“It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy.”
- George Horace Lorimer, Journalist and Publisher
I got this inspirational tale in an email recently and I wanted to share it with you because I believe it perfectly encapsulates a basic principle of life that I try to remember whenever I am struggling, or feeling let down or neglected by others.
What you give out you get back
A small, happy little dog learned of this place and decided to visit. When he arrived, he bounced happily up the stairs to the doorway of the house. He looked through the doorway with his ears lifted high and his tail wagging as fast as it could. To his great surprise, he found himself staring at 1000 other happy little dogs with their tails wagging just as fast as his. He smiled a great smile, and was answered with 1000 great smiles just as warm and friendly. As he left the house, he thought to himself, “This is a wonderful place. I will come back and visit it often.”
In this same village, another little dog, who was not quite as happy as the first one, decided to visit the house. He slowly climbed the stairs and hung his head low as he looked into the door. When he saw the 1000 unfriendly looking dogs staring back at him, he growled at them and was horrified to see 1000 little dogs growling back at him. As he left, he thought to himself, “That is a horrible place, and I will never go back there again.”
All the faces in the world are mirrors. What kind of reflections do you see in the faces of the people you meet?
First let me make one thing clear. I am not saying we must be smiling, positive people all the time. The MIRROR principle isn’t about that. But it is a powerful tool to refer to when you find yourself struggling with problematic people and difficult relationships.
By looking at what we believe about people and how we treat everyone we encounter in life, we can sometimes see where a problem stems from.
Maybe you had overly critical parents as a child, so you tend to attract critical people into your life because they’re the kind of relationships you’re comfortable with on a subconscious level. To you, love equals criticism because hey, it’s for your own good. “How will you ever know what you’re doing wrong if I don’t tell you”.
In this scenario, you can start to enact change by simply turning that mirror back onto yourself.
Where are you critical and judgmental? Listen to the words you use and the thoughts that run at a rapid pace through your mind. Do you gossip, silently judge others who live differently to you, or give a lot of “constructive advice” for how people can do things better? Do you find yourself thinking that everyone else is an idiot because they don’t do it your way?
Or maybe the person you are really negative and critical with is yourself. Maybe you can do nothing right in your eyes and the only language going around in your head every day is harsh and perfectionist. Maybe the criticism that comes at you from other people is really a mirror for the criticism you direct at the one person you should be the kindest to. YOU.
What do you think? Are the people in our lives mirrors for our own emotions, beliefs and behaviour? Can we really change how others treat us by changing how we treat ourselves?
Photo by Lukje
I was wondering what to post today because it’s been a chaotic week and I’m not feeling particularly insightful or funny. Then I ambled over to Urban Panther’s Lair and saw the following meme about the Panther. It’s a good one for getting to know someone, and since I currently feel like I need to get to know more about myself I thought I’d do it too.
The following is written completely off the cuff, no editing except for spelling.
This is ME uncensored and exposed. Hopefully that means it’s not boring!
outspoken, adventurous, passionate, and a little bit nuts
WAY too much
my son is due home from staying at his grandmother’s soon and I can’t wait to see him
much to be grateful for
I could be more content with my life
missing out on anything and I hate it when the chocolate runs out
my best friends, who mostly live far away
getting older (postscript: this is a recent thing and something I REALLY hope passes)
a worrying, whirring sound from my laptop
almost nothing. My sinus is really shit today
sweets, affection and excitement
for truth and a meaningful life
if I will ever be as slim as I was before I got pregnant
nothing - all mistakes are lessons learned
easily and sometimes too much
to return to Mexico
a disciplined person who is good at following rules. If I was I’d be thinner!
in honesty, loyalty, faith, compassion and a better world
around the house with great abandon
to my son and I do it really badly
at too many things to name. Great films, meaningful blog posts, moving books, memories. You name it, I cry over it
with myself more than I ever have with anyone else
whenever I really really want something
socks all the time. They mysteriously disappear from my drawer. I have no idea where they go.
want to be ordinary
love a drink, a deep and meaningful discussion and a girls night out
myself because I am unpredictable and change my mind all the time
to people’s problems because I love hearing people’s stories and I always want to help
do many things well and for that I am both lucky and unlucky. Lucky because I have made many opportunities for myself and unlucky because I never know where to focus my time and energy
of spiders and falling
freedom and love and lots of kisses from my son
when I am on the road with a backpack and no idea where I’m going
a world where people are kind and generous to each other, where we look out for each other and we all have more than enough
anyone with time on their hands and something to say.
