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Photo by Infrogmation

A few days ago someone I know asked how we can know if someone is a moral person. Conversations like this are fascinating to me due to how much they reveal about the world views of everyone who throws in their two cents.

My theory is that moral people don’t brag about it.

Ever.

In fact, they don’t talk about it much at all. The more someone talks about having great morals they are, the less I’m inclined to believe them. Bringing it up over and over again makes me wonder why they’re so interested in making sure other people see them as a upstanding citizen.

Do they like the attention? Are they trying to subtly manipulate everyone into thinking of them as an authority figure? Is this an attempt to misdirect our attention from what’s going on behind the mask?

I completely understand the urge for recognition, but there won’t always be other people around when you’re debating what to do. Doing the right thing is its own reward. Maybe someone will notice your work. Maybe they won’t. Your words and actions are just as meaningful either way though.

One of the things I appreciate the most from my Mennonite grandparents is their overpowering reluctance to be the centre of attention. Any attempt to toot your own horn is considered prideful and rude. I may be a non-believer, but I’m still a bit suspicious of anyone who feels the need to point out what a good person they are.

It’s sort of like when recording artists brag about how much money they have or their prowess in the bedroom. Is it possible it’s all true? Sure, but I think it’s far more likely to be a marketing ploy.

And I want to know what they’re selling before I buy into it.

Here is this week’s list of blog posts and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Crazy. This is a fantastic first-person essay about what it’s like to live with a rapid cycling form of bipolar disorder.

Lust via WilSenior. Everything I want to say about this link will give away spoilers. Ack!

How a Box of Knock-off Grape Nuts Taught Me About Relevance (And the Internet!) via 10minutewriter.  I love this.

The Slippery Slope in Business Ethics. I recently discovered this blog and thought this post would be a good place to start for anyone else who is interested in a secular approach to ethics. It’s really interesting stuff.

From Stop Being Strong via ohheynina:

I  typically think someone who is strong doesn’t have emotional baggage. She doesn’t let ANYthing get to her. She doesn’t act out of line. I’ve been wondering where I got this obscure definition of strength from until I read this quote via Twitter and instantly disagreed: “Don’t let your experiences break you.”

From Marcella:

Earth does not need you to reproduce. People are far from an endangered species. Earth needs your love and your talents directed toward getting us to a better and brighter future for all of us.

What have you been reading?

I’ve had a really bad cold this week and haven’t been able to get as much writing done as I normally do. You might have seen some of these search engine queries already if you follow me on Twitter, but I thought they were funny enough to warrant a silly blog post while I’m recovering. I’ll be back on Monday with something new.

Most of the time I understand how my blog ends up with certain search engine questions. These ones made me pause and lift an eyebrow.

1) Angry penguins.

2) What if we had sarurn?

3) Why are dumber people more talkative?

4) Why you shouldn’t care if you wear Walmart clothes.

5) Wanting forgiveness from a person who’s died.

6) What are the advantages and disadvantages of getting married with a foreigner?

7) Why doesn’t my brother acknowledge me on Facebook?

Theories, anyone?

I thought this was really interesting.

Picture by Dlks3.

Someone found this blog recently through this search phrase. I don’t know if they’ll come back and see my response, but I thought this was a good topic for today’s post.

Here’s what I do when I have an unhelpful thought that keeps coming back:

1) Meditate. It can be a religious ritual, but it certainly doesn’t have to be. There’s something incredibly relaxing about sitting down and clearing my mind for a few minutes. (I’m still figuring out how to pay attention longer than that!)

2) Imagine. Having a vivid imagination helps, but anyone can take even the most serious worries to ridiculous conclusions. In the past I’ve come up with elaborate ways to, say, haunt a building as a disgruntled ghost who didn’t actually believe in the afterlife and is flabbergasted to find out she was wrong. It’s hard to keep up the hard work of worrying when you’re laughing!

3) Walk. Not only it is a healthy habit, it disrupts your routine and gives you something else to think about. I love silently cooing over other people’s pets and kids. Adorable.

4) Eat.  Seriously – are you 100% sure it’s not at least partially a low blood sugar problem?

