I reorganised my categories. Initially “reorganising” meant renaming General to Waffle, which I felt summed it up better. I then added Rantage for angry posts and Musings for intelligent ones and started reorganising my blogs. I quickly realised that I was moving very few to either Rantage or Musings and thus scraped the idea. I am apparently a very happy, mentally vacuous Barbie Blogger.
Barbie rocks. If I’d has this Barbie as a kid the detachable belly would have been used as a secret storage compartment, which could possibly and brought up some interesting questions for my parents to deal with…
Given I have wasted the entire day when I should have been working, I thought I’d continue this wasteful streak with a blogette of busy thoughts. Most of my thoughts in life seem to be half finished. Like,
However, halfway through writing the above paragraph (since it took about a hour of dithering to get that far) my mood changed and I’m not feeling introspective any more. So I shall include here some good posts I made today when I was feeling introspective on my forum.
This post was in reply to someone who, being a devout Christian wanted advice on how best to save the souls of non-Christians and thus save them from hell, because knowing they were going to hell was tearing her apart. Suffice to say, considerable debate is now occuring on that thread.
My faith teaches a few things that are in disagreement with the main religions, and I love it for that.
1) Do not recruit, do not “spread the word”. If people need to join your religion, they will seek it out on their own. The journey they take is more important that the destination. My religion has survived for centuries without recruiting etc.
2) Other religions are valid. Non-religions are valid. Everyone’s beliefs are valid. Like viewing the world through differently tinted lenses, we’re all seeing the same thing, but drawing our own conclusions about how it works.
3) One thing I do believe in that kinda conflicts, kinda agrees – I believe you get what you deserve, if not in the next world, then in this. Hell doesn’t need to exist – this life has enough crap to punish anyone who deserves it on it’s own. Just as it has enough wonderous beauty to reward anyone who deserves it.
4) There is no hell in my faith. If you don’t believe in my faith, you don’t go to hell. Everyone goes wherever they think they will, and if that’s the nothingness of atheism, then there we are.
The reason people end up despising recruiters and using words like “despise” and “recruit” (and this has affected me too which is why I too use them) is that such people seem to believe that they are right. I acknowledge that my belief is just that – a belief. It’s what I think explains best what I see in the world. It’s what helps me be what I think is a good person. You cannot know you are right, and imo to believe without question is naive. If your religion can’t stand up to a little scrutiny, then it isn’t very robust.
To be honest, if I’m wrong and hell does exist for every non believer, and I go to hell, then I go to hell. I would not change my beliefs nor the way I live my life. I will have spent my life being a good person, supporting charity, loving my family, adoring my animals, embracing and trying to protect nature. If, despite all of this, a God wishes to send me to hell because I didn’t believe in him or his codes and I actively believed in a different set of deities and rules, well then I wouldn’t want to be a member of a religion that was so petty, and would happily boycott their “heaven” in protest of an unfair system.
I don’t let bullies scare me into changing my life or beliefs in other matters, I’m not about to let religious doctrines try and scare me into their religion. I would suggest if you feel you need to save people from hell, that you change your belief instead of trying to change theirs. There is nothing on this world or in any parallel dimensions, next worlds, underworlds, inner worlds, outer space that gives anyone the right to say their perception of the world is any more valid than someone elses.
Obviously I know not all Christians or all religious people try to recruit and although I thouroughly disagree with what they do, I on some level do understand that people who do try and recruit/convert (for any religion) are doing so because they want to help. I think the anger people feel towards such people is due more to the close mindedness they exhibit rather than their actual behaviour.
My second post was a bit less inflammatory. I was discussing lost family members in the forum with a friend. I’m only really recording it here as I think it sums up a lot how I feel about my family, and I’d like to record that on my blog as it will fall off the forum in time 
I think if you are someone who draws such strength from your family, and these people are so important to who you are it’s a mixed blessing. It makes you a better person, and gives you an amazing anchor in your life, but the fear of losing these people and actually losing them can be…acute. The loss felt is acute and sharp and it feels like part if you is lost as well, and you won’t know where to go in life or what to do because you’ve lost them.
The fact is, we are the youngest generation in our families for the most part. We’ll outlive most of the people who make us who we are. It would be less painful to not have them, then we wouldn’t have to lose them. My Nan, who’s husband was one of these larger than life people who still has an amazing prescence in my family despite dying the year before I was born, always says that it’s better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all. And considering she loved and lost the only person she totally relied upon, who protected her from the world, coming from her the phrase isn’t cliche.
When I was little it hurt me a lot (and still does) that I never met my Grandad – I never met this man who was so revered by my father (his son-in-law), and my father is a hard bloke to impress. My mum used to tell me stories about him, about the animals he’d rescued and the devastation his rescues caused in the flat they lived in Now I realise that although I’m recieving a slightly rosy tinted version of the man he was, the loss I felt from never having met him is nothing compared to the loss his wife Nan, and my mum and aunts and even my father and uncles feel. Only one of my cousins was barely old enough to remember Grandad, and he’s changed his surname and taken on Grandad’s with his own. And yet still they would rather have had him in their lives a short time rather than never have known him.
I don’t believe they ever go, these people who have such an effect on our lives. My Grandad as I mentioned above died before I was born, and yet he’s had a huge affect on me and my life. He was a keen animal lover, yet he was a butcher. I feel we have a lot in common with how we deal with the contradiction, what with me being a animal lover, and yet a vet. My Grandpa sucummed to mental vagueness (family has a tendency towards this subtle type of senility) as I became a teenager, and died in the late 1990s. I share his love of gardening and of the colour green – he was never allowed to have green at home because Grandma’s superstitious So I have it everywhere. Uncle Tom and I shared being partially deaf and thus having social difficulties, Uncle Sid worked at the horse racetrack his whole life and I adore horse racing and bets, and Uncle Ron was a hoarder, just like me Even Auntie Jean whom I only met once I was thinking about yesterday as I walked 2 miles from the shops with very heavy shopping. Right up until she died she carried heavy cartons of fruit juice back from the shops and up the stairs to her flat weekly, never complained. So I don’t believe they go while they still inspire us, and remind us who we are and why we are the way we are, and while their traits, for good or bad are still evident in us. It may not make the fact they are gone any easier to deal with, and life changes forever after they are gone, but at least part of them are still here and can be passed on to later generations.
Have I achieved today? My project is still lying there unwritten (or rather, there is a rectangular area of air where my project isn’t) but I made a friend feel better. And I ruled Egypt for a while to boot.
. My score sheet is currently as follows:
I had a formative practical OSCE/OSPVE exam, which was hilarious, got to scrub in to a really interesting op, asked one of my clinicians about becoming an intern, and he was very helpful, bonded with the wicked witch of the east who turned out to be lovely and who even made me coffee O.O, stayed late, worked hard, made pizza, ate pizza. Am generally chuffed