Third Dimension People

 So what makes someone dimensional? Two dimensional folks are those whose lives are the what-you-see- is-ALL-you get persons. Like paper dolls, they speak what they hear on the sports or political news, they appear fashionable and attractive, their lives are mostly keeping up appearances and have little to do with depth of thought or creativity or knowledge beyond the average. Well, you know the sorts I speak of. Kind of you and I people.  Everyone likes this kind of individual because their speech is two dimensional and offending no one because like paper, only little "cuts" might happen, ones that soon heal and don't leave scars. The three dimensional types are in social trouble a lot because, they "upset carts" and dig into matters with their deep shovels. They don't float on the surface of issues, they dive down and learn about them and what is happening and spend their waking hours planning and making attempts to change what they think is not right. It's much easier being two dimensional, but like paper pictures, you look at them for a short time and then move on, either to other two dimensionals or simply hang around the three dimensionals hoping some of their wisdom rubs off on you. I'm not sure I have the courage to be three dimensional all the time, but I hope that I can attempt it once in a blue.  Most of us in the vast majority are the same. We aren't comfortable with doing anything specific about what  is not right but we try to support it in some minor way and hope that it will help. The brave souls who are in the front lines risk a lot for we two dimensionals. They often give their entire lives to that service and are bashed about for it cruelly. But they, at least, unlike us, try to make changes. I may not always agree with the three dimesionals, but I admire their grit.

Cell Cultureism

 When I see someone sitting across from me, suddenly turning pale and gasping "Oh no, I forgot my cell phone!", I see an addict. A phone is a phone is a phone, it's not your best friend. It's a machine that has a purpose of communicating when necessary. No one needs to know every thought in your head, people. Texting has a place but not constantly. The addictive idiocy of having to "keep in touch" over nothing important all day and night, is an indication of sick compulsive behaviour. If your social circle demands that you carry around a piece of plastic to enter into the thing any and every thought that goes through your empty mind, think. If you can. Most of us who take time for serious thought are not addicted to the mountainous pile of nothing important that most cell phones are used for. Cell phones are a very useful tool. But they are tools, not best friends. Laws and rules are having to be passed to ban cell phones from classrooms. Now, who, in their right mind, wants to have phones in classrooms?  How stupid can we humans be? Does reality not enter our environments? When you are learning something, distraction is what you don't want and it isn't moot. Cell phones for social or business purposes are fine, under the right circumstances. But learning and working are not places for chit chatting about nothings. Some cell phone addicts can't quit their habit even though it interferes with their jobs and all sorts of other unrelated things that really matter. They will admit they are addicted.  Of course, there should be no cell phones, particularly, on the job or in classrooms. One of the excuses for such, I heard a teacher likely addicted itself, say, is to "teach" the use of cell phones.  I don't think so. That's like taking on measles to learn about measles. If you teach about cell phones, supply cell phones in the classroom.  Come on, people! The ever present cell phone madness of this sort is fortunately  dying due to rot and what a welcome disappearance it will be.  

Don't Give Up

 When my mother lay in a hospital bed near death, I told her "don't give up" and she repeated it over and over. She didn't "give up" and in her last hours, she smiled and seemed to see something or someone far off a vision that was not bad or sad. She didn't give up. I thought about that when I read an article today which had a time line for how bad the future will be (according to the writers) and the graph showed that in about eight years all aspects of human life could end. It told that the world would be run by billionaires and that the skies above and the earth below and the people within it would end. Not in my book. These articles or pieces of someone's dark research should have come out at the beginning of the Dark Ages when the Kings and Lords and Power Brokers stopped supporting their serfs and slaves who fed and cared for them in a pittance, went off clutching their gold off to their lairs in far corners where they could count the coins and eat their feasts and drink their quaffs alone in luxury and end there.  In those black times, the ordinary folks didn't give up in sadness and depression, they made the adjustments that were necessary and being humans who are resourceful and creative, they worked hard and survived. They formed governmental structures that were benevolent, they developed agriculture and commerce in ways that worked and life went on. And very well, on. The kings and princes and lords faded away and democractic forms of society began. It grew and prospered and if it appears not to work today, there are still strong hopes among ordinary human beings who don't have billions of pieces of paper called money, but continue to be imaginative and creative, kind and generous and considerate of each other and do and will survive. Human beings since they became inhabitants of the earth, have done exactly what they are best designed for, and that is to stay aware, alive and replenish and survive. Giving up is not an option. Nor are articles that serve only to drag us down with viewpoints that are negative. We humans, have always  survived and always will. We shall not give up. 

