Assessing validity of Dreams

 

We all dream most nights. Some we remember, others we can’t. Some seem to make sense, others complete nonsense.  Some so real and others pure fantasy. So, how do we deal with dreams? I mean, do we assume they all have meaning, thus try to work out the messgae clearly stated or hidden and go about changing this in our life to settle these dreams. Or do we assume they have little meaning, just a collection of tangled ideas and expeiences that float around in our semi-concious mind.

I have never thought too deeply about dreams up until now. Yes, some have scared me, shocked me, surprised me, even ecited me but dream itself stayed as a dream and I didnt allow it to evolve.  This is possibly because the dreams up to now have been a little more “fantasy” based and not so relevent to my life presently.  I mean, the characters that appera maybe those in my life now..or those I want to be in y life, or indeed have been, but the theme has been ‘querky’ at best.

That has changed of the last few months. My dreams have gained a stronger meaning generally and carry characters with issues that I am dealing with now. It makes its a little scarier I guess when you wake up and think you are still in the dream or that for the last 5 hours you have been playing out real life in your mind.

Is this a sign of deeper worries and more issues in my life? That would make sense I guess? Does this then mean that those with fewer issue, content and happy in their life paths dream less?

Rediscover myself

Whether it’s because of the social media boom, being away from home for so long, being  in a country where you cannot be fully accepted or understand 100% of whats being said or is happen I’m not sure; but somewhere along the way, I have lost myself. Not so badly that I’m crazy or don’t want to contine, just to the degree that I am not myself..as I know I can, want or used to be. It’s not sad but frustrating. I really don’t know how to rediscover this identity I know is mine but has left me righ now. As far as cofused connections go..this one is pretty tangled up.

Iiving for money, living for life?

 

I’m starting to wonder about what living means for us all. In a world developed and adjusted by mankind to work on system of bartering, purchase and profit we all need to be in possession of value and worth to participate in what we know as civilization. I wonder of God designed this or whether we as human beings designed it ourselves? If we did then it means we have a natural desire or need to be in possession of value. We need to rank people based on how much value they possess. I guess this has led us to believe that the more we have in terms of value (money) then the higher rank a person we are. It make sense…..but not necessarily happiness.

What would happen if we were all reset to 0 worth tomorrow morning and nobody owned the status of being higher than the next man? We we then try desperately to regain the wealth we thought reflected out value in society or would we try to rank people based on another aspect..say height. The tallest = the highest in society. This wouldn’t work….

So it’s not going to happen that we all become equal over night but it would be an interesting experiment to try.

So back to what I was saying, do we live for money? Do we live for life, love and happiness or do they both go hand in hand. Some people say money can make you love. Can give u the happiness to enjoy life..thus love more things and people.  May be the case but in having money you cannot help but make those who has less, feel of less value and possibly creating a kind of disharmony.  So in living for money you may inadvertently cause others to feel worse.

But what if we lived for life and only life? Thoughts not of what we could own but what we could do for others and what we could for ourselves? Hang on..theres something that contridicts this. In thinking what we could get for ourselves, we must think in terms of money and items money can buy right?

O.K..sorry for my confused connections today but I think I have it. Liveing for life, love and happiness in some way connects to value and money. The society we are part of runs  of exchange of resources so we cannot unfortunately avoid having to be the owners of value and resouces. We just need to be careful about what our goals are in life.

If it is to be happy then we need to aim for that first…money will follow.

If we aim for money first I believe happiness will struggle to catch up and follow.

Is facebook disconnecting people?

 

I’ve started to wonder recently about the phenomenon that is Facebook. Connecting people like never before…is what it was doing for so many people for such a long time. But as the month are passing I feel the Facebook effect is wearing off in many ways and what we are seeing is “disconnection”.

What I mean is less personal connection. Whereas before we might have called a friend or chatted with them online we now have profiles open to everybody on our “Friends” list. Knowing this we are a little cautious of what we are posting and what we are saying. Family members, school friends, uni friends, workmate’s, new friends in a new city you live…..what do they all have in common? You, and nothing else. But as people we grow, we change, we learn new skills and we have new ideas on life. For me, Facebook can’t handle these changes in our life and leaves us in sometimes an uncomfortable “no man’s land” where we lose the feeling of who we really are.