I’d love it if people would do this meme, or part of it, in your comments. Like I said, I’m interested in people and their stories, so I’d love to know more about ALL of you.
Kelly
How many times have you stared at an advertisement, magazine cover or the fashion pages and wished you had hair, eyes, cheekbones, breasts, lips like the woman in the photo?
When I was younger I had a thing about eyebrows. Bizarre I know. But hey, that’s me. It started in my late teens with Sherilyn Fenn, that ’80s vixen and star of Twin Peaks.
Sherilyn has the absolute best eyebrows. Very old Hollywood glamour. Looking at her, for the first time in my life I realised eyebrows could actually define a woman’s eyes and face. I became obsessed with how to make my naturally curved, but fine eyebrows dark and thick and peaked. I longed for her white pallor and cursed my freckly tan. I hold Sherilyn Fenn almost completely responsible for my over made-up goth like phase during my university years.
Now after watching the above video, I may not question Sherilyn’s eyebrows (they were ’80s authentic I’m sure), but I could definitely ask myself if great eyebrows on magazine covers exist at all. Is there an art to eyebrow styling or have I been lied to completely?
I shouldn’t be so pithy about the subject of media image manipulation. At best, it uses lies to sell us products, at worse it encourages dangerous social stereotypes. Take the recent furore over the new Beyonce L’Oreal ads. The famous African-American singer is pictured not only with straight, reddish-blond hair, but her complexion is suspiciously whiter than usual. L’Oreal denies any wrong doing, but the spotlight is well and truly on photographic re-touching in advertising.
In fact, if this video is anything to go by, then the term “retouching” is a bit soft. This advertisement is pure IMAGE CREATION. The woman in the billboard barely resembles the woman who sat down in front of the camera.
I guess this is what Cindy Crawford meant when she said in 1993: “Even I don’t look like Cindy Crawford in the morning.”
Check out the iWANEX Studio - Professional Photo Retouching Services and click on their GALLERY section. You’ll be treated to a dozen or more images of famous celebrities and get to see what they REALLY look like. Going over the BEFORE and AFTER shots is a revelation. Not only are these gorgeous men and women aged backwards, slimmed down, given breast augmentation and de-freckled, but sometimes they’re even fattened up. Cameron Diaz is a perfect example.
I don’t even know why I am surprised at the extent of this illusion.
I do have one clear memory of a photo shoot for a nutritional supplement I was promoting. We needed an image of a naked woman’s back for the product label and advertisements, and our target market were women 30 and over. This was a problem because all the models we saw at the initial go-see were so thin their spines were raised out of their back and therefore we couldn’t use them to appeal to our target market.
In the end, we had a few girls who specialized in mens magazines come in because our art director said they should be a bit meatier. They were, and we eventually found the woman with the ‘perfect back’. The only problem was she had a large tattoo on her shoulder blade. “No worries,” said the art director. “We’ll photoshop it out.” And they did.
That was 1997. Eleven years on, they’d probably use a skinny model and just re-draw her spine and thicken her back so she looked right. I doubt they would have bothered to find a fatter model with a realistic body shape.
Unattainable beauty images are already a hot topic of discussion. But the extent of the image manipulation at iWANEX Studio indicates that the problem is a whole lot bigger than that.
Remember sexy Jessica Rabbit? I wanted her va va voom figure, long red hair and white skin as a girl, but I knew she was a cartoon. There was no illusion of reality. Is what we are seeing in print these days any more real than Jessica Rabbit?
What do you think? Should we expect some reality from the images of human beings that are plastered all over our buildings, buses, televisions, films and print media?
Below are some more interesting links on re-touching in advertisements:
Customer Watch - The Live Version witout Re-touching
3 Magazines are Accused of Retouching Celebrity Bodies to Excess
Redbook Caught Red-handed Retouching Faith Hill
Today, I’m excited to introduce my second SHE-POWER Man, Charlie Gilkey from Productive Flourishing. I’ll try not to gush, but I’m a big fan of Charlie’s. Not only is he one of the most sincere and insightful bloggers I have ‘met’ since starting SHE-POWER, but his blog really is one of a kind. Intelligent. Motivating. Thought provoking.