My Own Fiction

 At my age when there is no husband, no son, no one so near, I can write my own fiction. Those of us near ninety, do write our lives. It's our turn to be Best Sellers with our names far bigger than our titles. Old. We are finally able to be what we actually are even if our bones are ancient and soon to become ash. When we sit and stare, we can fly away into our personal books. If we want to dream in sleep and in daytime, we can. Our dreams are in colour. Some of us live in beautiful unreality and others of us, in our time, spending our last years in the books we read, the music we listen to, beiing with the people who mean the most. They are not the cooers who pat and moan at us, but those close, we might not even know. But they  see us and hear and sense us.  What is closest is mostest now.  The reality world sees us as ugly and wrinkled (whatever that means). to be pitied and cherished truly, but not as now people. We are the used to bes. We are called the wise elders but in truth, in private we are called "old lady" or the "old man". Or worse. We know it, but we are kind and smile and nod rather than rant. If we rant, they tie us into what is called a "home" or the back room because "it's all we need at this age". None of the unkind kindnesses hurt us because we live in our own fiction. No one is able to reach into our mind rooms where we are princesses, princes, pirates or heroes who can fly and conquer anything and are richly loved and adored. There we are free in the lands behind our eyes. There in our fiction, we never were the school kid the other ones shunned or left out of their games. We won the prizes at the fair or got the top marks in high school and were elected president of the Student Council.  Where we worked, we were the bosses, the admired invators, the ones who went far. Right now, we see smiling, all the ones we loved who went away and didn't come back. Here they are  now in our fiction,  and we smile. We are living non-fiction of our fiction. We are the old. 

Broadcasting

 Any threat to a Canadian-wide broadcasting system worries me. We are a broad country that stretches, as few others mostly East and West. The sort of circular mode as in the US is not ours. Things that go to and fro are not in a dizzy circular fashion. And while I complain about the media, I would be devastated if I could not to listen to my morning news from one end of the country to the other, while abluting daily. Radio doesn't need headsets of any kind and you are doing tasks that require full body attention without dangling wires or things stuck in your ears. Radio, like open air, is the freest kind of listening device. Also a country-wide system, paid for by the government: us, so that we don't have to tolerate advertising rattling in our ears or interrupting our thoughts as we listen, makes it perfect national communication. If one must doddle the texting thumb or tap out an email in response to what we hear, that, too, can be done. Of most concern is that we, in this country,  depend on the reliability of our broadcasting system to protect us as well as join us in its  unifying force. We need an objective source of information and while we often complain about "the media", we love our CBC. Unlike other countries, our nation wide system  is widely respected and always considered, reliable. Without our national broadcasting system, what would we do for a stable, uninterrupted twenty-four hour source of information, or warnings of possible weather or other dangers or polling of Canadian thought  sweeping right across our country from East to West to North. Other countries I can think of, are dial confusing as your scour through, trying to find reliable access to a radio station that tells it like it is without silly ads blasting at you and annoying you. Knowing the weather in all parts of the country, events from shore to shore to shore and the thinking that sweeps from all our coasts making us Canadians sharing each others problems and achievements  and being able to comment on them knowing that our input won't be interfered with as in a commercial venue we must not allow it to leave.  Never let our cross country radio disappear because if it does, part of our Canadian unity will also.  

