You get to choose one gift — no price restrictions — for any person you want. The caveat? You have to give it anonymously. What gift would you give, and to whom?
This is quite a hard decision to make – every person knows a lot of people, and there are a lot of people whom are genuinely in need, not to mention the countless others who are living in poverty around the world.
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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
When was the last time that sentence accurately described your life?
I can sum this up in two words:
ex. boyfriend.
Rumi said that a wound is where the light enters you. Discuss this idea and how it applies to a moment in your life.
Without going through a battle and getting wounded, then we don’t truly gain insight. The way I read this, the light is a metaphor for insight / wisdom / knowledge / understanding. And if wounds don’t give you that, then you must be an idiot.
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You wake up one day and realize you’re ten years older than you were the previous night. Beyond the initial shock, how does this development change your life plans?
You mean after I become hysterical and can’t even think about living because the depression of losing ten years is far too great?? Continue reading
Among the people you’ve known for a long time, who is the person who’s changed the most over the years? Was the change for the better?
There are a number of people that I know that have gone through significant changes in their time – marriage, divorce, kids, deaths, sickness and injuries etc and they’re all and amazing test of character and resilience, however there is one type of person I’d particularly like to focus on…
What do you find more unbearable: watching a video of yourself, or listening to a recording of your voice? Why?
After years of dancing, I’ve finally started to come around to actually being able to watch videos without completely cringing in horror.
If you could persuade people to do one thing right now, what would it be?
I would actually try to persuade people to have more of a social conscience.
Only in the past few years have I really developed more of a social conscience in terms of being more vocal about things that I believe in – things like animal rights, climate change, marriage equality, boycotting companies that don’t support the same beliefs that I have.
And then we end up with this complete and utter monstrosity, Tony Abbott, as our leader, who is so completely backwards, he almost seems to be determined to try and inflict as much damage as possible, so that when he gets voted out at the next election, him and his Liberal government will then have all this damage and destruction to use as a platform for the incoming government, and use that to make them look inadequate because they won’t be able to fix it overnight, and they wont have billions of dollars at their disposal to start trying to undo all the damage that the Abbott government has, is and will cause to our country.
Without actually thinking about the country that we live in and the world that we live in, people tend to just sit back and ignore or avoid these kind of things because they don’t think it affects them; or they think that they can make a change, (or maybe they don’t want to?!) but the fact still remains, that there is a lot of shit that happens in this world, and not enough people really seem to care about it to do anything to create a positive change. Yes, there are a number of activists out there, but more often than not, they give the actual term ‘activist’ a bad reputation.
What’s the first thing you see in your head when you hear the word activist? I’m just gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that it’s something like a person with some signs / placards, chaining themselves to a fence or a tree, or maybe standing in the way of a bulldozer in a picket line. Perhaps they’re rocking out a giant mop of bushy dreadlocks, screaming into a megaphone, barefoot, with a face full of piercings and referring to themselves in the third person by their alternate non-religious name of Sapphire or Moonflower.
That doesn’t have to be the case. Any body can be an activist without having to resort to that kind of action. You can do little things, small every-day things, that will at least make you feel like you’re doing your part to help a worthy cause.
Personally, I’m not going to go out of my way to go to a rally. Even if it’s for something that I support, I generally loathe them, because you see those people I just described, and they make me want to throat-punch them. Instead, I do my own stuff. I’ll sign petitions; I’ll buy only free-range eggs; I’ve even gone to the point now where I completely emptied my entire bathroom skincare and hair care products for cruelty-free brands. I’ll donate money to charities like the RSPCA, or supporting initiatives for the homeless. I refuse to support companies that don’t support marriage equality, or have financial ties to anti-gay organisations like the christian lobby. I no longer donate clothing to The Salvation Army or The Red Cross because they refuse to help people who are in need that are homosexual. Those people are more than happy to take my hard-earned pink dollars, but if I ever found myself in need of their assistance, it’s so disheartening to know that the people who gladly took my money would refuse to help me.
Why would I continue to support that. Especially when I’d blindly been doing so for so many years. Part of me wishes I could ask for a refund of everything I’ve donated to them, just so I could give it to a more deserving charity.
But I am just one person. I cannot make a big enough difference to influence any change, but I can tell other people about it. And they can tell people, and so on and so forth. But there’s a difference between agreeing that there is a lot of stuff that is wrong in this world and actually stepping up and doing something to make a difference.
