Category: practicing peace

World wide what?

I got spammed this morning on FB and luckily enough, removed it thank you friend.
But lately been feeling the pull to pull away from this internet thing.  Not just because there’s these links to depression and spending time on the internet.  But it’s a little too much.  Like yesterday, there’s a local yoga studio that had over fifteen status updates on the FB thing all surrounding one event.  While this is annoying, it’s an effective way of using their FB status to promote an event.   But how effective is it?  And how much time am I spending on looking at the FB statuses of friends, people I’ve come into contact with previously and are friends on FB, searching for things only to find stuff that is optimized better coming up first on Google search, etc.  Yes, the internet is a great tool, we all communicate better, but quite frankly it’s also a sounding board for a lot of people who long to take their aggression and anger out on others.  Yelp, for instance, can be a helpful tool but it also has so much griping and unsubstantiated griping that really is hard on small business owners and gives a false idea of how good a business is.  One review I saw blatantly lied about a business practice and yet is still allowed online and figures into how a business is rated. We won’t even go into the online posting boards, think craigslist, and see the horror going on there.
I run into people all the time that aren’t on this internet thingy.   Some are stuck in the dark ages about things. But others, well, their life doesn’t seem to be too much affected by their non-use of the internet and all things digital.  They deal with humans on a one-on-one basis.  They seem pretty ok and happy.  Hmmm….

Shades of Green

I fit the term “green eyed monster” a little too literally.  Lately, it’s pervasive not just in eye color but in mental states as well.   And I have various reasons for it’s justification.  Things not going so well, I can look towards the ‘current state of blah-blah-blah and look at blah-blah and it’s crappy that blah-blah and they don’t deserve blah-blah’ and well it’s become the blah-blah-blahs.  Jealousy is a seldom admitted but often feeling that is so unattractive and leaves me petty and miserable.  And yet it disguises itself well.  Root of it, well, that’s where the murkiness lies.  Insecurity, small mindedness, sense of some sort of loss, low self esteem, but ultimately it’s roots are somewhere in ‘I’m not enough-ness’ and in that state, well, it’s a sorry place to be.  But as humans, we can trace the roots of jealousy all the way back to infancy.  Studies have show infants as young as five months exhibit traits of jealousy. 
So what can I combat this with.  When I look around at the current state of blah-blah.  A gratitude list is one way.  Being grateful cultivates a state of happiness.  If there is something that I want in another person or circumstance, wanting it, not coveting it, creates a state of lack.  Can I adjust this to a feeling of ‘this is something that I can attain and I am grateful.’   I’ll get back to you on the rest, for now, the human experiment continues….