Though Productive Flourishing is listed on Alltop as a Lifehack blog, and has been featured on Lifehack.org, Lifehacker, and other top-tier productivity blogs, it is so much more than another productivity site.
Charlie is an accomplished teacher of Philosophy, who writes from the perspective of someone who actually has problems he’s trying to solve. Productive Flourishing combines his questions about the human condition and how we can live more successful and meaningful lives, with some very practical planning tools to help everyday people become more productive.
Of course, having such a fascinating interviewee put the pressure on me to ask some challenging questions that would be worthy of Charlie’s brilliant mind. Let me know how you think I did.
Go out and create opportunities for yourself and don’t wait for them to show up on your doorstep. People who learn to help themselves rarely have trouble finding help when they need it.
When Angela and I backpacked through Europe while we were in College. Being on the road with my then-girlfriend (now wife) in countries where we didn’t speak the language truly taught us who we were and what we loved, and when we returned to the States, the world around us (including our hometown) was so different. Vagabonding is an experience that everyone should have at least once in his or her life.
People who can excel personally while not forgetting about other people. I see a lot of people, offline and online, that use people as pawns in their rise - and once they get to the top, they don’t turn around and help those who have helped them.
In a collective activity, individual successes are strongly dependent on the efforts and support of the group, but too often we (especially Westerners) are so individualistic, we forget about others once we’ve gotten what we want. I really admire people who actively work to spread their good fortune. I’m not saying that I’m particularly good at this, either, but I try.
Unfortunately, I agree. Gender roles are so completely socialized that the basis for which we judge men and women is radically different. It’s especially hard for powerful women and sensitive men. The sexes are expected to act differently, and there’s a lot of social pressure on those people who have “traits of the opposite sex” to conform and get in line. The sad part is that a lot of us recognize the problem, yet we repeat the same patterns with our children.
As long as our social institutions associate women with beauty, elegance, and domesticity and men with strength, intelligence, and breadwinning - especially in the fairy tales and heroes we present to our children - we will continue this division that generally disadvantages women.
There are more than two sexes, and gender is on a continuum - until we realize that, we will continue to judge females by feminine standards and males by masculine standards, and a large portion of humanity will continue to be unhappy as they try to wear shoes that don’t fit.
More self-discipline. I can plan and evaluate ’til the cows come home but I have the hardest time following through with a plan or making changes after an evaluation. This problem manifests itself on my blog where I don’t complete series or write posts that I’ve said I will, and this is a large reason why I’m so behind on my dissertation. The good news is that I’ve made some real progress this year - a lot of it by using principles I’ve written about on Productive Flourishing.
We were sitting on the pier in Nafplio, Greece. It was a perfect evening, the sun was receding, and dolphins were dancing across the sparkling blue sea in the distance. The light on the lighthouse was just beginning to warm up, and we were reflecting on how amazing our trip had been thus far and how excited we were about the next few weeks. We sat, hand in hand, and both knew it was the right time for me to ask my girlfriend (my current wife) to marry me. I opened my mouth and began to say the words -and then thought about the fact that I didn’t have a ring, was still relatively poor, and couldn’t give her the life I thought she wanted - and looked away. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you blow a once-in-a-lifetime moment to ask the love of your life to marry you.
What I learned from that occasion is that there are times in your life where you just need to go with the moment and let your heart guide you.
Being able to dance with each other through life’s challenges. Change - sometimes small, sometimes radical – is inevitable, and your partner needs to know that you’re there throughout the changes. Sometimes we’ll have to lead, and other times we’ll have to follow – but as long as you keep dancing together, you’ll make it through. Anchoring your partner while giving him or her room to grow as a person is the best way to honor both your partner’s individuality and your commitment to be there for the long haul.
Leonardo da Vinci, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jane Addams. Maybe I see these people as archetypes for the human spirit. Leonardo to me is the icon of human ingenuity and creativity. King and Addams share a social dimension that too few of us take seriously – they were brilliant intellectuals that used their gifts to help others. These three combined would provide such different, but critical, perspectives into the human condition. And though it may not be rollercoaster ride ‘fun’, I think the conversation would be utterly fascinating and probably life-changing.
