Daily Prompt – Worldly Encounters

The friendly, English-speaking extraterrestrial you run into outside your house is asking you to recommend the one book, movie, or song that explains what humans are all about. What do you pick?

Hang on, are these those annoying extraterrestrials that are still on tv doing the Budget Direct commercials?

For those of you who aren’t from Australia, please don’t judge us for commercials like this. Somebody, somewhere was paid a fortune for coming up with this unbelievably ridiculous marketing campaign. Nobody really gets it, nor do people actually enjoy them.

So, I just imagine that I would be talking to these two fools… having to then explain humans to them. In saying that, you’d kind of think that being extraterrestrials who had already infiltrated the human race, one would assume that they would have already done their own research; their own study into the human race, their behaviours and interactions… maybe they would want an explanation as to why we behave they way we do… trying to explain why we instigate wars, why we preach hate, why we use God and religion as a excuse to justify it all, why we have so much corruption, and segregation between classes and societies.

However, I think that in order to get to all of that, you would need to go all the way back to where it all began. I’d recommend something like ‘On The Origin of Species’ which was written by Charles Darwin back in 1859 in which he famously published his theory of evolution and his theory of natural selection. Although in saying that, one would have to assume that these ‘beings’; these ‘advanced life forms’ should already know all of this, however, there would also be the possibility that although they may be a species hundred, thousands or even millions of years older than the human race, they may not actually know anything about us, who we are, how we came to be.

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Daily Prompt – Modern Families

If one of your late ancestors were to come back from the dead and join you for dinner, what things about your family would this person find the most shocking?

Well, depends on which century this ancestor is from?

Where do I start… the fact that I’m gay, would be a pretty big one.

Considering that homosexuality was pretty much taboo across most centuries, well, unless you lived around the era of Game of Thrones, then it was perfectly fine – people just turned a blind eye to those kind of… indiscretions. Which is quite interesting that even back then, it was still more accepted than it is today.

Society could probably learn a little something from that.

Then, of course, there’s the fact that my parent’s are divorced, again, something that was so heavily frowned upon. Moreso for the woman. Being a divorced woman carried a stigma with it – almost like a sense of tarnishing a woman’s reputation. Divorcee’s were frowned upon; pitied.

Then add onto that that none of us are religious… and I think that would probably make my ancestors head begin to explode. Being a person of no faith was also unheard of. If you didn’t believe in God, then you were seen as not having a soul, and condemned to burn in hell for eternity. Well, providing people didn’t automatically assume that you were associating with the Devil, or you were a witch.

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Daily Prompt: Que Sera Sera

Do you believe in fate or do you believe you can control your own destiny?

I generally believe in fate. I think that everything happens for a reason – whether that reason is clear or not. I know that there are people who believe that they can control their own destiny, but I generally disagree with that view of thinking.

I believe that fate is what controls our lives. We can try to control it as much as possible, but things happen to each of us for all different reasons.

Hands up any of you who have had one of those days where everything just seems to go completely wrong – and before you know it, you’re already wishing you had’ve just stayed in bed.

I have had a countless amount of those days. For example, just recently, I slept through my alarm, waking up when I was supposed to actually be catching the bus on the way to work. I rushed around the house in a complete panic getting ready and packing my bag, only to race out of the building and find myself stuck on the wrong side of the road waiting for a break in the traffic. Whilst I was waiting to cross, the bus that I had intended on catching, turned the corner and left  – without me. Awesome. I then had to wait another 20mins for the next bus, which ended up being late, only to then get stuck in peak-hour traffic, and subsequently break down a few blocks from the train station. By this stage I had already called work to tell them I was running quite late. I power-walked down to the train station, only to discover that there was a delay on the train line I catch, and I had to catch a different train into the city, and then change again in order for me to get to the station I needed to get to. By this stage, I was already starting to get a bit sweaty from being so rushed, but I could deal with it when I got to the office.

The train arrived, and then stopped in between stations for another 5 minutes, waiting for the train in front of us to move out of the station – it was having an engine fault. By this stage I was already 20mins late for work. I then (finally) got my station, and got off to catch a tram, and just missed the tram I needed and the next one wasn’t for another 9minutes. Instead, I ended up walking the rest of the way. It took longer than 9 minutes, but no tram had passed me by the time I got to the office – so I took some very minor comfort knowing that it was faster to walk rather than wait for a tram.

All up… I was on hour late to work.

It’s just like when you’re driving somewhere and you really want to just get there… and you end up getting every. single. red. light. After about 5 in a row, you’re ready to tear your hair out, and screaming out to God / Mother Nature / Life as to why it seems to hate you so much.

Can you control that? Not at all. It’s out of your control.

In my situation, could I have controlled any of that? I could have gotten up when I was supposed to, but who’s to say that the same thing wouldn’t have happened?? I can say that in my experience, it has. I’ve had days where it’s taken me almost two hours to get to work. Granted, it has only happened a couple of times, but it has happened. And it’s all out of my control. I can only do so much… the rest, as I said before, I believe is simply fate.

Sometimes I think life is there to test me. To try and see what my breaking point is. Maybe it’s God (not that I acutally believe in God) or Mother Nature, or some other spiritual entity, watching me, thinking ‘Now, what can I do today, to really piss him off?’. Sometimes I feel as though life just seems to hate me. Sometimes it makes me feel that I shouldn’t ever leave the house, and should just confine myself to my apartment – but knowing my track record, I’d do that, and then have a three-day power outage.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/prompt-que-sera-sera/