Author: toseealife

Hearts ready to take Flight.

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Saying something is one thing, doing it is another.

“I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.”–Portia, (The merchant of Venice.)

After talking about the problems of too much screen time, I figured I better be putting it into practice myself.

It’s funny, but whenever I refrain from one thing I seem to compensate with another. I guess there’s so much time to be filled and most of us don’t know what to do with it.

That’s the trouble with a free society, people like being told how to manage their time by other people, and the people in charge have their time managed simply by being in charge. I know few things harder on the mind than doing absolutely nothing. In fact, as I’ve noted since I was a little girl, there is no such thing as doing nothing. Unless you are dead. Life and death are states of being that you don’t have to try to bring about. (I mean not that you can’t cause your own death, but that once you are dead, your body at least is not doing anything.) If you’re reading this you must be alive, so of course I’ll talk about that.

I’m all for a free society. But Time is a commodity people don’t know how to handle well. My guess is because we can’t make it, or destroy it, only use it. If you make something you usually know what to do with it. But if someone else makes something, and you’ve never seen it before, then of course, you don’t know how to use it right off the bat.

All this to make a point. Knowing how to use your time well is not something we’re born with. And berating each other for it is really quite pointless; only experience teaches the use of time. Unless of course you can talk to the person who made it (Hi, God). But even then some things we never learn without experience.

So, most of us have had the experience that staring at a screen is a normal, somehow valid use of our time. But I won’t go into that again, since I just did. I think the real question is, what are our other options? What could possibly be more fun and more worthwhile and more relaxing?

I am continually frightened by older people recounting conversations with people of my age range. They say we can’t think, that we believe only what we’ve been told all our lives, and that we have only relative moral standards. And we are this way because of our schooling and our television. Schooling is a topic for another time, but the more I think about it, the more I realize how TV and movies did influence my acceptance of certain points of view. I think differently now, but until I hit my teens I really didn’t question it. I’m fortunate to have a family with strong values, so I wasn’t a ship without anchor, but I can imagine how much worse it must be for kids with no such anchor.

I’d say an excellent use of time is in getting more educated about things. Being willing to read books that present opposing views, or at least show all sides. (I just read Red Scarf Girl which was chock full of ideas I don’t agree with, but I enjoyed it.)

For us millenials sometimes learning just can’t happen until we unplug. I have a job babysitting some kids in my neighborhood, and at first all one of them seemed to do was play on an Ipad, except for brief intervals of playing with dolls or going outside, I kind of had to push her into it. Or we’d watch a movie, but while the older ones and I enjoyed it, the middle girl would get bored and go back to the Ipad. (Anyone else see the irony of that action?) This is a five year old. The worst of it is I let her do it sometimes because I was tired or wanted to do something else. My mom finally snapped me out of it last week by pointing out that I wasn’t paying enough attention to my charges. Yikes! But I decided to make a new rule, not electronics save for the purpose of texting their parents. At least for most of the days I’m there. I admit this is not easy to stick to. It feels like I have SO MUCH TIME.

But that’s just it. I have so much time. Time to play games, and read stories, and sing and dance, and watch the baby. Time to write a story. Time to tell a story. Time to actually learn about these kids. It’s not the work of a day or a week, but it can happen; because I can be present instead of just there.

This would be a good comments topic; what things in your life do you need more time for?

I won’t say I don’t get bored, but there’s other ways to deal with boredom. I still watch movies, but having less time to do it in means choosing more carefully. Often I’ll want to watch one movie one day and a few days later I don’t want to anymore. Now I sometimes pick movies that I think will help me with a project, or I just need to hear their message again. I guess what sums it up is the reason you do something is what makes the experience valuable.

With that I bid you ado until next time–Natasha.

 

 

Flashing lights and the buzz of speakers ( thoughts on the effect of televison.)

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I got a much better response on my last post than I expected, so I will try to do a good job on this follow up. Which I was planning anyway.