(Jane Addams is one of the forgotten heroes of feminism and activism who doesn’t get nearly enough coverage – all women, but especially American women, should know more about her.)
Being good at something doesn’t mean you should do it, and you work for money until you learn how to make money work for you.
This is a tricky one. Imagine that you’re placed in a position such that you have two options: kill one innocent person and save nineteen, or don’t kill that one person and someone else kills all 20. I hope that in such a situation I’d have the fortitude to kill the one person – saving the 19 justifies the mean. I may regret it and be torn about it for the rest of my life, but I think it’d be the right thing to do.
On the other hand, take what the Nazi’s did to the “undesirables” in the concentration camps. They used innocent people as guinea pigs for medical procedures and products – with the people suffering horrendously throughout these experiments - but it turns out that many of their findings proved beneficial for humanity at large. As inconsistent as it may seem with my above statement, I don’t think their actions were right.
There’s what ethicists call a proportionality constraint on these types of discussions that can’t be fleshed out to a very high degree. Intuitively, there’s a limit to the harm we can do others before we have outweighed the positive effects. But it’s really difficult and it does depend on the specifics of the harm we’re causing and the good we’re trying to get. I don’t think a simple answer can apply in all cases. I feel the tension in both directions: the individual must sometimes yield to the collective, but there are some things that you just can’t do to people without their consent.
All of that is just an academic way of saying, “Depends.”
Photo of Nafplio by kyriazis
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First I have to apologize to my male readers. This is an unashamedly girly post. It’s all about hair. You’re forgiven if you want to give it a miss.
Yesterday I cut off my long hair.
It seemed like a good idea at the time, but when I got home and completed the standard ‘check your hair from every conceivable angle in the mirror’ session, I wondered if someone had give me a lobotomy while I slept because I’d just made a HUGE motherfucking mistake.
Sorry about the language, but I’m having a crisis here! I’m not myself. On the weekend I had long, sexy hair and now …
First comes the baby. Then your wardrobe shrinks to joggers and comfortable clothing. You stop wearing make-up and get a sensible haircut and all is lost. You’re another mommy robot. The old you has been strangled and left to decompose in a cupboard somewhere along with your ‘fuck me’ heels, racy red underwear and guide to the Kama Sutra.
It’s not that the cut is ugly, or I have no hair left, it’s just that only last week some friends were talking about how long my hair had gotten (it was halfway down my back). Then mum commented on how the length was bringing out the waves and ringlets, which immediately led me to fantasize about being some kind of Venus in a half shell. But not walking around nude or anything; that wouldn’t be appropriate at all.
This is what my hair used to look like. It’s not my favorite shot and it doesn’t show you how long the back layers were, but I didn’t have many photos to choose from because I seem to wear my hair up or tucked under caps a lot of the time. Probably because I’m a boring suburban mother!
If you’re like my husband, you’re now asking, “Why did you cut it, if you were so happy with it?”
A fool who’s embarrassed to admit that I had a major freak out about aging on the weekend.
It all started on Sunday morning when I was looking for a particular old photo that I wanted to scan in and use for a future travel post. When I didn’t find it in the expected location, I widened the search and ended up looking through lots of photos from over the past 6 years. One that got my attention was the shot below. This was taken on my wedding anniversary 4 years ago, and looking at it I was struck by how cute that post baby haircut was, and HOW YOUNG I LOOKED in spite of the total lack of sleep I was getting at the time.
After scurrying to the mirror I realized it was true. I looked more tired and weathered now than I did when I got a maximum of four hours sleep a night. My age is finally catching up with me. I’m past my prime. Slowly degrading.
While poking and stretching the skin around my eyes, neck and forehead, I briefly entertained the thought of having botox. Luckily this idiocy lasted only a few minutes, before I fixated on the hair. It was too dark. Too long. It was dragging my face down. I needed to wear more make-up, get some highlights. I needed a new face AND new hair.
