I just missed the first man on the moon. I was born in a demographic lull between the baby boom and its echo when the baby boomers themselves had children. 1971 is slap bang in the middle of ‘generation x.’ There was an oil crisis and electricity blackouts. I was educated in the midst of teachers strikes and suffered the first year of GCSEs. I started university at the freeze of the student grant and the creation of the student loans company. I graduated in the midst of the early 90s recession. I closed my own business in the wake of the dot com bust of 2000. And I’m turning forty in a world with global financial crisis.
I was born into a modern age of decimal coinage and metrication. I grew up in a time that saw technology do away with much drudgery. I got more sophisticated toys, the computer and video age came into the home as I grew up. Comprehensive education and change in industry meant I had a choice from manual or dangerous livings. I got a place at university during the explosion in university admissions. I got a job, I changed my mind, I studied for a PhD, I changed my mind, I started my own business, I had mobility. I could live anywhere and so I moved to somewhere nice in 2000. I’m turning forty and there’s as much ahead of me as behind.
Both paragraphs above are accurate and cover similar ground, the second is however more useful to me. The challenge this month for blog club is ‘a cause to champion.’ It is what the second paragraph represents is my choice of cause.
I’m not advocating a Pollyanna glad game finding something to be glad about in every situation. No, I offer this: you can think about a situation in different ways and its the way you *think* about something that affects how you *feel*.
The problem with Pollyanna’s glad game is it supposes you should find happiness all the time, apart from being nauseating it’s also impossible. Sometimes you have to be sad.
The best way to predict the future is to play a part in shaping that future: on a personal scale and maybe at a much larger scale. There is much economic doom and gloom around at the moment, blame and worry abound. The (ahem) experts tell us that thought of dire economic circumstance actually can cause those circumstances to come to fruition. Again I don’t advocate we all think glad thoughts to get ourselves out of a euro banking crisis; I champion the power that what we collectively think changes the course of history.
I blame, or do I give credit? Today people can communicate directly to billions of others. Elites are losing their power; cover-ups are harder to cover up; middle men are losing their purpose and industries are disappearing. I refer to the seismic changes following the widespread adoption of the Internet. It took 200 years for the world to settle after Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press. I suspect we’re in for a fair old rattling after the opening of our communications Pandora’s box.
But remember my cause to champion, what we think affects how we feel. If you think all this turmoil is a price worth paying we’ll feel better about it. If we feel good we might get involved and actually make a difference to the outcome. I think we’re going to be sad about some changes but knowing that we could on balance choose the thoughts that help the future turn out well might ease those times we have to be sad.
I was born into a modern age of decimal coinage and metrication. I grew up in a time that saw technology do away with much drudgery. I got more sophisticated toys, the computer and video age came into the home as I grew up. Comprehensive education and change in industry meant I had a choice from manual or dangerous livings. I got a place at university during the explosion in university admissions. I got a job, I changed my mind, I studied for a PhD, I changed my mind, I started my own business, I had mobility. I could live anywhere and so I moved to somewhere nice in 2000. I’m turning forty and there’s as much ahead of me as behind.
Both paragraphs above are accurate and cover similar ground, the second is however more useful to me. The challenge this month for blog club is ‘a cause to champion.’ It is what the second paragraph represents is my choice of cause.
I’m not advocating a Pollyanna glad game finding something to be glad about in every situation. No, I offer this: you can think about a situation in different ways and its the way you *think* about something that affects how you *feel*.
The problem with Pollyanna’s glad game is it supposes you should find happiness all the time, apart from being nauseating it’s also impossible. Sometimes you have to be sad.
The best way to predict the future is to play a part in shaping that future: on a personal scale and maybe at a much larger scale. There is much economic doom and gloom around at the moment, blame and worry abound. The (ahem) experts tell us that thought of dire economic circumstance actually can cause those circumstances to come to fruition. Again I don’t advocate we all think glad thoughts to get ourselves out of a euro banking crisis; I champion the power that what we collectively think changes the course of history.
I blame, or do I give credit? Today people can communicate directly to billions of others. Elites are losing their power; cover-ups are harder to cover up; middle men are losing their purpose and industries are disappearing. I refer to the seismic changes following the widespread adoption of the Internet. It took 200 years for the world to settle after Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press. I suspect we’re in for a fair old rattling after the opening of our communications Pandora’s box.
But remember my cause to champion, what we think affects how we feel. If you think all this turmoil is a price worth paying we’ll feel better about it. If we feel good we might get involved and actually make a difference to the outcome. I think we’re going to be sad about some changes but knowing that we could on balance choose the thoughts that help the future turn out well might ease those times we have to be sad.
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