I like to ignore statistics and go for what I see as the heart of a matter. I don’t believe numbers speak to very many people, to a lucky few perhaps.

I quoted a TV show in my last post, which was ironically about staying away from screens. But for once I felt the show did a good job of making its point and I was actually apt to consider its truth after watching. There are very few such shows that I’m aware of.

For an opening quote here’s this little tidbit by Raymond Shaw (The Manchurian Candidate.) “Have you noticed that the human race is divided into two distinct, irreconcilable groups? those who walk into rooms and automatically turn television sets on, and those who walk into rooms and automatically turn them off.” I can’t say I fall into either of these groups. We no longer have a TV in my house, but when we did I fell more into the second category. I really don’t like television.

It’s one thing to think it’s bad for you, it’s another to actually dislike something. But I do. I dislike it firstly because I feel dumber after I watch it for longer than a half hour. (I blame commercial breaks.) Secondly, because it gives me a headache. Thirdly, I have a deeper reason: I don’t like what it does to conversation. I have relatives who will never turn off the TV set if they can possible help it. In fact, that is the majority of my extended family. I have cousins younger than ten who’ve seldom sat in a room with the absence of flashing lights and the buzz of speakers. Younger than ten. I wasn’t allowed to watch things everyday till I was at least eleven, or if I went through a phase my mom stopped it in time. What bothers me is how normal the magic box seems to kids, how inseparable from life. I have true concern for this; I’m not just criticizing for the sake of criticism.

I believe the format of screen time is a problem, but I am coming to think more and more that it’s also the format of what is shown. When you watch episode after episode of disconnected material, with more disconnected material in the form of commercials, and worse, if you channel surf as many of us do, what is your mind supposed to make of it all? Our minds are designed for learning. They organize information, process it in various ways, store it, or discard it if it’s unimportant. The more the info makes sense, the better out minds learn something of substance. Reinforcement is crucial. So is building off what you’ve already learned. This being the case, a TV show that is random and disintegrated is very hard for your mind to make any sense of. It doesn’t know what you’re trying to learn, or how, or why. So it goes to sleep in a sense. (I have no proof of this except my own observations and what I’ve heard about  brain memory and receptivity. I thought I should put a disclaimer.) Here’s the kicker, when you choose to fill your fun hours in this manner, all real learning becomes difficult and “work.” If it was just TV, we might recover, but now phones and ipads make this a constant part of our day.

We as adults and older teens have a choice, but kids don’t always. I don’t know if we realize that they’ve been taught to see screen time as necessary, normal, and a good way to please their parents by keeping quiet. For every adult complaining, there’s 2 or 3 kids who can’t understand why screen watching is a bad thing and not socially acceptable. In fact, I myself am guilty of sending mixed messages to kids about this. I have regrets for it.

Choice is the key. TV is not evil except in the hands of evil, whether an evil person or just an evil system that cripples kids. So, if we take TV back into our own hands, and sets some boundaries, we can redeem it.

Luckily, I have some experience in this area, so if you’re open, I can help.

Step 1: Remove yourself from temptation. “I find television to be very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book.”–Groucho Marx.

I made the stupid mistake in my early days of resisting the screen: I would sit in the same room as it. I still do this, but I’ve learned that giving myself something else to do is a huge determent to giving in. Whether it’s doing a puzzle, knitting, or going in my room and reading, writing, or turning on the radio so I can’t hear what’s being watched; any other thing to focus on that gets focus off what I’m missing.

Step 2: Get educated.

It really is amazing what the absence of distraction does for the interest. I guess we just get so desperate without  a screen that we’ll go for anything. Try reading books. I find the more I read, the less important TV seems to me. Now to be fair, often books remind of a movie, but a movie is better assembled and can be wholesome, if only one is watched at a time. With long movies, intermission seems like a good idea to me now, just to get refocused. As I read, I change, as I change I care less about the culture’s opinions, so why would I watch things that were made only to spread those opinions?

Step 3: Get involved.