I tried to pull myself together with a “You can’t look 25 forever” pep talk, but it didn’t stick. Monday morning came and I found myself standing out the front of the hairdressers. I admired the posters of gorgeous young models with fresh skin and shiny, flowing locks. Was dazzled by the rows of hair product promising me “sleek curls’ and “no frizz’ and ‘thick lustrous locks’. And next thing I knew, I was sitting in the comfy leather chair and pointing at a cute copper coloured flip and using words like “new look”, “something fresh”. You know, the stupid hair talk that inevitably leads to trouble.
At first it was all good. A little hair pick-me-up. A bit of pampering to start off my week. And when the hair fell in five inch tresses off my head and pooled around the chair, I knew it was a mistake, but it was too late to tell Ms Scissorhands that I’d changed my mind.
When she saw my shocked, tearful face at the end, the hairdreser assured me that it wasn’t as short as sit looked, there was still PLENTY of length at the back. I don’t know what back she was looking at, but the only things I could see plenty of were grey hairs! Apparently they multiply with every inch of hair that gets cut off.
Musicman says the hair looks bouncy and it’s good to have a change. I think he’s mad. Who needs change? I’m almost 37 years old, I’m gonna change soon enough and not in a good way.
I know I have issues and I’m being negative. And I’m going to age regardless of how I feel about it, and the best years of my life are still ahead of me and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…
Maybe the solution is more tampering. I could get a new dye job to go with the cut. I’ve never had purple hair before. Purple hair would make me look young again, wouldn’t it?
And maybe a nose ring. I don’t have nearly enough piercings. And tattoos, I probably need more tattoos…
I have always been a big reader. In fact, I cannot remember a time when I did not read. Sometimes I think I was born clutching a novel in my hand.
But in the past 18 months I have discovered a new reading addiction.
The first blog I ever subscribed to (by email because I had no idea what RSS was) was Copyblogger. If you want to learn how to write clean, compelling blog posts and web copy then Brian Clarke is THE MAN. I think everyone in marketing, advertising, blogging or with a small business should subscribe to Copyblogger. Follow his advice and your writing will improve ten-fold. He has the absolute best headlines too.
Darren Rowse at Problogger made me see blogs were a unique new way to self-publish and build an on-line community. Yaro Starak at Entrepreurs Journey then provided me with the technical skills and little details of what blogging was all about. Yaro excels at step by step explanations and I recommend him as the go-to guy for both beginner bloggers and people interested in learning how to build an on-line business.
Soon I was hooked and added a few more blogs to my reading list. These were ZenHabits, Tim Ferriss’ 4 Hour Work Week, Chris Garrett on New Media and the now defunct Success from the Nest.
By January 2008 I was starting to network with other bloggers, and my blog-roll filled out as I became excited by the quality of information on blogs and the great people I was meeting. Since then I have regularly added new blogs to my reading list. Some of them I comment on regularly, others occasionally, and the rest I lurk (sorry!).
Today, I thought I’d share what’s in my Google Reader. Maybe there’s a blog here you haven’t heard of before that is right up your alley. Maybe we have the same taste and can celebrate our like-mindedness. Either way,
These blogs are ordered from my longest subscription to most recent.
An Island Life - Paradise Edition
In My Heels - Tips for Love, Life, You
The Growing Life - Alternative Productivity. Anti-Hacks for Living
Cath Lawson - Bold Advice for Business Success
GoodLifeZen - Personal Growth with a Spiritual Twist
Delightful Work - Coach Tom Volkar on Pursuing Work Life Freedom
Plain Talk and Ordinary Wisdom
Skelliewag - Innovation. Ideas. Simplicity
AnyWired - Work Online, Work Anywhere, Live Free
Watdawat - One Man’s Adventures in Parenting Five Crazy Children, while Educating Ninety More
The Discomfort Zone - A Daring Adventure Life Coaching
Illuminated Mind - The Less Boring Side of Personal Development
Productive Flourishing - Beyond Lifehacks. Toward Living
Monk Mojo’s 1000 Cuts - Hacking Life with a Dull Blade
Think Simple Now - Creativity, Clarity & Happiness
The Writer’s Manifesto Blog - Freelance Writing. Blogging. Work from Home
My Tropical Escape - Lifestyle Design. Entrepreneurship. Travel
Blogging Without A Blog - Blogging Lessons, Links and Observations