We are constantly reminded of our past, some of which we want to forget or move on from, but an old acquaintance on your list may be preventing you from feeling you can state something, post something or announce something the he/she never knew as part of your personality or identity.  We basically are so connected to our past and to our present that we are not moving thought e natural stages of life as we did before.

Then there are the problems..which I know o well about which is having friends which are not actually your friends. I am the MOST guilty of this crime in that I created a second account of myself. It was not for strange or misleading reasons but was to help to connect me to a group of people in a city I live (Nagoya, Japan) so that I could promote my website. I went about making so many new friends, requesting all these connections which actually have no real connection to myself. It felt fun in the beginning but now feels so very false and untrue. They are according to my profile, my friends but I have never met 95% of them. I read their messages and see their updates but I have never spoke a word to them. They see my pictures and I see theirs but we have never seen each others face to face. It’s all so false in many ways.

Of course there are so many points in this post you will point to and say…yes but you can so this…or you can do this…or your shouldnt have done this…in reference to the way I have used Facebook. Yes, I don;t have to add friends that I don’t know. Yes I know I block certain people from seeing certain things on my page. Yes, I know I don’t have to post pictures that I don’t want the world to see. Yes, I can say what I want and no have to bother about what people think.BUT BUT BUT…..even though I know all these things I still do or don’t follow them.

In regards to my REAL page, there are so many groups of my friends as I mentioned before that in some way I have a very close relationship too..but in different ways. My uni friends know me a drunken fool who talks about women and football. My family knows me as me, but a cleaner version of what friends know. Work friends know you as a little more professional (sometimes) and have knowledge of you that goes back say only 3 years. Your girlfriend, if she is a friend is completely different an issue…I wont even go there. But what we have is most incredibly messy mix of relationships all in one large simmering pot. WE can’t unfriend any of them as they are all important to us. If we exclude some from seeing certain things or only being allowed access to particular information we risk hiding or appearing to want to hide a part of our lives from them.  This brings dishonesty into the equation.

Going back to my other point about having a SECOND account as I do..well thats just all so fake and makes me feel very strange. I mean, I want to know so many on my list but I simply have no right to. However, there are times I find myself commenting on their status…again with no real right to. I have never considered myself strange but recently am wondering….you are a bit aren’t you Rob?  I would go as far as saying there is a certain degree of “anti-socialness” that Facebook has brought me.

But as I mentioned, this is not Facebook’s fault in any way. I choose who my friends are and I choose who I let see my life. For some people this new way of communicating is bringing unbelievable rewards to their lives. The “connected-world” aspect is in some ways so amazing as lets us share events, happiness sadness; brings people together, gathers support, raises awareness and opens our hearts.

This I know and cannot argue with as all. I guess what I’m trying to work out is how t use “social networking” so that we can stay close to those who mean much to us, not offend or hurt others and improve our lives and those who we interact with. I have made some bloopers in learning how to achieve this and no doubt will make many more. That’s why I’m gonna take a step back,  reflect and make an effort not to get totally engulfed in my online social network.

Close window, shut down, close the laptop, grab your keys, go outside and get communicating the way we used to.

Voice of an Angel

I just discovered an amazing singer, you may know her “Nina”.

Wow..what a voice!

Myths of Motivation

Have you ever wondered why we have motivation in life? I mean, there are times in your life, year, month or even day when you have a strong desire to achieve something. That desire is born out of motivation. It could be a desire to have a new computer in which you are in essence motivated by the idea of money.  A desire to look cooler than you even have done before – you are being motivated by women.

What I am interested in is why we have these motivations and why they don’t always stay with us and come to us sporadically.  I was motivated 2 years ago to be so intelligent in the field of politics and economics…I dare say I don’t have that motivation anymore.  There was a time 3 years ago I had the desire to become to best Japanese speaking foreigner in Japan. Then I was motivated by the idea of getting a very highly paid job. But, as I say, these motivations and desires don’t always last, for me anyway. Is that the same for all of us I wonder?