Why not spend more time talking to people. Some people only need a slight nudge to put down their phones and engage. Children may be harder or easier, it depends. But we all love it if someone really wants to talk to us, and if we had no texting, oh my gosh! Maybe we would want to talk to people! Join a group, take a walk, ask your neighbors over for dinner, go to church and volunteer for something, take a class. Check out your downtown areas. Go to a library.

“I thought we were gonna get television…but the truth is, television is going to get us.”–Dick Goodwin,

Please, don’t let it get you. We all need to fight it, because it is far more serious than we imagine.

Until next post– Natasha

 

Millions of flashing lights.

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I wonder what people are doing when they find this blog. Surfing through internet stuff to kill time. Or perhaps checking their own blog and then seeing what’s new on WordPress. Not that I’m ungrateful or think that’s a bad thing, I just wonder how much of it we do.

People say we are over connected nowadays, we’ve all heard it. Most of us probably agree with the statement to a degree, just not as it affects us. I have heard statistics, but I’m not going to list any about the subject at hand. There are no statistics  that can measure how connected you feel with the people around you. Can we take a moment to acknowledge that, good.

The truth of the matter is, nothing you see in front of you can make a connection with your heart of hearts if all it is is flashing lights. Why don’t we ever ask ourselves just what the substance of a text, or a post, or a picture is? It’s flashing lights, it’s not the sound of a human voice, or the touch of human affection, or a real face in front of us. It’s just an image. It serves about the same purpose as a photograph or a letter used to, conveying part of the person, as a way to remember them and get a small taste of who they were when they couldn’t be with us. The more you knew them, the more you could get out of such reminders. Pictures are good I think, and it’s fine to take them even on a phone, but can they substitute for actually seeing the person?

Three things that don’t have value in a culture of technology:

  1. Privacy.
  2. Silence.
  3. Seriousness.

For the first thing: Moments of being alone with your thoughts. Time to yourself. This is not seen as a good thing, by you or by your friends who keep texting you all the time, or who constantly post new things for you to read. Wanting time alone can only mean you’re tired and cranky, not that you want to stay SANE.

Secondly, there is almost no silence. When we’re tired we turn on the TV or whatever our preferred form of tech is, ( if you don’t do this, then you have my apologies,) but I’ve found I’m more rested after just a little quiet time outdoors or in my room. If a stay at home mom is reading this, I know it’s hard to get a break; if a working person is reading this, I know that it can be just as hard to. Frankly, if you go to school it’s even harder because half your day is taken up without your consent. But there are still hours of time that most of us have that we fill with distaction form how tired we are, instead of rest.

Thirdly, When your day is crammed full of things that seem disconnected with each other, it’s hard to give full attention to anything. Again, if you go to school it is not your choice that subjects are seperated by the hour, but an hour is too long for some things, and far too short for others. I can spend hours writing, I get frusterated if I spend one hour trying to figure out a song on the keyboard. I have to take it in little bites.  Our minds look for connection and patterns, we need them to make sense of the world. The whole world is one interworking system, nothing is independent of everything else, yet nothing is the same. Both sameness and irregularity play havoc with our ability to reason and think and feel.

Yet entertainment is becoming increasingly both same and irregular. People who play the parts in the media industry now utter lines that come out of nowhere, and whose very randomness is supposed to be funny. I laugh sometimes, but unless it is very well done, such humor shows less, not more, cleverness. And plots are cliched. Based on what sells, not on a good message. I have to give Disney and Pixar credit for sometimes being an exception to this, but only sometimes. By and large there are no exceptions beyond the least popular movies and shows.

More than movies though, is our hopping from computers to phones to tablets to ipads to computers again, in a cycle of boredom.

Let me now quote a show called “Girl meets world”I heard this on one episode and liked it a lot.

“Not until we switch off our computers, put down our phones, and look into each others eyes, will we be able to touch each other’s hearts..there is no connection you can make with any screen that compares with the moment you understand only human beings have souls.”