The Internet Entrepreneur Diary - Word Like an Entrepreneur & Play Hard Like a Billionaire
The Happiest Blog on Earth - Great Smiles. Happy Life
The Simple Dollar - Financial Talk for the Rest of Us
Self Made Chick - Make Money Online, Work from Home, and Take Back Your Life
The Simple Marriage Project - Simple Relationship Design
NorthxEast.com - Weekly Articles about Blogging
Alex Shalman - Practical Personal Development
Liz Strauss at Successful Blog - Thinking, Writing, Business Ideas… You’re Only a Stranger Once
MomGrind - Mommyblogger Wannabe
Dumb Little Man - Tips for Life
Awake at the Wheel - Tips, Strategies and Conversations at the Crossroads of Work, Life, Entrepreneurship and Play
Location Independent Living - Live and Work from Anywhere You Choose
Men With Pens - Web Business Tips for Writers, Freelancers and Online Entrepreneurs
Gunfighter: A Modern Warrior’s Life
We The Change - Personal Development for Conscious People
Island Wench - Celebrating the Joy of Living on an Island through Creative Living, Spiritual Crafts and other Soul Transformational Activities
Write to Done - Unmissable Articles on Writing
IttyBiz - Work from Home Tips to Help You Stay Sane
Telling It Like It Is - Things You Need to Know about Marriage, Relationships and Parenting
Attraction Mind Map - Attracting Abundance Begins in the Mind
Success Soul - Abundance and Simplicity for Mind, Body & Soul
The Art of Non-Conformity - Unconventional Strategies for Work, Life and Travel
Abundance Blog at Marelisa Online
7P Productions - Dedicated to Achieving Goals and Dreams
iNeedMotivation - Self Improvement & Motivation for Logical People
Hunter Nuttall .com - Stop Sucking and Live A Life of Abundance
A Few Strong Words - Freelance. Writing. Life
Today is that Day - Create Life in Your Image
San Diego Momma - but it could happen anywhere…
Urban Panther’s Lair - The Strange Behaviours of Wildcats in an Urban Setting
Pun Intended - Daily Humor and Escapism
Bloody hell, I had no idea I read so many blogs!
I’m tempted to say, if you know of another blog I might like, then drop me a line. But I’m not sure my family will thank you.
Then again, I’m expanding my mind, feeding my thirst for knowledge and perspective. One or two more blogs can’t hurt… Just whisper it so MusicMan doesn’t hear.
And check out some of the fabulous blogs on my list. I recommend all of them and I thank their writers for getting me thinking and keeping me entertained over the past year.
Photo by nico.cavallotto
Warning: This article discusses THEMES of The Dark Knight, but there are NO actual plot SPOILERS
On the weekend I saw The Dark Knight, the new Batman movie, which is an amazing film and not just because it manages to be an action extravaganza with real plot, clever dialogue and some nail-biting suspense. What I really liked about The Dark Knight was that it was intelligent enough to have Musicman and I still talking and thinking about it hours later.
I don’t want to spoil the film too much for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but essentially The Dark Knight is about the fight for Gotham City’s soul. One one side you have Batman and his White Knight, Harvey Dent, the crusading district attorney Bruce Wayne hopes will make his altar ego obsolete. On the other, you have The Joker, a psychotic killer who wants to see Gotham City fall into chaos.
This might sound all very standard super hero fare, but The Dark Knight really examines the notion of evil and the idea that maybe we can all turn to the Dark Side if we are just given a big enough push.
Now I find this a fascinating discussion because…
I believe human beings are inherently good.
I also believe in the power of redemption and the idea that people can change and try to make amends for their wrong doings, even if they are never forgiven or able to undo them.
Does that mean I am oblivious to the bad things people do?
Not at all. I have had first hand experience with human brutality and am familiar with the long and painful process that victims of crime must go through to move on, and in my case, forgive the perpetrators. I do not believe we forgive for the sake of others; to release them from guilt. That is their cross to bear. We forgive to release ourselves and claim the freedom and peace of mind we all deserve to have.
I have also spent months in Central America, where countries like Nicaragua and Guatemala have histories so horrid that to dwell on them is to sink into a pit of despair.
So yes, I agree humans are capable of great evil. It’s like a switch waiting to turn on. The more disconnected you are from the people around you and the innate goodness, love and empathy within, the closer you get to that tipping point.
