What’s the first thing you notice about a person?
I think generally their expression. Do they look happy or sad, smiling or serious?
Photo by Rene Asmussen from Pexels
What three habits do you feel would improve someone’s life?
Not in any particular order:
- Optimism – “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”
- Moderation- Enjoy the things you like but don’t go overboard
- Tolerance – I’ll give you a quote from Gene Roddenberry for this one:
IDIC: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations
| “Intolerance in the 23rd century? Improbable! If humankind survives that long, we will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between people and between cultures. We will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life’s exciting variety, not something to fear. It’s a manifestation of the greatness that God, or whatever it is, gave us. This infinite variation and delight, this is part of the optimism that we built into Star Trek.”— Gene Roddenberry |
What takes up too much of your time? Would you stop that if you could?
Definitely the internet. No.
Cookies (biscuits to those elsewhere), pastries, pie or cake? If not, what does your sweet tooth crave?
I like all of those but if I had to choose I’d probably tend towards cake first although I am very partial to desserts like pies.
Gratitude? Are You Happy? If so, why? If not, why not?
Yes. I am happy. I don’t have everything but I’m mostly content with my life.
Our Other Blog: Two Sisters and Two Points of View 
Wonderful! You have a very happy World, that you Shared with us. I’m with you on the habits…those are three, which if cultivated, would change a person’s life. 🙂
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I’d agree with what you said about tolerance, but this can get quite difficult if another culture doesn’t show tolerance to your own. I think here in Germany, our tolerance with certain cultures has pretty much ended lol, because way to many didn’t show tolerance for our own culture, the way we live, our laws, values and so on. So, I am absolutely for tolerance, but only if it’s mutual. It’s similar with respect… if another person shows me respect, I most likely will do too. It’s getting more difficult if that is not the case. So, tolerance yes, but not if a certain group shows to be incompatible due to their malicious behaviour against us. That’s where tolerance is ending.
I do agree with your points about moderation and optimism. But I’ve been a lot more optimistic in the past. From time to time I notice that I am more pessimist than ever. When I was young, I believed in the promises of getting chances to advance and so on. But now I just have minimum wage slaves around me. Nobody ever got a chance to advance. I have the feeling that so many things are not in our hands, that so many things have more to do with luck, connections, money and so on. That certain groups protect their wealth, and won’t share it, not even with job promotions and what not (they’d rather give a good job to people they know, not to a stranger). Germany is a country where nepotism and corruption is really strong, that’s where everyone I know shares the same opinion. This really made me a bit pessimistic over time.
I sometimes try to tell myself that I should be more optimistic again, because gernally I still managed it to be a quite happy person 🙂 Because even if I don’t have everything, I learned to be happy with the things I achieved, or the things I have. I learned to live on a moderate way. Maybe it’s also because I value a good time with myself, with my family, and friends a lot more than materialism. Hobbies help too, you just need to know what to do with your time. And you know, if you get home and your pets, in my case my cat makes big eyes… it instantly makes you happy too 🙂 It’s just that I am still aware of the inequality in this world. Maybe it’s even more correct to say that I am not a pessimist, but a person that is very critical about our society.
Internet! Haha, yes. I am with you on that 🙂
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You make good points Dennis. Respect and tolerance should be mutual. I still think it wrong to be intolerant of others just because they are different. If they have hurt others it is understandable but I like to think that there are reasonable people on both sides of every group. It gets harder as you get older. I’m less optimistic and more cynical now than when I was younger. But in my daily life I try not to look on the dark side. I can still be happy about that.
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I do agree with that. There are. But unless our government starts to make that distinction that there are good and bad people coming here, citizens won’t get the message about tolerance. So far the propaganda message has been “They’re all good, you guys should calm down, what you experienced is a lie, don’t be racist”. That’s upsetting people even more and it’s the main reason for the raise of right-wing movement. It’s ironic. The spirits that they called. Currently we have dynamite in our society and the fuse is already ignited. I personally think the governments are at fault in Europe and locally, and I actually could go really in-depth about the complex issue we have right now and how problems could be solved, without stopping to be an open society. There are ways to make everyone become more tolerant and live together in neighborhoods peacefully, but it would mean to stop being ignorant about the complex problems caused. It would mean to let the good ones stay, and the bad ones go. But it’s not just about crime, but also about many other things like the high pressure on the apartment market due to heavy migration without subsidisation of the apartment market to name just one out of hundreds of issues connected to the whole case. It’s already a powder barrel and hard to believe how a government is trying hard to make it explode. It’s a shame that reasonable immigrants are basically victims of the ignorance of our government as well.
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I feel we have the opposite problem of a very right wing government who wants to make us hate and fear asylum seekers and refugees who try to come here by sea while ignoring those who fly in and overstay their visas. Australia is already a difficult country to emigrate to. When Donald Trump thinks your government is going a good job you know you have a problem.
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