equality, I think that men should have a special day as well...and I would celebrate that day too. I also support the December 6th Memorial Day which is marking violence against women everywhere. I think it is important to remember that woman abuse is still a very strong part of our social fabric, and that it is wrong to abuse anyone.
I enjoy Thanksgiving as well, and do celebrate it. I look at it as the abundance of the harvest, a time to start settling into the home for the winter, and a time to re-connect with people. I do not like the American way of celebrating the Pilgrims though as that was the destruction of another race of people and I do not see it proper to celebrate that aspect.
I actually do enjoy spending special time for many of these holidays, even though they don't actually call to me personally. I love getting together with family folks, and I love spending time with friends. I can honour the fallen, and can celebrate what is yet to come. I can celebrate in general and just put my own personal spin onto the celebration days at hand. And...that much said...I am going to close my rant on Family Day and spend some time thinking about the special folks in my life.
Peace be with you on this holiday. May you be loved somewhere by someone, and have the ability to celebrate your own specialness.
lou
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
self worth and tolerance applied to intimate relationships and branching out to family, friends, work, and object ownership blatherings and thoughts
I actually wrote this a couple of days ago in my fb journal. Tonight, I got thinking and figured it should be here as well.
When I was housebound at the start of January, a friend loaned me the movie, “The Joy Luck Club.” I watched it, then watched it again, and watched it one more time. Three weeks later, I am still thinking. It just won’t go away.
Briefly, the film is about a group of four women who emigrated from China to the States, their lives, the lives of their daughters, the similarities, the differences, the hopes, dreams, and lessons that are to be learned from each life. The part that has captured me is the notion of what you are worth. I keep pondering this.
In the movie, it is strictly about what a woman is worth in regards to her relationship with a man. What is she willing to sacrifice from herself? What is she willing to settle for? According to the premise of the movie, the value a woman places on herself is the value she will be given in an intimate relationship.
I see this as a lesson that can go beyond an intimate relationship. Self worth is something that influences friendships and family dynamics. Work can be influenced by what one is willing to settle for too. Then I got to thinking about houses, and the miscellaneous stuff that we surround ourselves with and what we settle for and self worth. Then I think of self esteem and how buying objects can be done to replace a lack of sense of self, and yet I know that there has to be a sense of self worth in order to buy the self an object at all. The picture keeps growing bigger. But to return to the original thought . . .
Relationships. Why is it that a person is able to give so much of themselves away in a particular relationship with a particular person yet, at the same time, have no tolerance for the same behaviours from anyone else? We have various levels of tolerance for various folks in our lives. This is seen in how we react to children, the frail, people with challenges in their lives; most folks show more patience and understanding towards these people. Parents are probably far more tolerant of their children’s behaviour than most other people would be. We have more understanding when someone is faced with a hardship, or is ill, or is going through something. But why is it, overall, that people are able to have such high levels of tolerance for someone’s negative behaviour that they wouldn’t accept from someone else, if there was not a viable explanation for the behaviour? Does it stem from self worth? Does it stem from love? Unconditional love? Is there really such a thing as unconditional love? Okay, that is another topic all together… I digress.
Is tolerating a singular person’s negative behaviour while having no tolerance in someone else showing similar actions without a viable cause a reflection of self esteem in an intimate relationship, or is it a reflection of love and caring? I think in order to love someone else that a person has to be capable of loving themselves first. Loving the self is a huge part of self esteem, self worth and self respect. If a person doesn’t love themselves it is hard to provide themselves with comfort and caring, let alone be able to set higher standards for relationship expectations.
Now, that much said, what about if a person is escaping into an intimate relationship in order to avoid delving too deep into themselves? That could happen as well. Hmmm. Aha…that would be more of an obsession than a love though. Okay, so the ability to love another stems from being able to love the self. Now back to the thought of when someone tolerates behaviours in a person they love that they would not tolerate in someone else, even though they may have love for that person too. Why is there a difference in the levels of tolerance? Could it be biological? It has been shown (and no I am not going to go dig out the research right now, and yes I am just blathering off the top of my head, and yes I am still thinking of the article I skimmed in Time Magazine last week on relationships and chemical attraction, and yes thinking of various courses I have taken and books I have read), that people are attracted to other people on the basis of smell, what they see, pheromones and chemicals. We have the theory of evolution – we are driven to reproduce with people we are biologically compatible with. So is does this play a role in it? Is it because we have met the person who is most biologically compatible with us which gives us reason to tolerate their negative behaviours? Incidentally, a side note from the Time Magazine article, I thought it interesting that a couple could be attracted to one another, fall in love, get married, yet when the woman went off the birth control pills she had been on all through the relationship they lost their attraction. There may be more chemical attraction at play than what many of us would care to admit as we embrace freedom of choice.