So if you were to sit there and make a list of what do you feel strongly about in terms of a broader social aspect, what would you write down? What are your top five issues? What small steps can you take to make a small difference?? And for those of you that believe in it, I think we can agree that by making a positive change for a social cause will bring you good karma.
And everybody wants good karma, right?
Who’s your hero? Tell us a story about why that person plays such an important role in your life.
It’s taken four attempts to write and re-write this, no thanks to a glitch in the WP app, so let’s try for number 5… And see if I can remember what I wrote…
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What does “happiness” look like to you?
Growing up as a kid in the 80’s and 90’s, this is one of those weird little phrases planted deep in my mind, and when I read this prompt, that song immediately sprang into my mind.
What does happiness look like to me?? Well, happiness can take on so many different forms. People show emotion in so many different ways…
For me, however, the more I think about it, the more I come to this depressing realisation that I don’t experience that type of happiness anywhere near as much as I would like. Yes, things make me happy: curling up on the couch with Hulk watching Real Housewives makes me happy; being out in the sunshine makes me happy; sleeping makes me happy; seeing friends makes me happy; shopping makes me happy… but it’s not the kind of Tom-Cruise-jumping-on-a-couch happy.
I don’t know what exactly would give me that kind of happiness, but I know that I would like to have those moments… but I don’t.
It’s something that is missing in my life, and sometimes I feel more as though I’m experiencing less and less happiness in my life.
I’m not entirely sure what needs to change, but I know that something needs to change…
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/daily-prompt-happy/
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
So, I’ve been looking through the list of NaBloPoMo prompts, and this sense of deflation starts to wash over me. How the fuck do I answer that one? What am I supposed to write for this one? Why are these so hard? UGH. I CAN’T DO THIS!! THIS WAS SUCH A BIG MISTAKE!! Then, to add insult to injury, I discover in my Reader, the WordPress Daily Prompts.
Great. Just what I need. MORE writing challenges. Granted, nobody is forcing me to take part in any of these challenges, but I want to. I want to do it to prove something to myself…. I’m just not entirely sure what that is yet. Maybe it’s just to prove that I can stick to something for more than… oh look… shiny things!!
Perhaps that’s the one thing I would change about myself? My evident lack of dedication to things in life. Writing challenges, diets, savings. Y’know, all those great things that people struggle with on a daily basis. Maybe if I was more dedicated to something and actually applied myself, I’d see some kind of results?
But I think that’s too easy of an answer and the question itself is so open and generic. What would you change about yourself? Hands up those of you who just said stuff like ‘I’d change my height / weight / nose / lips / boobs etc’?? CONGRATULATIONS, you’re all superficial. Okay, now raise your hand if your response was ‘I don’t need to change anything about me. You can’t change perfection!’? CONGRATULATIONS, you’re also superficial… AND FUCKING ANNOYING. Actually, you lot can all go and take all your so-called perfection along with your motivational / inspirational quotes that you like to bombard my Facebook newsfeed with and lock yourself away from society. You’re the ones who need to change the most. You’re not fooling anybody with that happy-as-a-pig-in-shit exterior and your fantasy world where everything is just AH-MAH-ZING and you’re blessed to have such wonderful amazing people in your life, and everything’s all puppies and rainbows.
…get me a bucket.
You lot are the ones that make me want to self-harm. I’m not sure exactly what it is about your sickening positivity that sends me into a murderous rage – I haven’t quite worked it out, but something about you makes me want to turn into The Hulk and smash everything.
Those of you who haven’t raised your hand are probably the ones who would respond with something like:
I could quite easily start my own list of things about myself that I’d like to change, and again they’re all things that I could achieve if I could actually apply myself more effectively. Perhaps mine would be to have better time-management skills? Working two jobs and having late nights doesn’t leave much free time for, well, anything. And whilst every single one of us could write a list of things we’d like to change about ourselves as long as our arm, majority of them can actually be achieved.
Who’s to say you can’t go back to uni and start a degree that you wished you did when you were 19? Who’s stopping you from going to take some classes in self-confidence to help get over your fear of public speaking? Why can’t you sell off your children in order to be free and happy?? I’m sure Angelina won’t mind taking them in.
See… I knew this would happen – a tangent. As usual. Where was I? Oh right, change? Well, I’m thinking if I were truly honest with myself, I would probably become more tolerant.
Perhaps I should start taking some pointers from those motivational graphics on my newsfeed?!
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