The sum of all our fears

All of us are scared of something, right? From the neighbour's dog to the weekly nightmare in which you turn into a turnip before midnight to being served a plate of boiled ants...
   I know someone who's reluctant to write the word banana because once he starts, he worries that he wont be able to stop with the 'n's and the 'a's!
   I don't like clowns. I don't agree with the idea of men with big wigs, painted faces and enormous shoes driving cars where the doors fall off when they use the horn. Clowns in real life are even more freaky- at the circus, randomly at shopping malls, etc.. There's something not right about bending balloons into animal shapes. My first trip to a local mall was a nightmare, wandering around oblivious buying stuff then seeing a mechanical clown climbing up a rope... leering at me, with its eyes following me around.

   My other childhood fear was the dark, the result of an over-active imagination and a love of scary movies. I was always convinced there was something unspeakable under my bed (apart from my favourite pair of pants which in themselves were quite scary!). I never understood in horror films why when the teenagers' car broke down they would think of going to the big creepy house to stay the night... and if the front door squeaks when you open it, what other warning do you need? Just run!
   A friend of mine had to fend off the advances of an over-amorous large dog when she was a kid- resulting in a lifelong fear of big dogs. I find this particularly funny (especially as I have no fear of dogs- unless, of course, they happened to be dressed like clowns). I always try to test my friend by playing one of my favourite games , Name Your Price.
   Basically you think about the most unpleasant things (like eyeballs) and ask how much money they would want to eat a plate full of eyeballs. I always tease her with "Well, for a million pounds would you let the dog be near you for five minutes?" Despite her refusal to ever allow it to happen, in my experience, we all have a price- you just have to find it!

Painting happiness

A world without suffering. In today's times, you wonder if that is any longer a possibility. But reading about the endeavours of some people, you begin to think, 'Perhaps...'
   For you to spread the 'Perhaps' happy bug around, you have to first train your mind to always see a glass as half full, not half empty. Then simply fill it to the brim. Now pick up the glass full and offer it to someone who is in pain, is suffering or teetering on the edge of despair. It's transformational. Filling up the glass is as metaphoric as is the act of seeing it as half full (to begin with). There are a thousand ways of filling up that glass just as there are a thousand things that can stand in for a half full glass. A bleak situation, a bruising experience, a hard mental journey, a physical obstacle, an emotional loss... people are stuck by so many kinds of tragedies. But each one of us also possess something- a talent, a gift, a privilege, an art- which if offered generously can help a person deal with the tragedy better!

Are you sure?

If there's one thing I know for sure it's that I don't know one thing for sure.
Stuff I learned at school now appear to be outdated theories about history and civilizations. With the explosion of media, internet and the like-we are exposed to so much information and different perspectives- it's hard to know what the truth really is about, literally anything.
   I read a story a few weeks back regarding a lady who wrote to the newspaper asking why there were so many onions on the beach? At the time I thought that the answer was pretty simple- Barbecues.
   The answer given was that onions provide a solution to the problems posed by jellyfish.
   I imagined he would be telling that you could repel jellyfish by throwing onions at them from the beach. But incredibly he says "the best cure for a jellyfish sting is to rub the juice of an onion on it". So who knows? And more incredibly, how do we find that stuff out? I can't imagine somebody running out of the water covered in stings and ignoring an ambulance and medical staff- and driving to the Fruit & Veg section of a supermarket. But, like I said, who knows?

  And with the whole Wikipedia culture- the basic premise being that there's an online information database that we can all access for research but more worrying- we can all contribute towards. There's some absolutely crazy stuff written on the interweb and the last thing that we need is some of that going to websites that we might look at to get facts! Things like "bald men may well lose hair on their head because they have excessive hair on their arms and the heat has to escape somewhere".
   Science is as yet unable to get to grips. The worst scenario imaginable is if my granny gets online because some of her theories that she actually practices in real life are nothing short of terrifying. Example: whenever I bumped my head as a child (this happened quite regularly and may well explain my later personality) instead of the recognized ointments she would smear the bump with butter. If you know no different you just accept it- but on those occasions that you ventured out back to your mates and told them you had butter on your head, their uncontrollable laughter gave some clue that maybe it was not such a commonly accepted remedy. Alternatively, my friend once had a goldfish that went a bit wonky and her mom plopped a dissolvable aspirin in the tank much to our horror. It lived another three years by the way... but was much more hyper!
   So who really knows?
   All I do know for sure is that the most important thing to strive for is Love- it has to be as good as your dream, with no compromise. And if you have that you have the answer to all of Life's questions.
 

Mom and Dad... your vision is our guiding light

Every journey
We embark upon
Starts with the memory
Of things you have done

Every odd
We dare to defy
We battle with courage
You inspired us by

Every moment
Of times that are dark
We walk through with ease
On the path that you marked

Every milestone
Every conquest
Is a symbol of our thanks
For your dreams of success!