We are born with a natural capacity for love, a craving for connection. But if we are surrounded by hatred and violence and neglect rather than love, we may learn that our humanity and empathy is a weakness. One that will only be used against us if we let it. This is the fertile breeding ground for evil.
Fear.
Isolation / Disconnection
Us versus Them.
When love is replaced by fear, evil is let in and we we all lose.
Even vengeance, a reason many of us might entertain violence given the right circumstances, is really fear. Fear that there is no justice.
I am a warm hearted, peaceful person, but I think I could turn murderous if someone harmed my child. And I am not talking self defence here because that is not an evil act. But I believe vengeful retribution is, and I can see how I could be pushed to this state. I wouldn’t necessarily think I deserved to get away with my crime, maybe I’d never be able to forgive myself, but it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do it. What does that say about me?
Some interesting quotes from The Dark Knight on man’s capacity for evil are:
“when the chips are down, these uh… civilized people, they’ll eat each other.” - THE JOKER
“some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.” - ALFRED, Batman’s loyal butler
And another classic I have always liked is:
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” - EDMUND BURKE, Irish orator, philosopher and politician (1729 - 1797)
So, what do you think? Are humans inherently good? How thick is the veneer of cvilization? Are some people hard wired for violence? Do you believe you are immune to murderous impulses?
I’ve admitted I’m not.
And go see The Dark Knight. It is destined to be a benchmark in big ‘Hollywood’ films and will go down in history as a fitting testament to Heath Ledger’s extraordinary talent.
Photo by bart234465
If you’re a regular reader, click HERE for my SHE-POWER Birthday post.
If you’ve come from Liz Strauss’ Blog to Show showcase then
My name’s Kelly and you’ve come at the perfect time because I’m celebrating my 1 Year Blogging Anniversary, so read on to see where all the kooky and cool kids hang out.
SHE-POWER offers inspiration, everyday wisdom, personality and humor. There’s original fiction and the popular SHE-POWER Interview Series, which puts other bloggers under the microscope and tortures them with questions until they tell us their secrets.
This anniversary post also offers you the chance to score a $30 Gift Voucher from AMAZON if you can give me a fitting tagline for this blog. And if you want to see which articles have proved the most popular with readers, make sure you check out My Top 12 Posts.
Don’t be shy. Say hello. If you’re a blogger, let me know who you are and where you live and I’ll stop by so we can get to know each other better. The more friends in the blogasphere, the better!
Roughly this time last year SHE-POWER was born. It was not a birth that was accompanied by much fanfare and to be honest I didn’t blog regularly or do any promotion of SHE-POWER until January, 2008.
When I checked through my stats this week (something I never do), I found that I only had 285 unique visits to this blog in 2007. Then in January after I joined StumbleUpon and started commenting on blogs like ZenHabits I jumped to 16,037 uniques, which was a huge thrill at the time. It’s amazing what happens when you actually tell people you exist.
So despite the fact that no one else was reading until 2008, I am going to be literal and celebrate the end of my first year in this particular creative journey. As of July last year I was here toiling away, building my first blog, learning basic code and generally pushing myself into unknown terrain. And that’s always something to celebrate.
I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank my readers, many of you who have been with me for some months. I may blog in a haphazard fashion with three posts one week, then only one the week after, but SHE-POWER has become a very important part of my life.
YOU have become a very important part of my life.
I have made some wonderful friends here and I find it liberating to share my journey through life and my stories - the words from my heart - with all of you.
Thank you for showing up each and every post. You make the work, the writers block and the time away from my family worth it.
I was very excited when I first thought up the name for this site. Not only is SHE-POWER catchy and memorable, but it’s in line with my feminist creed and belief that you must claim your own power in life.
The problem has always been that as much as I love the name SHE-POWER, I have never been entirely sure what this blog is about.
I originally had a vague idea of an empowerment and personal development site geared towards women, but I hit a stumbling block when I discovered I don’t enjoy writing about serious feminist issues and doling out advice bores me.
I didn’t want this blog to feel like work. I wasn’t planning on retiring from its proceeds. I just wanted to kick the promotional copywriter’s voice I’ve lived with for years into the back seat and explore my natural writer’s voice. Get creative. Free up. Throw some of my fiction out there. Have some fun.
