I Am One Of Them 

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I wrote this in June 2013   (The numbers are a little off but I think it is still pertinent)

There are approximately 7,121,329,380 people in the world, and I am one of them. Nearly 3,523,843,881 people on earth are women, and I’m one of them.  Less than 2% of the human population are natural redheads, and I am one of them.  Roughly 90% of the women in the world are right-handed.  I am one of them.  Approximately 35,000,000 people live in Canada and I’m one of them. More than 2.1 million people in the world are affected by MS.  I am one of them.

The reason I have taken the time to show you these statistics is because people need to understand that they are part of a group.  We are not alone.  There are actually billions of us in this great big beautiful boat we call the earth and we need to take care of it.  We spend so much time arguing over our differences that we forget to look at our similarities.  Every single person on this earth has the same colour blood I do.  We all need air to breathe and food to eat.  We all feel pain, anger, dismay and love.  We have children, we have hobbies, we have nightmares and we have dreams.  We are living longer than we did 100 years ago but I’m not sure that we are living better.  Our cultures are different, our aspirations are different and our languages are different.  But don’t you think we have more in common than we do differences?  As a species we started in the same place.  We all struggled out of the primordial sludge and over the years we developed a brain, a thought process and an attitude.  We need to put it to good use.

There is something else I want to point out.  Of the more than 7 billion people in the world there is only one me.  I am unique.  I am an original.  I am special, in exactly the same way that you are special.  Never ever again in the history of our species will you, or I, ever exist again.  Now don’t you feel significant?

A Tale of a Tail

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This is a tale of a tail

Attached to a rat

Who wanted some cheese

That belonged to a cat.

 

Now our cat loved to play

All day with a string

But it had been taken

By a dog who could sing.

 

And the cat knew the dog

Just wanted a bone

That belonged to a man

Who lived on his own.

 

But the man was annoyed

That his home had a mouse

Who scurried around

All over of the house.

 

If the mouse could be caught

Then the bone would be tendered

The string would drawn

And the cheese would be rendered.

 

Horrid the deeds

Would need to be done

Death and defying

Was the character of none.

 

So the tale of this tail

Will end on a high

In the house of the man

They all settled for pie!

Seeing

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I was sitting on my balcony recently, causally glancing over the buildings in the near distance and I saw something I had never seen.  Now I have lived in this town, in this apartment building, in this apartment, for more than twenty-five years.  I have been venturing out on to this balcony literally hundreds of times. And I never saw it before?  It wasn’t the fact that it had been there decades longer than I have, it was that I hadn’t noticed it.

Our eyes may look but it is our brain that sees.  How many times have you walked into a room, looked around and missed seeing the person you were there to meet? They were standing in plain sight but you missed them.  How many times have you bumped into something or someone right in front of you?  Your eyes were open but your brain was distracted.

I was walking in a mall one day many years ago when I was startled by an old friend, just inches from my face.  He said that he had been waving and while I was looking at him, he realized I hadn’t seen him.  I hadn’t.  My mind, my brain was preoccupied.  So, while the saying ‘seeing is believing’ is catchy, I don’t believe it.

Four people see a traffic accident.  They will have four different accounts.  Ask any First Responder.  We all SEE things differently. Our eyes see and our brain interprets. And THAT is what we witness.

I look out over a pristine forest and I see great beauty in the flora and fauna. Someone who makes their living from cutting down those trees sees his children with food on the table and a roof over their heads. We are looking at the exact same thing and yet we ‘see’ something completely different. And therein lies the conundrum.

What is the truth? What is the truth to you?  There are some facts that are irrefutable and yet some people refuse to believe them. Why? Perhaps they are unable to handle the truth. And it is so difficult to sift through the masses of information and misinformation that we are bombarded with every day.  Sometimes it is easier to listen to whoever speaks the loudest.  Sad but true. What does that say about us as a people?  Mistakes have been made in the past that affected the entire world because the masses listened to the wrong voice. How can we ensure that doesn’t happen again?

Oh and what was it that I had not noticed?  It was the name of the building I was looking at in four-foot letters!