Random Thoughts

It only takes me a couple of seconds to realize that the YouTube video I just watched wasn’t as entertaining as I’d hoped. The hit has been registered and the “uploader” has received credit for something cleverly named and yet lacking any real content. Their 3 minute compilation video of horses, cats, aliens, conspiracy theory or fails;   will yet receive a bunch more hits before something actually entertaining knocks it of the Most Viewed Today list.  We are all easily trapped by the deceptive title, “Star Trek and its parallels to human behaviour”.

It only takes a thousand or so hits for a content uploader to make money from the stupid and pointless ads that Google attaches the content, and thats all they really want. It annoys me that other more ‘legitimate’ content creators are forever struggling to created new and clever skits, hoping to retain and to attract new subscribers, all the while fighting this kind of ‘cut and copy’ uploader for 3 minutes of my time.

It seems to me that 3 minutes is about all they can get. Our attention spans must be pretty short, possibly from all that channel surfing on the 1920′s invention the Television. We’ll watch 15 minutes of a television program we find entertaining then during the commercials we hope to find something else on another channel equally as entertaining, something that will fill the 3 minutes until the original show comes back on. Disgustingly we spend 2 minutes jumping channels until something that looks good, and isn’t a commercial grabs our attention. We watch it for 2 minutes hoping it satisfies, and maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t, but we find ourselves going back to find the thing we where watching before only to realize, we’ve missed key dialog and the plot or ending is missed.

Likewise we’ll catch the end of a song on the radio (an invention of the 1910′s) and wait endlessly for it to be played again . We’ll find that after 2 hours you’ve heard the same a second time but that 3 minutes was all we were looking for yet we listen to a bunch more of 3 minute songs and 3 minute ad breaks and 3 minute interruption by the announcers to get it. In the old days anyway we’d go out and sing the song to some record shop owner hoping they’d know the tune, but today we use apps on the smart phones to listen for us and tell us the song. All so we can hear it again without having to wait through someone elses 3 minutes of ill conceived drivel.

Clearly entertainment is found in 3 minute increments.

Hi, and thanks or coming. You probably didn’t get here from a email list, but thanks for coming anyway.

I opened my email today and was unsurprised to find 12 new emails today. For me that’s not at all many, but significantly only 1 was from someone I knew. The other 11 where as a result of legit subscriptions from websites where I bought something recently; and they’ve included me on the opt in list.

I can tolerate these emails for a while, but after almost a week of similar emails they all blur into one and I think to myself, “hey didn’t you send me something yesterday?”

Today as I stared blankly at my email I remembered, email is communication and none of this was communication I really want, yeah it’s good to be reminded from time to time of the companies I bought stuff from, but honestly I don’t need 10 plus emails a day to help spend my limited funds.

As I unsubscribed from each site I had a twinge of satisfaction as I realised they might get less email tomorrow… wait is that a good thing?, how will I know my email is working if I don’t get spam??

Having the option which bottle to lie down in the fridge. The milk or the red creaming soda? The red of course, at least it’ll be a pretty sticky mess and less stinky than the milk. Oh the choices we make when there is limited space in the fridge

Sometimes in the humdrum of life we can forget the one thing
that keeps us going…  the pause.

Pause to reset

Pause to rest

Pause to contemplate

Pause to relax

Pause to get control

Pause to realise what matters

Pause to think

Pause to….. Pause.

Simplicity is pausing deciding and doing, rather than letting it do us. I think we are born to act rather than to be acted upon.

We are not to be as leaves on the water top, pushed about by the wind, rain, currents and waves. Nor are we are the rock dropped in the
water, which causes a ripple which subsides in time and then we sit on the bottom of the pond. We are more like the boat. We have a sail, we have a
rudder, we have control. With this we harness the wind and the currents to take us somewhere. In order to get there we have to decide and that decision of
action is simply this. “I want to go there”

It is that simple. ‘Pause’, ‘Make a decision’ and ’ Go’. It is that simple.

We have the agency to act.

I have standards. These are the minimum set of behavioural rules I’ve set for myself. Fortunately they are closely aligned with what my parents taught me and what I teach my children. And whilst they are developed based on my religious belief, they apply to me in all circumstances. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a standard. I could be accused of failing to meet the standards from time to time, and that is life. So I focus on efforts to improve my behaviours to meet these standards. Then as I meet these I might shift them to “higher” standards.

If my standards are different to someone elses’ standards, does that mean that if I accept someone elses behaviour based on their standards, that I can be accused of a double standard? How can one have double standards anyway, double means to take ‘something’ and add to it, the same value (A + A = B or Ax2 = B). If I were to take my standards and double them, how do I double my efforts to wear only modest clothes?

I think the correct term would be hypocrite. Saying your standard is “this” and doing something else, or applying your ‘standards’ differently depending on the situation. The standard is the behaviour, and changing the standard suit the behaviour is no standard at all.

This is the fundamental principle of a standard. In any situation, I will behave in this manner. If I choose not be a “prawn eater”, then the application of this standard applies to parties, just as well as it would to a late night snack. If I have an addiction, then a standard is good as it helps to set the boundary and what behaviour the individual is aiming for. We might fail as we attempt to balance our standards with our behaviour, but it doesn’t mean the standard is bad, just because we feel guilty. It means that change takes time and a double standard is just another, kinder way to not say hypocrite, because it would appear that we are judging someone elses’ behaviours against our perceived impression of their standards and that would against our standards of begin kind to others and we’d become the hypocrite.