Blessed Rainy Day

Blessed Rainy Day is the holiday marking the end of the monsoon season in Bhutan. On this day all natural water resources in the country are considered to be sanctifying and citizens are encouraged to take an outdoor bath to be cleansed of "bad deeds, obstructions and defilements" and accumulated bad karma. Families traditionally gather for a meal of thup (porridge) at breakfast time. The holiday also marks the end of the farming season and the beginning of the harvest season.

Government offices, schools, and institutions are closed for the day.
The most auspicious hour for the ablution is determined by astrologers in the service of the Je Khenpo, the chief abbot of the country. They refer to the Bhutanese lunar calendar (essentially the Tibetan lunar calendar), but the exact method of their calculations have not been disclosed. In 2004, they determined the preferred time to be 4:00 p.m., September 22. Citizens who are unable to bathe at the exact hour instead often rise before dawn for a brisk morning splash.

Connecting people? So many gadgets are available now.

The craze over the latest i-pads, i-phones and everything paid by dad is a fever. The initial aim of the gadgets was to minimize distance – but is it really doing so?

Gadgets which connects people

I take a look around and see that my younger brother is absorbed in his video game and won’t disturb me for a while. My Brother, who has just come back for holidays, is busy chatting away on his incessant chatting is disturbing me. I tell him to tell mother to lower down the volume of the television that she is watching. My father is doubtless busy reading something on his laptop.
I just realize that we are supposed to be on holiday here. We hardly meet each other but I think I have talked to my brother more over Skype than I have talked to him when he is here. I open up the explorer on my laptop and an ad pops up. Making a mental note to get the add while the arrow moves towards the red button. “Nokia – connecting people.” Connecting people? I can see my younger brother through the crack between the door and the wall. She is definitely “connecting”.
Technology has really blasted Bhutan into the future. It is simply amazing how the things we take for granted has brought such a big change. I could go on and on about the usage of cell phones, i – phones, i – pads, internet, etc. What is the use in that? Everybody, including my brother who is not even a decade old, knows about technology and its uses. But what we don’t realize is the huge impact it is having on our social lives.
I confess the thoughts of living of living without my i-phone and my laptop(with high speed internet) is unimaginable. The loss of either would probably mean submerging me into the Neanderthal times. However, I can’t help but wonder if my world is getting bigger (as Facebook says it is) or if my world is now limited to the four blue walls of my bedrooms. I don’t even know what the weather it is outside. Rain or shine, summer or winter, it is nonexistent expect when I have to go to school. According to Facebook, I have 1124 friends with 10 friend requests pending. But according to the social life I have been leading, I have 0 friends.
Recently, I met the girl from my Facebook friend list. I really liked her in the e-world. She was funny, smart and updated interesting tweets. Her Facebook wall was filed with fascinating news and even though she was not active on Google+, it was still fun to look at her page. Her Facebook photo showed a very pretty girl with smooth fair skin, potty lips and dancing guitar earrings. I could hardly believe that the girl who stood in front of me was the same one. It was difficult to imagine that it was the same person with whom I had chatted late into the night about my problems and shared jokes with.
It is also worth a mention that my classmates with whom I chat so much online have nothing have nothing to say when we actually meet in class. It is as if we have exhausted everything we have to say online. Not to mention, everyone is more flirty and bold if it is through text messages or fb messages but they shutter oh-so-prettily when in front. What a sad, sad world!
My family hardly talks to each other anymore even if we sitting in one room. I am usually playing angry birds on my phone, trying to beat my previous score, my brother is busy on his Nintendo, mom always reads e-books on her phone, dad is too busy watching the news and my brother (supposedly on vacation to be with the family) is usually texting someone. If we have something to say, we hardly lift our eyes off our gadgets, too busy taking care of our e-world.
Maybe it is the fact that we have control over our e-world, much more than we have in our real life. We have the power to cut off friends from the friend list, the power to tell people what is on our mind, tweet about politics because there is anonymity. “We are who we are when we think no one is looking.” How true! I guess it should now be modified to “we are who we are when we are online.”
Internet addiction is a high risk especially for people suffering from anxiety, depression, and other addictions and if you are an unhappy teenager, lack support or introverted. The internet is used as a temporary distraction and as means of escaping from feelings of depressions. However the usage actually   leads to anxiety disorders like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCH) and can further contribute to stress, isolation and loneliness. Instead of helping to get rid of addictions, internet addiction can lead to online gambling, cyber relationships, etc.
Instead of making us social, we are slowly alienating ourselves. We are isolated in our cocoon, in a world we build our ourselves. Facebook, with 845 million users with a whopping $3.7 billion in revenue is expecting to rise up to $5 billion which will make it by far the largest Internet IPO in history. Google+ specifies that you have to include only “your real friends, the ones you feel comfortable sharing private details with.” The phrase is indirectly capitalizing on the fear and anxieties that Facebook has caused interfering with our real friendships, making us all the more lonelier. Instead of conquering isolation as it  was initially designed for, Facebook is spreading isolation faster than a Trojan virus.
A recent study out of Australia titled “Who Uses Facebook?” found a compelling and sometimes confusing relationship between loneliness and social networking. Facebook users had slightly lower levels of “social loneliness” but “significantly higher levels family loneliness”. Facebook encourages contact with people outside our family at expense of family relations. But why go on and on about Facebook? Or Twitter or Google+ for that matter?
It is not just the online sites that are distancing us from our near ones. A simple phone is also responsible for isolation, so are the rampant RPG (Role Play Games) responsible. We are no longer meeting friends as regularly as we used to, no longer talking to our mothers about our problems, no longer asking fathers for advice or sharing relationship problems with our siblings. Technology and connecting people? I have to think about it, so do you.