5. Sleep. Ditto. I’m the grouchiest zombie ever if I get less than 7 or 8 hours of shut-eye.

6. Help. It could be as simple as having a conversation with that one neighbour who always seems lonely and a little overeager to talk to anyone who will listen. I’ve only ever found a couple of volunteer gigs that I was willing to commit to longterm, but random acts of kindness can be done anywhere and at any time.

What about you? How do you let go of persistent thoughts?

Here is this week’s list of blog posts and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Ten Reasons Why My Rottweiler is Better Than a Gun via jayboshea. Finding humour in unexpected places seems to be the overarching theme for this week. I thought this post was a great place to start.

Why You Are Wrong. It’s important that all of my followers know just how wrong they are every time they disagree with me. 😉

Paying the Piper via fumanchucat. I like the imagery in this poem.

Why Adam and Steve Make the Best Parents After All via PJFoxWrites. Wanting kids to stay in foster care rather than finding a loving, permanent family doesn’t make any sense to me. I’ve seen what happens when a child develops an attachment disorder from being bounced around from one shaky placement to the next. The consequences can be lifelong and severe.

From Blessed Are the Hungry:

Ten generations had come and gone since our Generation Ship left the Earth but the Prelates said we weren’t even halfway to our destination. I was born in space and I would probably die in space. In my heart I knew that I would never see our new home, Gliese 581g — a small terrestrial planet in the old constellation of Libra. I suppose neither my children nor my children’s children would reach planetfall either. But I guess that was okay, it would have been far worse to have been left behind, dying slowly and painfully in the radioactive ruins of our poor, destroyed world.

From Hospice, Inc.:

Allegations like those leveled by Maples’ family against Vitas have become increasingly common over the past decade as the hospice industry has undergone a titanic shift. What once was a collection of mostly small, religious-affiliated nonprofits is now a booming, $17 billion industry dominated by national chains.

Longterm readers of this blog know that I’m a sucker for nonfiction books about animals. As soon as I noticed Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him in the New Books section at the library I knew I had to give it a try.

Luis Carlos Montalván is a soldier who came home with PTSD and a traumatic brain injury from his combat experiences in Iraq.  Tuesday is a service dog who doesn’t always do what he’s told. It isn’t that he’s unable to follow commands – he just gets a little distracted sometimes.

What I liked the most about this story was how brutally honest the author was about his emotional state. His flashbacks are  intense, and he hasn’t always handled himself well when he’s having a bad day. Sometimes books in this genre gloss over the flaws of the author in order to make him or her more relatable to the reader, but this isn’t one of them.

What have you been reading?

Photo by Benson Kua.

My parents and youngest brother visited us for a few days this week.

Yesterday we ate dinner on the picturesque Toronto Island and then watched the sun set before attempting to return to the mainland that evening. It was a warm, quiet, and uneventful ride until our ferry attempted to stop off at Hanlan’s Point to pick up a few more passengers.

Our ferry was the smallest one I’ve ever seen on that particular route. It had a long, narrow, enclosed space for passengers to sit on either side of it, but almost everyone was standing outside in the middle of it when the accident happened.

I was sleepy from a long day of visiting and sightseeing, so mom, my brother, and I were sitting and talking when we were suddenly pitched violently to the left. There was a horrible grinding, crashing noise at the same moment, and then everything was silent.

The three of us seemed to be ok, but Drew and my dad had been standing outside. I was still stunned when mom jumped up to see if they’d been injured. It was a relief to hear that they only had a few bumps and bruises even though they’d both fallen to the ground from the impact of the crash.

Most of the other passengers seemed to act like me right after the accident happened: sitting quietly and making sure everything still worked. A few leapt to action to make sure no one was seriously hurt (and they weren’t. The worst injury I saw was a woman whose knee had been banged up, but someone was able to get her an ice pack for it pretty quickly).

I suspect that some of these differences are inborn. Certain people react much more quickly than others in a potentially dangerous situation just like they’d be the first one to volunteer to try something new or exciting.