Many articles later I am still not sure what I write is worthy of a name like SHE-POWER. I don’t fit clearly into the Feminist, Women or Mommyblogger niches because I blog about pretty much anything.
Love, women, family, travel, music, my obsessions with certain reality TV shows, love of books, finances and goals, my quirky sense of humor, my assorted neuroses and even the embarrassing details of my personal life.
If there is a common theme for this blog, it is:
SHE-POWER is about the search for personal truth, inspiration, and wisdom. It’s about making the most of this adventure called life and having lots of laughs along the way.
The reason my lack of a niche bothers me is I want to re-design my site, but I need a proper tagline first and I can’t think of anything that fits. With my years of marketing experience, you’d think I could come up with a tagline for my own blog, but no. My talents came in handy for Chris at WatDaWat and Mary at GoodLifeZen, but when it comes to helping myself, I come up with NOTHING. Now, I need your help.
I realise that’s not a kings ransom, but I have to be tight with my spending now that I’ve spent my son’s university education on a European vacation. So please, if you think you’ve got a catchy line to help explain and sell this blog, give me a shout. I am completely open to suggestions.
As I said earlier, I’m not one for stats. I did have the usual subscriber checking obsession in January, but this soon petered out when I saw how neurotic I was getting. Back then, losing even one subscriber (it’s always a weekend - have you noticed that?) was the end of the world. I’d be sobbing over the keyboard, sculling bottles of wine and generally feeling like I was a shitty writer. I took this to mean stats were not for me.
That said, a 1 Year Anniversary is a good time to check some stats and share some of SHE-POWER’s achievements. So here they are:
I’ve made the Top 10 Posts of StumbleUpon twice, and Reddit once.
According to my WordPress stats, April was my highest traffic month with almost 50,000 unique visitors. I have no idea whether this is ‘good’, but I think I get a lot of traffic for a blog that is only updated 1-3 times a week.
I made the list for the Top 100 Australian Female Blogs.
I went from an Alexa ranking of around 937,000 in February to a high of 197,000 in May.
Leo from ZenHabits approached me to write him a guest post after discovering my blog and reading How To Be A Super Mom. The article that he published, The Users Guide to Fabulous Friendships, was a big profile boost for me and brought in lots of new subscribers. The funny thing was I lost almost half of them within a month, probably because people were disappointed that I don’t write productivity and how-to articles here.
My post on Spirituality and Faith was controversial enough that it lost me 30 subscribers overnight. I take this as an achievement because I very quickly attracted new subscribers to replace them, and if you can’t make people think and feel then why write?
My fiction has been well received and I owe a big thanks to all of you who have emailed me and commented on my creative works. Many of you have been wonderfully supportive and have even linked to my fiction, recommending it, so thank you for that. It is very encouraging.
Despite my one month European vacation and a slack posting schedule either side, I have managed to maintain my subscriber numbers, though obviously my traffic did drop back quite a bit with all that inactivity.
There might be other achievements of note, but that’s all I can think of for now. My subscriber numbers in themselves are nothing to write home about. Except for a brief spike with ZenHabits, I have never hit over 200 subscribers. I’m not sure why, and it does seem strange when you consider 8,000 - 10,000 visitors in a week is not uncommon for me, but then again there’s nothing wrong with a small and loyal following.
Because Top 10 is such a cliche…
The 12 SHE-POWER Posts which received the most traffic, and in some cases the most comments, were:
How I Lost 9kgs and Still Ate Chocolate Cake Parts 1,2 and 3
My post about The Users Guide to Fabulous Friendships would have made the middle of this list, but I didn’t count it because the article was on Leo’s site, not mine. When I put this list together there were definitely some surprises. Shows how unreliable our memory can be. I thought my interview with Jemi had done very well, and it did in comments and on StumbleUpon, but the total traffic for other articles was much higher.
On the other hand, my Dr. Seuss article making the number 8 spot was a total shock. I think it ended up being a slow burner and got increasing page views over time. And of course, I was very happy to see one of my fiction pieces and two of my SHE-POWER interviews in the Top 12 as these are personally very special to me.
I think I have rambled on enough now. For the millionth time, thank you. I’ll be back with my next post in a few days. Hope to see you there.
Photo by cleverboy68
