Lydia Schoch

This post originally went live on May 5, 2014. I will return to my regular blogging schedule in the new year. 

Someone I follow on Twitter who prefers to remain anonymous recently asked something interesting:

Do you have any decidedly unacceptable thoughts or wants?

The question was posed to everyone, but I thought I’d respond to it with a full length blog post.

My answer is yes. Everyone has thoughts that they’d rather keep to themselves sometimes, whether it’s to silently express frustration with a person, place, or situation. It isn’t humanely possible to always give the benefit of the doubt or remain cheerful indefinitely.

Photo by DodosD.

This use of the term “unacceptable” is assuming, of course, that even our thoughts must be censored to fit someone else’s idea of what we should be feeling.

You can think something without agreeing with it.

You can think something and have mixed feelings about it.

You can think something but never say it out loud.

Even if it’s grouchy. Spiteful. Truthy.

I don’t believe in thoughtcrimes. There’s a world of difference between entertaining an idea and actually saying, writing, or doing whatever it was that flitted through your brain.

If anything, the act of uprooting those thoughts  tends to encourage them to stick around longer.

Hold them gently in the palm of your hand. Acknowledge that they exist, but don’t feel guilty over something that hasn’t actually caused any harm. Allowing them to softly dissipate is the best thing I’ve learned yet from my meditation habit.

This post was originally published on April 21, 2014. I will be back with new material in the first week of January.

How is it that though I love advice, I so seldom listen to it?

— C.G.Ayling (@CGAyling) April 18, 2014

A fascinating conversation on this topic sprung up on Twitter over the weekend. It seems to be much easier to give other people advice than to receive it. Why is that?

I think there are several reasons why this might be so.

 Talk Is Cheap. It’s always going to be easier to tell someone else how to live than to get into those habits ourselves. I also suspect that talking about something that is good for you makes some people feel like they’re taking a step in the right direction. If they can discuss it, maybe they’ll also be able to convince themselves to finally do it regularly.

Being Right Feels Great. It takes a humble person to admit when he or she is wrong, but it takes an even more humble person to resist the urge to make a big deal about it when they’re proven right.

We Think It’s Helpful. Whether or not this is true varies widely from one situation to the next. I honestly do believe that most people have good intentions most of the time, though.

We’ve Made the Same Mistakes. Some people seem to have a very difficult time allowing others the same freedoms they enjoyed when they were younger. This isn’t always a bad thing, of course, but there is a big difference between sharing what you’ve learned the hard way and trying to control the lives of other adults.

Readers, what do you think? Have I missed anything?

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

Six Christmases. A fascinating look at how life can change one Christmas at a time.

The Mischievous Mommy. It’s rare for me to recommend an entire blog, but I couldn’t pick just one of these paintings. The owner of this blog transforms her toddler’s pictures into  artworks that have to be seen to be believed.

Greetings from Pandora. Where does she come from? What does she want? There are so many story possibilities in her eyes.

Grandmothers Everywhere Prepare To Guilt Their Grandchildren To Jesus This Holiday Season. Too funny.

Survive the Holidays with Social Anxiety. This is great for anyone who has ever been nervous in a social setting for any reason.

This short film is great:

Let’s see how many holiday greetings I can fit into the end of this post. Happy/ Merry:

• Festivus
• Yule
• Christmas
•  Hannukah
• (early) Mawlid Un Nabi
• Malanka
• Pancha Ganapati
• Saturnalia
• New Year

If I missed yours, let me know in the comments. I tried pretty hard to find everything that’s celebrated this time of year. It was a very interesting search!

Periodically I like share some of the more interesting search terms that lead new readers to this blog. Other than my regular Suggestion Saturday posts, this is the last new post of 2014. I’ll be reprinting my favourite posts from this past year over the next two weeks, and will be back to my regular posting schedule on Monday, January 5, 2015. Happy Holidays to all of my readers!

do all elders deserve respect?

forgiving husband ‘s brother ‘s wife who gossips about you.

how do you know when you shouldnt wear makeup

i forgive the abusive family i came from as a christian but i never want to see them again

in-laws want to mend fence without apology

my man left me for her and he isn’t even apologetic

how to forgive someone you believe is up to know good and pretends to care?

where did laura secord sleep on her 20 mile walk

why shouldn’t religions hide their values

How to get people in a groups to talk

mother in law injured child does she need to apologize

amazing facts about being quiet

my husband always doesn’t apologise when his done wrong or have hurt me

I know some of my readers strongly prefer to know what the films I share are about before they decide whether to watch them.