Note the word understand. If you’ve read this far, I must have your interest on some level, so please, attend. I cannot possibly state enough the importance of knowing human beings have souls.

Personal story: A while back my sister and I decided to stop watching movies and youtube clips on the weekdays, we wanted to spend more time reading, and doing other stuff, and getting our studies done. At first it was hard and it still is in a way, (although I’m currently on break for a week,) but I noticed a change almost right away. I was happier, I was more interested in things. My brain was more receptive, I could enjoy reading more. I could go outside and really look at the world around me. I had more time to pursue interests, and more time to just rest without watching a screen, or to listen to music instead of watch music videos. I am more awake. That, versus yesterday, when we watched things for hours on end, and at the end of them I felt cranky with everyone, bad about myself, and confused about where I was in my personal life. I might have felt all that anyway, but it seemed so much worse than of late, and I couldn’t even think as clearly. To be honest, I’ve noticed the quality of what I’m watching plays a part, you feel clearer after good movies, and sutpider after stupid ones. It’s just the way it is.

I have found myself more paitent with people, and more at peace. Because in the absence of a screen, I have to use real substance to feed my imagination, not sicken it.

This is very long, so I’ll save the rest for a later post. I think we all have plenty to consider, myself included.

 

If at first you don’t succeed…

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A short word on my experience at doing new things: It probably won’t go perfectly the first time. Expect difficulties and deicide what to do about them ahead of time, and it usually will go smoother than you anticipated. As the adage goes, nothing worth having comes easily.

CPR on the soul.

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Oh my gosh I haven’t posted in weeks!

Now that that’s out of the way, I can honestly say I haven’t known what to write about.

How about creativity? I’ve been thinking about inspiration a lot. And inspiration fuels creativity.

But I guess I don’t need to explain creativity. Inspiration, though, is a lost thing in a lot of us.

I actually looked it up for another project I was working on. Inspiration used to be, and still is, defined as a Divine influence, upon the soul or spirit. (I’ve shortened it, as you probably can tell.) Imparted by the Holy Spirit, according to Webster’s 1828 Dictionary. Also, to inspire means to fill with an animating, quickening, or exalting influence.

In short, when you want or just need to do something, but in a really good way; then you’ve been inspired. It’s the urge to create, or to be better at something.

What I love about a good book or movie is how much it makes me want to live life better. The world doesn’t seem flat, insipid, dark, lonely, or meaningless anymore. This is different from feeling pumped after an action flick, or in awe after an inspirational story. I’ve never found inspirational stories, sold on that premise, to actually inspire me to do anything. It’s the inspirational stories I didn’t expect that do the most. Take my old time favorites The Hiding Place, The Secret Garden, The Enchanted April, Frozen, and here’s a new one, an old-ish movie called The Miracle Worker. This is the story of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan. This movie did not inspire me to overcome obstacles, or to persevere, in fact I’m not sure I took away the “message” at all, but I decided after viewing it to learn to fingerspell. Then I learned sign language, I now speak it fairly well and have tried to teach it to other people with some success. People have told me they think it’s beautiful to watch. If it is, that’s an accident on my part, usually; but I learned something good and I enjoyed it, all because of an inspiring story.

Inspiration is marked by action. Not speech. A speech can be inspired, but that takes refining and effort, not like babbling. No one ever heard inspired babbling.

Honestly, why are people so flippant nowadays? We don’t even try to understand great art, or great literature. We make fun of them instead. I used to be that way. Blame whatever you wish for this attitude we’ve all adopted, but I suggest we seriously ask ourselves what we’re passionate about. PDS is Passion Deficiency Syndrome. It’s kind of a churchy term, I’ll grant you, but I notice it’s not just the church, it’s everyone. Well almost everyone. We’ve all gotten tired of the sameness of places. Like a prison. If I try to be witty, I might say I’m tired of people talking or singing about being individuals, and I wish they’d just be individuals instead. Apparently, being unique is important to the majority of Millenials, (if I can believe the part of the article I read about it,) but I don’t really see it, you know. I don’t mean just looking different. I mean, deep down, being different.