So maybe that is part of it - that we are destined through chemical attraction to love this person and, thus, will tolerate the poor behaviour. But this still doesn’t explain the foundation of the poor behaviour and that needs to be explained as well for this to be a cohesive thought. And why would the tolerating person be tolerating so much in the first place if they truly loved themselves? If one person is tolerating then the other person is acting, one is giving away ones values that they apply to other people and it causes me to wonder what the other person is doing. This cannot be considered simply from the side of the person doing the tolerating; it needs to be more balanced…there always has to be balance. Are they giving away their values as well by performing the behaviour? Do they perform this behaviour with all other people or just this select one person? Do they love the other person as well? When does tolerance become too much tolerance and move from the realm of understanding into the realm of self harm. Definitions are needed. Balance. More pondering is needed. Maybe once I can get through the thought process of understanding the foundations of tolerance, love, and self worth as used in the movie, I can carry on and apply it towards the other areas I have been thinking of…family, friends, work, and ownership. To start though, I have to understand intimate relationships, self worth, and tolerance.
**sighs**
Damned movie.
When I was housebound at the start of January, a friend loaned me the movie, “The Joy Luck Club.” I watched it, then watched it again, and watched it one more time. Three weeks later, I am still thinking. It just won’t go away.
Briefly, the film is about a group of four women who emigrated from China to the States, their lives, the lives of their daughters, the similarities, the differences, the hopes, dreams, and lessons that are to be learned from each life. The part that has captured me is the notion of what you are worth. I keep pondering this.
In the movie, it is strictly about what a woman is worth in regards to her relationship with a man. What is she willing to sacrifice from herself? What is she willing to settle for? According to the premise of the movie, the value a woman places on herself is the value she will be given in an intimate relationship.
I see this as a lesson that can go beyond an intimate relationship. Self worth is something that influences friendships and family dynamics. Work can be influenced by what one is willing to settle for too. Then I got to thinking about houses, and the miscellaneous stuff that we surround ourselves with and what we settle for and self worth. Then I think of self esteem and how buying objects can be done to replace a lack of sense of self, and yet I know that there has to be a sense of self worth in order to buy the self an object at all. The picture keeps growing bigger. But to return to the original thought . . .
Relationships. Why is it that a person is able to give so much of themselves away in a particular relationship with a particular person yet, at the same time, have no tolerance for the same behaviours from anyone else? We have various levels of tolerance for various folks in our lives. This is seen in how we react to children, the frail, people with challenges in their lives; most folks show more patience and understanding towards these people. Parents are probably far more tolerant of their children’s behaviour than most other people would be. We have more understanding when someone is faced with a hardship, or is ill, or is going through something. But why is it, overall, that people are able to have such high levels of tolerance for someone’s negative behaviour that they wouldn’t accept from someone else, if there was not a viable explanation for the behaviour? Does it stem from self worth? Does it stem from love? Unconditional love? Is there really such a thing as unconditional love? Okay, that is another topic all together… I digress.
Is tolerating a singular person’s negative behaviour while having no tolerance in someone else showing similar actions without a viable cause a reflection of self esteem in an intimate relationship, or is it a reflection of love and caring? I think in order to love someone else that a person has to be capable of loving themselves first. Loving the self is a huge part of self esteem, self worth and self respect. If a person doesn’t love themselves it is hard to provide themselves with comfort and caring, let alone be able to set higher standards for relationship expectations.
Now, that much said, what about if a person is escaping into an intimate relationship in order to avoid delving too deep into themselves? That could happen as well. Hmmm. Aha…that would be more of an obsession than a love though. Okay, so the ability to love another stems from being able to love the self. Now back to the thought of when someone tolerates behaviours in a person they love that they would not tolerate in someone else, even though they may have love for that person too. Why is there a difference in the levels of tolerance? Could it be biological? It has been shown (and no I am not going to go dig out the research right now, and yes I am just blathering off the top of my head, and yes I am still thinking of the article I skimmed in Time Magazine last week on relationships and chemical attraction, and yes thinking of various courses I have taken and books I have read), that people are attracted to other people on the basis of smell, what they see, pheromones and chemicals. We have the theory of evolution – we are driven to reproduce with people we are biologically compatible with. So is does this play a role in it? Is it because we have met the person who is most biologically compatible with us which gives us reason to tolerate their negative behaviours? Incidentally, a side note from the Time Magazine article, I thought it interesting that a couple could be attracted to one another, fall in love, get married, yet when the woman went off the birth control pills she had been on all through the relationship they lost their attraction. There may be more chemical attraction at play than what many of us would care to admit as we embrace freedom of choice.
So maybe that is part of it - that we are destined through chemical attraction to love this person and, thus, will tolerate the poor behaviour. But this still doesn’t explain the foundation of the poor behaviour and that needs to be explained as well for this to be a cohesive thought. And why would the tolerating person be tolerating so much in the first place if they truly loved themselves? If one person is tolerating then the other person is acting, one is giving away ones values that they apply to other people and it causes me to wonder what the other person is doing. This cannot be considered simply from the side of the person doing the tolerating; it needs to be more balanced…there always has to be balance. Are they giving away their values as well by performing the behaviour? Do they perform this behaviour with all other people or just this select one person? Do they love the other person as well? When does tolerance become too much tolerance and move from the realm of understanding into the realm of self harm. Definitions are needed. Balance. More pondering is needed. Maybe once I can get through the thought process of understanding the foundations of tolerance, love, and self worth as used in the movie, I can carry on and apply it towards the other areas I have been thinking of…family, friends, work, and ownership. To start though, I have to understand intimate relationships, self worth, and tolerance.
**sighs**
Damned movie.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