Be silent, or say something better than silence.

 

It is necessary to one’s personal happiness to exercise control over one’s words as well as acts for there are words that strike even harder than blows. There are words which pierce hearts more than sharp swords do. There are words the point of which sting the heart through the course a whole life. The turn of a sentence can decide the fate of many a friendship and the fate of many a kingdom. A Spanish proverb says, “A goose quill often hurts more than a lion’s claw.”

It s really true in seeking the good of others we find our own. The cheerful man makes a cheerful world, a gloomy man a gloomy one. A person returning from an evening party complained to a policeman on his beat than an ill-looking fellow was following him, it turned to be his own shadow.

And such usually is human life to each of us. It is for the most part, but the refection of us. Although cheerfulness of disposition is a matter of inborn temperament, it is also capable of being trained and cultivated like any other habit we may make the best of life or make the worst of it, and it depends very much upon ourselves whether we extract joy or misery from it. Sir Walter Scott was man full of the milk of human kindness. He relates one incident of his boyhood. One day a dog coming towards him, he took up a big stone, threw it, and hit the dog. The poor creature had strength enough left to crawl up to him and lick his feet, although he saw its leg was broken. This incident had given him the bitterest remorse in his life.  

The influence of woman is the same everywhere. Her condition influences the morals, manners and the character of the people in all countries. Where she is debased, society is debased, where she is morally pure and enlightened, society will be proportionately elevated. Woman can no more do men’s special work in the world than man can do woman’s. You observe a man becoming day by day richer or increasing in professional reputation and you set him down as a successful man in life. But if his home is an ill-regulated one, where no links of affection extend throughout the family, I contend, that man has not been successful. Man enters a new world of joy sympathy and human interest, through the porch of love. The utmost blessing that God can confer on a man is the possession of a good and pious wife, with whom he may live in peace to whom he may confide his whole possession, even his life and welfare.


Lady Rachel Russell is a woman is in history celebrated for her devotion and faithfulness. She labored and pleaded for her husband’s release. But when she saw that all was in vain, she collected her courage, and strove by her example to strengthen her dear lord, the husband. When his last hour had nearly come, his wife and children waited to receive his parting embrace concealed the agony under a seeming composure; they parted, after a tender adieu, in silence. After she had gone, Lord William said, “Now the bitterness of death is passed”. Lady Russell received the dead body of her beloved without a head, after a couple of hours.
 
One of the most painful ordeals of man’s temper and patience was that which took place in Abruzzi, a natural philosopher at Geneva. He devoted much study to the barometer and its variations. During 27 years, he made numerous observations daily, recording them on sheets prepared for the purpose. One day, when a new servant was installed in the house. She immediately started displaying her devotion by putting things to rights. When he entered his room, he asked of the servant, “What have you done with the paper that was round the barometer”? Oh, sir, it was so dirty that i burnt it and put in its place these new papers”.

Abruzzi crossed his arms and said calmly after some moments of internal struggle, “you have destroyed the result of 17 yrs’ labor, in future touch nothing whatever in this room”.

Use ‘I’ statements not ‘you’ statements to discuss your anger. Say “I feel angry when my needs are not being met” instead of “you make me and when you are so inconsiderate”. Forgive and forget. Forgiving helps lower blood pressure and erase muscle tension so you can feel more relaxed. Up to 80 percent of people, who commit suicide, mention their intentions to someone. People who are considering their intentions to someone. People, who are considering suicide, are often undecided about choosing life or death. With your timely compassionate help, they may choose to live.

 

Not Anymore

You tell me to walk behind,

I never seemed to mind,
As I do what you say,
Since you have to have your way.

Just because you’re tall,
Know how to throw a ball,
And don’t always fall,
Doesn’t mean you know all

You and your frown,
You want to bring me down,
You never think about me,
Because my pain you can never see.

You can’t let that be,
You got to listen to me,
And then learn,
That it’s my turn.

You can’t do that anymore,
It’s not just I have to think for,
All you ever think about is you,
How about you step in my shoe?

We can’t work as pair,
I can’t always stand and stare,
I can’t stay,
But I need to have my day.

It’s my turn to walk away,
I am not going to stay,
Not anymore.