I blame a lack of inspiration for the lack of individuality. I think people are disconnected from God, or from the aspects of Him that nourish our soul. Beauty and Greatness, where will we find them? The answer is quite simple, you have to look. It won’t be obvious, but it won’t hide itself either. Before inspiration comes good influence. And that is up to us, Sometimes we can’t choose our environment, but we can always choose what part of it we focus on and allow to shape us. Someone once said Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. I don’t know if that is accurate, but the principle of it is.

I don’t mean in the least that inspiration can be forced. You will never be able to force yourself to enjoy life or to want it, or to want to be creative or a better person. I have tried, it’s impossible. But things come to us that present these things as offers. We can surrender to it, or resist it. But looking for it is a good step toward attaining it.

By the by, another definition of inspire is to breath into.

I hope this made some sense, because it’s a difficult thing to explain, in fact I really can’t. So I can only hope my words touched on your own experiences. Until next time–Natasha

 

 

Don’t deal with the devil

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We’ve all heard the phrase “Made a deal with the devil.” Perhaps some of us think nothing of it, but it gives me the creeps. Who the heck would do that? Even if we claim the devil is not real, the expression still means to sell your soul to, or at least make a contract with, evil. And who would do that?

Lots of people. Have you ever excused doing something you knew was wrong? Maybe by saying “My parents did it?” Or “Well, that’s just the way I am.” Or have you ever called a lie “necessary” or “harmless.” Have you ever compromised your morals to keep something a secret, or given in to peer pressure?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, these can all be different forms of dealing with evil. And by evil, I mean anything that is wrong, directly harms others or yourself, and is destructive to health, happiness, or emotional security.

Having these kinds of deals always involves shame. We fear other people finding out that we do it. The most common example would be drug use or alcoholism, people give in to it out of fear or emotional problems, and then they have even more fear and issues because they have to hide it or act like it doesn’t bother them. They have to pay the piper a high price to numb their pain. The price includes relationships, health, jobs, freedom, ability to reason, and the list goes on.

Another way, by far the most common, is to make a deal with fear that requires you to do things you know are wrong to stay safe. Fear always threatens to expose you for a coward, so often we have to do even more things to cover it up. Like being dishonest and saying it’s the way of the world, and you have to be that way to survive. Or being unfair for the same reasons. But at bottom, we’re afraid, and we’re afraid of our fear being exposed. They say that’s why bullies are mean and tough on the outside, but inside they are often immature and insecure themselves.

We also make deals with mediocrity. We put forth only so much effort, because it’s not really worth it. As long as we meet the minimum requirement, mediocrity lets us live comfortably, but it never betters our circumstances or lets us escape our cage. We are left alone, left to ourselves. Again, people are afraid; so they think as long as they aren’t targeted by the bad guys, it’s okay. But sooner or later they realize they missed out on true greatness. One might even ask if mediocrity was not just as evil as the other examples, because it deprives the world of more and more greatness. And the people around you as well.

There are more deals, but I hope you’re getting my point enough to leave it at these examples. Now, there is hope. Another word for deals could be allegiance and having an allegiance to evil is fatal. To really live, you must break it. Verbally even, or on paper, or perhaps all it will take is a deep decision within you. I don’t recommend trying to do this without God’s help, because these deals are usually ingrained in us by the time we realize their presence. But break the deal. It’s up to you to decide what it making the deal too costly to stick to. Like Lando in Star Wars: The Empire strikes back. Who has to decide at what point protecting his people from the Empire is less important than doing what he knows is right. So, when have you had enough? Enough of the guilt, the fear, the misery. (I trust all my readers know that I’m only referring to people who know they have bad deals in their lives.) If you’ve had enough, then end the charade, prolonging it will only make it worse. Then choose a new allegiance, to good.

“Submit to God, resist the Devil, and he will flee from you.” James 4:7