Posts Tagged ‘points of view’

How connected are you? If you are reading this you probably either have e-mail or can go online. Do you remember the days before the Internet, e-mail, and cell phones? Do you feel closer to people now, or do you long for the closeness you enjoyed back then? For millennia people sat around and talked to each other. Now kids sitting in the same room text each other. Or they're all on laptops, doing their own thing, telling the others about something cool they've found, but not being heard because everyone else is so engrossed with being "connected."

As much as people talk about being connected, it often seems as if they actually seek ways to evade each other in public. The avoidance might be unintentional, but the phenomenon is worldwide. The Japanese actually have a term for teenagers who withdraw completely from social contact with others — hikikomori. I routinely see pairs of students walking along or sitting beside each other, both of them texting someone else instead of enjoying being with the one nearby.

Though I can't recommend the source of the following as a regular diet, the cartoon does show clearly the unintentional aspect I just mentioned.

In his quest to be "connected," the poor guy in that cartoon wasn't connecting with the one near him, and probably as a result, she totally disconnected from him.
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Let's see the hands of all of you out there who want to live in a nursing home! I don't imagine I would see many raised on that one. And that's not surprising. Many people do not even like to visit someone in a nursing home. Living in a nursing home is something that most people dread and hope will never happen to them. But it has become a reality for many and is often their best and only option.

It may have slipped by some of us that this past week — May 9 - 15 — was National Nursing Home Week. My mom lives in a nursing home in Bowling Green, Ohio. It's a very well run facility with very nice staff, and she's happy and safe there. It's really her only option with some of her present special needs.

When we go on trips, we usually stay with family. When we do stay in hotels, which is rare, we thoroughly enjoy some of the amenities there that we don't have at home. As nice and well run as nursing homes and hotels are, though, we prefer living in our home. Thoughts of nursing homes and hotels reminded me of something I've had in my files for a long time.

No Nursing Home for Me!

With the average cost for a nursing home reaching $209.00 per day (in 2008), there is a better way to spend our savings, when we get old and feeble. Someone has already checked on reservations at the Holiday Inn for a combined long term stay discount and a senior discount. It comes to only $70.23 per night.

That leaves you $138.77 a day for the following, most of which is already free:
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Are your first impressions usually right, or do you often have to try to get past those impressions once you learn more? It is the experience of many of us, I think, to form wrong first impressions when making new acquaintances or when viewing situations. I won't go into any details, but I recently made a misjudgment based on wrong first impressions when I witnessed some activities that were not part of my experience. Once I dug deeper, I understood not only why my first impressions were wrong, but also how far off they were from reality.

Today's iv is a compilation of things I've seen recently that involve first impressions — some of which are right and some of which are wrong. I'll lead off with a funny demotivational poster I saw on the topic.

I would say that first impressions are extremely important, but they're not the whole picture. Learning details sometimes shows you how off-base our snap judgments are.
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Life is busy right now, playing catch-up after last week. So for today's "instant vacation" I'm posting three short jokes about what people know and don't know.

A man went to see his doctor because he was suffering from a miserable cold. His doctor prescribed some pills, but they didn't help.

On his next visit the doctor gave him a shot, but that didn't do any good.

On his third visit the doctor told the man to go home and take a hot bath. As soon as he was finished bathing he was to throw open all the windows and stand in the draft.

"But doc," protested the patient, "if I do that, I'll get pneumonia."

"I know," said his physician. "I can cure pneumonia."
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Have you ever been stranded? You read or hear stories about people who are stranded in all sorts of situations — along a highway, in the woods, on a mountain, in a boat, in the snow, on an island, and many other scenarios. Just recently on the news there was a story of young boy who spent a night in the woods after getting lost while skiing. Once found, he was facing losing several toes from frostbite. Being stranded has been romanticized in literature and on film, but the difficulties, fear, loneliness, and necessities of life would quickly crowd out any dreamy notions.

One time in France we shared a train compartment with an American man and his child. While in Italy the father had been pickpocketed and lost all his money, their tickets, and any form of identification. He didn't speak the language and had to try to rebuild his identity and to come up with enough money to obtain food and lodging and to get themselves back to the USA. He said that beyond the frustrations of his situation was the terror of being stranded and feeling utterly helpless. We shared his horror as he recounted their experience, and I was able to share with him what would have been our Confidence in such a situation.

Today I'm posting three fictitious stories about people stranded on islands and what happened to them.
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