Picture this: Earth has been destroyed. Humanity is extinct. The planet we once thrived on is now empty and quiet until one day when an alien crashes on it.

This species is bound by space but has the ability to briefly travel through time. He uses this ability to peek back into his past (and our present) in order to look for the items needed to repair the ship.

Some of the methods used to get everything the ship needed were pretty funny. Once again, I’m blown away by how much storytelling can be accomplished with the use of any dialogue whatsoever.

( © Superbass / CC-BY-SA-4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).

A new reader recently found this blog by searching for how to celebrate when you are alone. I’m going to assume that he or she was talking about the holidays. If this isn’t true and you’re the person who searched for it, let me know what you were really thinking.

One of the things I had to adjust to when I moved to Toronto was celebrating most holidays with only Drew’s company, and he’s not the kind of person who usually gets excited about the holidays.

Does this count as celebrating alone? Given that I’d spent most of my childhood being surrounded by a house full of relatives  for Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter, I think it does.

It took some time to grow accustomed to the quiet. I was used to hearing half a dozen conversations going on at once, to tables groaning with food, and to so many people around me that I could barely hear myself think.

This wasn’t a bad experience, by the way. I loved and love spending time with our extended family.

It’s just that Toronto couldn’t offer me that.

The trick is to find out what celebrating alone – or nearly alone – can offer you.

Once year we (but mostly I) feasted on carbohydrates. Rather than making an entire Thanksgiving dinner for just the two of us, I narrowed it down to the foods I loved the most: pie, rolls, and stuffing. It was delicious, although I didn’t eat any of them again for a long time.

Another year I made sugar cookies. The only tin cutouts I could find anywhere in my neighbourhood were at a dollar store. All of them were in the shapes of single-digit numbers. So that year I ate a lot of ones, twos, and threes. Ha!

Other years I haven’t celebrated anything at all. There’s something to be said for stripping away all of the extra work that comes with planning a big meal and just enjoying a nice, quiet day. Don’t underestimate how relaxing it is to watch a movie or order in a pizza. As time passes, I fall back onto this option more and more during the holidays when I know I won’t be going to the U.S.

Long walks are also nice. The streets are usually quieter than normal during big holidays, especially if you avoid driving on the highways or taking mass transit. It’s like the entire city is sleeping. This isn’t literally true, of course, but it’s a funny thought to ponder.

As an aside: I added the picture above to this post due to my love of rabbits. Unless one of my readers is planning to invite me over to visit their bunnies some holiday, there is only a tenuous connection between these topics. 😉

How have your celebrations changed over the years? How do you celebrate alone?

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

Tree Decorating 101. This is what happens when your cats help you set up your Christmas tree. The before and after pictures make me chuckle.

Writing Class. I share a lot of poetry on my Suggestion Saturday posts. What attracted me to this essay is what it has to say about the culture of poetry that a lot of people don’t want to think about. His recommendations seem to already be happening in the social circles I frequent, although this is such a huge subculture that there’s no doubt in my mind that other people have had other experiences.

Um…what Jena Malone? The truth about celebrities and celebrity worship.

No Such Thing as Thanksgiving via OlliCruseo. History and sociology nerds, click here. While I’m ethnically German, my family lived in the U.S. for enough generations before I came along that I’m culturally American (and now Canadian as well).  I don’t speak German or know about many of their customs.

An Ode to the Married Man on My Right via skinnyandsingle. This is one of those links that works better if you don’t know anything about it ahead of time.

From Marlee – A Homeless Woman’s Death via Christina_Z13:

Perhaps Marlee had been beautiful once. She was of Native American descent and had almond-colored skin, dark eyes, and thick, black hair that fell below her shoulders. But the years and streets had not been kind to her. I would guess her age as mid to late 30s, but she may have been younger. She was a heavy-set woman, whose hair was perpetually tangled. Her face was so bloated it distorted her features.