But I also think that training has something to do with it. My mom is a nurse who has often worked in settings that require her to react almost before she’s had a chance to think. I’m a writer. Stewing it over for a while is what I do best. 😉

Readers, what do you think?

This week I’ve celebrated or will be celebrating Pride Week, Canada Day, and the Fourth of July. Other than Halloween, the end of June and beginning of July is my favourite time of year because it’s so festive.

It’s really cool to walk down the street and see so many other LGBT people and straight allies enjoying everything that Pride Week has to offer. Sometimes it gets a little corporate and commercialized, but as someone who grew up in a community where it was most definitely not ok to be open about your life if you existed anywhere outside of the heterosexual, cisgendered bubble it still amazes me sometimes to see how things have changed and continue to change.

As a dual citizen, I love celebrating the birthdays of both of my countries. There’s no such thing as too many fireworks. 😀

If you observe any or all of these holidays, enjoy them!

I’ll be back on Thursday with a regular post.

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, poems, artworks, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Old Farm Equipment and Scrap  Metal Turned Into Stunning Sculptures via FairfieldJen. I love the creativity of these sculptures.

My Life Is Perfect Hell via LorcaDamon. Ack! Everything I want to say about this link would give away spoilers for it. Go read it, and if you like it as much as I did we can discuss it in the comment section. 🙂

Valentine for Sally Hemings. This is the kind of poem that burrows into your skin.

But the Daisies via Jessicajots. So is this one (for entirely different reasons).

From Taming the Mammoth: Why You Should Stop Caring What Other People Think:

Your Authentic Voice, somewhere in there, knows all about you. In contrast to the black-and-white simplicity of the Social Survival Mammoth, your Authentic Voice is complex, sometimes hazy, constantly evolving, and unafraid. Your AV has its own, nuanced moral code, formed by experience, reflection, and its own personal take on compassion and integrity. It knows how you feel deep down about things like money and family and marriage, and it knows which kinds of people, topics of interest, and types of activities you truly enjoy, and which you don’t. Your AV knows that it doesn’tknow how your life will or should play out, but it tends to have a strong hunch about the right step to take next.

From Scenes From a Life in Negroland:

Are We Rich?

Mother raises those plucked, deep-toned eyebrows that did such excellent expressive work for women in the 1950s. Lift the penciled arch by three to four millimeters for bemused doubt, blatant disdain, or disapproval just playful enough to lure the speaker into more error. Mother’s lips form a small, cool smile that mirrors her eyebrow arch. She places a small, emphatic space between each word: Are. We. Rich? Then she adds, with a hint of weariness: Why do you ask?

The Purity Myth made me shake my head so vigorously I thought it might fall off. 😛

On a serious note, this is a well-rounded critique of all of the myths about what it means to be a “good” girl. The author discusses virginity, modesty, slut shaming, and what happens when girls and women break the unwritten rules about what we are (and aren’t) supposed to be doing.

I heartily recommend it to anyone in the mood to think critically about the way western society treats women.

What have you been reading?

A few weeks ago I blogged about my realization that I’m not that good at keeping in touch with friends and family members who live far away and aren’t active online.

I decided to try being more conscientious about occasionally reaching out to them this summer.  I’m not a fan of talking on the phone, so I decided to use other methods of communication instead: cards, postcards, and email.

It’s been so long since I regularly sent out snail mail that doing so felt about as ordinary as taking your cat on a walk. Sure, you can do it (and the cat might even love it!), but it’s one of those things that’s never been part of my routine.

The response has been warm though. Getting mail that isn’t a bill or useless advertisement is nice, and I suspect that it’s even better for people who grew up before the Internet changed so many of the ways in which we communicate with one another. When I’m old I hope my nephew and niece understand my love for texting and emails even if they’ve moved on to something else.

I’m much better at responding to emails, but even there I sometimes get a few weeks behind. (Although I do reply to everything eventually!) It’s not that I don’t love hearing from people, it’s just one of those tasks that’s very easy to put off until tomorrow.

My goal for the next month is to respond to every email in a week or less. Eventually I’d like to cut that down to a day or two at most, but I thought I’d tackle my response times in stages.

What about you? How have you been keeping up with your loved ones so far this summer?