I’m thinking that the motivations are very much affected by our experiences in trying to reach the goals we set.  A dream is so beautiful and faultless but when we try to act out the dream, not all the pieces fall into place like they should have done.  This then I feel is the gap between “Reality” and “imagination”.

So we are motivated by something that hasn’t actually happened to us but we hope will. Essentially we are motivated by dreams. We fail to achieve these dreams and we lose the motivation…right?

If this though train is right then I have to conclude that dreaming and dreaming as far and deep and grand as you can is the way we can achieve amazing happiness in life. Why you ask? Its like this:

When you dream of nothing you have no goal no point at which to aim your sights and thus no way of accessing how far you have come. Dreaming in a grand of marvelously way focuses us on something unrealistic. However…in trying so hard to reach this point that we can never or probably will never reach takes us to places and achievements we would never have had gotten to without a dream.

I want to be a best web designer on earth. Of course I fail but in failing I produce 10 websites and learn to write in html and CSS language thus giving me a skill. Compared with – I have an idea that I want to be the best web designers but I don’t even dream as I don’t believe it can happen. The result is that I make a weak effort at building 1 site and give up as I never had a dream to begin with.

So, don’t just have a dream. Have a dream to be the best. You may get there one day. Even if you don’t you have learnt and become a more skilled and able person for trying.

Settle for 9 or chase 10?

In many ways life is content, life is happy, life is full of the perfect dreams you dream when you are young and imagining adulthood.  A day passes and 90% of everything is perfect.

So, how to look at the 90%? It’s the same as looking at a glass and thinking is it “half-full” or “half -empty”. Is 90% good, or is 90% not enough? Is it 90% better than I deserve or 10% less? Do I chase the big 100 or stay content and happy with a figure close but not the same?

For me, life is short. I guess a that’s selfish thing to say as it’s short not only for me but for 6.8 billion people wondering around this earth. But I can only think how I think….not for others…so I wanna repeat the words “life is short”. So simple and so overused but when I say the words, I mean the words in every sense.

For me, losing somebody close is something I had never experienced in my life until last year.  Until then I had lived thinking that the body and the soul never grow old and people never fade..never weaken and never go. I was wrong, so so so wrong. My dearest gran, the only one I ever knew left this world to find peace. She had such warmth for all around her. She gave me the greatest gift in my life, my mother. She still surrounds us, protects us and heals our pain. She’ll be there to take us by the hand when it’s our turn to find peace, as she did.

I lost another close companion, though not human a beautiful and caring friend that had given her love to the family since she joined us. In fact it was me who at 13years old said to mum “I wanna dog, mum, please”. I was 13 and just moved to a new city that I had no friends. I was scared and I escaped this by loving my family more and wanting to make it stronger, another reason to stay at home more..to give me a reason to love.

She came to us such a cute puppy with a pink tummy and big paws. Her eyes were so big and so brown and he tongue so soft and wet. On her first day I lay on the sofa she jumped up and slept on my chest all evening. She was so beautiful and so loyal, my mum loved her so much..so did the rest of the family. Mum walked her every day…twice a day…without fail. Her eyes lit up when she heard the sound of her lead being taken off the door handle. That sound meant she could go for a walk. She loved walking.

At 17 years old she had gotten weak, her bones were aching and her eyes so dim she could barely see the colours of life anymore. When I was home for the summer she finally got so sick we had no choice. She couldn’t stand up, let alone walk.  So one morning we decided to do the best thing, for her..to relieve her of pain. I carried her to the car, put her on the front seat and said goodbye. When I said those words what I meant was “thank you”. You loved us, protected us and never let us down. You were so simple, and such simple things made you happy. You loved to loved. You taught me so much.

I was in such pain, I lost a friend..no, more..much more. I’ll never forget her.

And so I came to realise through the pain of losing someone that “life is short”. It’s short because for every second that passes we take a small step towards the end. This is not sad story of “imminent death” and depression. It’s just to say…don’t get too caught up in chasing life. Take a moment to see what you what you have, where you are, who you love and who loves you…NOW. She might love you in the future..he might become important to you someday but…..not now. It doesn’t mean dont make an effort to chase that extra 10%. It just means, wait and that 10% will surely come. It will come because you appreciate the 90% you have.