Your Atomic Self: The Invisible Elements That Connect You to Everything Else in the Universe has been mesmerizing me this month.

At first I thought this book might have a New Age slant to it, but it isn’t about spirituality at all. Instead it discusses what certain elements do for  your body as well as how they travel through the food chain.

I especially enjoyed the chapter about iron. It affects human health in many more ways than I originally thought.

What have you been reading?

Photo by Soutiras.

Several months ago I said good-bye to my friend Bruce Gerencser.

After a long history of blogging, he’d decided to give up on it for good.

This was something he’d done several other times in the past for reasons that I’ll leave up to him to explain, so it didn’t come as much of a surprise to me. Bruce is the kind of guy who is either 100% dedicated to something or not involved with it at all.

It was sad to see his blog disappear. We didn’t and don’t see eye to eye on everything, but I’ve always appreciated Bruce’s willingness to examine all of the possibilities before making up his mind. Most people choose a position and then look for evidence to support what they already assume is the truth.

Following the evidence no matter where it leads can be difficult. There are definitely issues that I have a hard time looking at dispassionately due to personal experiences with certain topics.

Bruce is a good egg. Go check his new site out to see what he really looks like or if you have any interest in all in discussing atheism, religion, politics, living with mental health issues, photography, or how to care for cute, feral cats when you already have all the pets you can handle.

In the meantime, I want to know which bloggers or other Internet personalities you admire.

I’ll check out any link you share in the comment section.

Wanderers – a short film by Erik Wernquist from Erik Wernquist on Vimeo.

This is mesmerizing. I hope I live long enough to see some of these places.

Picture by Bishonen.

Years ago I was in a utterly toxic situation. The specific details of it don’t matter. All you really need to know is that I was so stressed out that I lost 20 pounds over the course of a few months. I was quite thin to begin with.

While trying to figure out how to extract myself from the circumstances that were having such a horrific impact on my mental and physical health, someone I loved told me that I all I had to do was stop giving a fuck about it.

“That’s a nice idea,” I thought, “but how in the hell am I supposed to do that?” I’m the kind of person who weighs every word carefully and muddles over anything unintentionally hurtful long after the original conversation has ended.

I’d love to tell you that I have it all figured out. I don’t. The good news is that I’ve discovered some things that have helped me to internalize the idea that other people’s opinions of me aren’t actually the gospel truth.

1) You can’t please everyone. It’s impossible. Even if it were somehow possible, spending your few, precious years on earth running around after other people’s ideas of what your life should look like is ridiculous.

2) Some people will never be satisfied. Oh, this was a hard one. The peacemaker in me thought that they’d be satisfied if A, B, and C changed. They weren’t. Not even a little bit. If anything, it made them even more adamant that D, E, and F were what was really wrong with me. This is not to even mention the fact that there are hundreds of letters in other alphabets to beat me over the head with even if I miraculously managed to survive the 26 in my own alphabet with my mind more or less intact.

3)  Sticks and stones aren’t the only things that can hurt you. Sharp words can hurt someone just as much as a slap or punch. You’re not being overly sensitive or weak when you’re hurt by verbal attacks. There is a difference between accidentally stepping on someone’s toes and purposefully doing it over and over again.  I’ve learned to pay close attention to people who regularly say critical or mean-spirited things. That says a lot about their character, and none of it is good.

4) Everyone needs cheerleaders. No, this doesn’t mean that I expect everyone around me to love everything I say, do, or think. It’s a good thing to be challenged when someone you care about thinks you’re wrong. There is definitely something to be said for surrounding yourself with people who believe in you, though, and who want to see you succeed. Having a positive support system like this also makes it much easier to ignore the opinions of those who don’t have your best interests at heart.

5) Not everyone deserves the pleasure of your company.  Spending time with me (and you, and every other reasonable person on this planet) is a gift. Occasionally there will be people who don’t appreciate it for reasons that are far beyond the scope of this blog post. It’s perfectly acceptable to stop giving them this gift – whether temporarily or permanently – if they’ve repeatedly shown that they don’t know how to handle it.