Life In The Slow Lane

Listening to youth and somewhat beyond, you find that speech has speeded up. It isn't my elder years that can't keep up with the norm, it's simply that generally speaking, speaking is in the fast lane. In fact, walking down a city street or driving on the roads doing it as quickly as you can is the rule. About the only place you can wander in a leisurely fashion is on a pathway in the forest unless there are joggers in the area or bikers tearing up the dirt. Fast is the rule. If you can do it faster, the theory appears to be,  you do it better. "Slow and steady wins the race" is a fallacy. Today, Mr. Rabbit wins and Mr. Turtle is dust. There are times when I am shopping a nice young lady explains the benefits of a garment or a pair of shoes  so rapidly that I think she is speaking another language. I yearn to be in the far south of this continent where slow speech is considered an art. My favorite radio host, used to be understandable at six in the morning but after he came back from a Covid stint, he somehow reverted to fast talk so that even he couldn't be understood. I thought, have I turned up the rpms or something? His keepers must have warned him to slow down a bit because gradually he returned to a normal verbal pace, and I was able to pick up every little word. I think some of the younger set who fast talk, have transferred their rapid thumb picker texting style to their own repartee which makes them decodable only to their peers. The entire world beyond mere speech has become faster. Vehicles have become a prime example of it. On the freeways, no one does the speed limit and if it is ahered to, other drivers honk or zip around impatiently to pass. In a thirty mile an hour zone, honestly, do you hold to that speed? We elders who recall the days when fifty miles an hour was an accident waiting to happen, might yearn for the times when a slower world knew about "getting there is half the fun". We could see the birds in the trees as we passed, be amazed by the eagles on branches or  hawks swooping past  or deer grazing in a field. Now, we are going so fast that all we see is the back end of the car in front. 

Place Privacy Hmm

 There is a new program for devices that is much like the prison ankle strap that keeps track of offenders outside the "joint".  This one  gives parents and other guardians complete access via cyber to track anywhere their subject  happens to go with a cell phone. If you participate as a child or adult and carry your C phone, your whereabouts can be observed. Theoretically, everywhere you go, however humble, you are blipped. Now, a lot of parents will see this as a boon so so that they can track constantly  where their little he/she is. Handy? I am reserving my opinion on it because that kind of surveilance concerns me. Do I want not as a baby or tot, but as a child, teen, adult or elder to be constantly observed in this way? Does it offend my trust or even personal privacy? These are questions that need to be thoroughly pondered in a time when there is very little space for one to find complete security when the need for privacy is felt. As a child, I revelled in being able, with my friends to find "forts" in the woods near my house or "clubs"in someone's garage or other place where we kids could feel it was somewhere that we, alone, found to be just  kids and do our perfectly innocent activities without the pressure of adults about. It developed, I think, in us, a certain amount of confidence that our parents trusted us and that we trusted that they did. It made us mature as children should, to see themselves as being responsible not only to their parents and their guidelines but also to their ability to take care of themselves to become future independent adults. Of course, in this day, there are many hazards for children, but we don't want them to regard every stranger or place as danger. We teach kids how to protect themselves and eventually they are going to have to walk to their school, not ride, be with their friends and make choices without parental supervision. Kids or anyone, must  feel free at any place to make choices and decisons.  It appears that worried parents and caregivers sometimes go too far overboard. Or do they? We have cameras that follow us, device tracking and now blippable location programs. What next?

Ask First

I've seen my peers, elders, rudely pushing away young arms that grabbed to help them. I find it sad. The elder who was once as young as the individual taking their their arm or warning them about what to step over, has privacy boundaries as does everyone. Age is not an illness; it's a common human condition in which the body may be breaking down but the mind and psyche of the individual living in that body, remains a fully operational human. Their bodies are theirs, not property for others to latch on to without permission no matter what the motive may be.  Nurses know about these things, and in their work, they always ask first and if necessary, give reasons in assisting elders in their charge.  They have learned that elders require the same kind of respect that everyone else on the planet is entitled to. Elders are equals in life. They are not babies or small children; they are humans whose bodies have reached a point in time that often, but not always, can use a helping hand. It is demeaning to speak down to elders or use "baby talk" at them.  In fact, it can be regarded as an insult. It is simple to just ask politely: "May I be of help to you?". There is no need to rush over and put hands on the elder who, in most cases, enjoys any semblance of independence they can eke out. They may move slowly because that's the way it is when you live inside an elder body. A human person who has been around for decades is naturally going to have complaints to do with pain and lack of mobility or flexibility. It's a simple human fact. The elder often says such as "You'll find out one day!" and that is true. I recall saying such things in my young days when I  waited impatiently for someone old at the checkout counter trying to locate something in her purse or for a slow gentleman who walked at a snail's pace through a doorway with many people delayed behind him. I smile when I think of being the elder myself and not the looker on. Please ask first and a cheery word with a smile doesn't hurt either.