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1 Life Lesson I’ve Learned for Every Year of My Adult Life

By ThinkingNo Comments

Life is about growth through learning and experience. So here’s 1 lesson life has taught me for every year of my adult live:

Age 18 – The importance of good and lifelong friendships. What makes a good friend including care, kindness, a sense of humour and loyalty.

Age 19 – The importance of having joy in my life. Creating opportunities for joy, seeking it out and chasing it are all essential activities for me.

Madame Tussaunds Blackpool on a thrown

Me on a thrown
Antony-Simpson-Writer

Me

Age 20 – That I’m never going to please everyone. Not everyone will like me or get me. That doesn’t mean I should stop trying. If I can make somebody laugh with a funny story or a joke, I’m going to do it. The smile or laughter is always worth it for me.

I just accept that not everyone is going to be pleased with what I do or don’t do. As long as I am happy with my intentions, actions and omissions, that’s good enough for me.

Age 21 – A diagnosis of a chronic illness (in my case type 1 diabetes) starts with grief. I mourned the loss of my working pancreas and cursed my faulty immune system.

Age 22 – Independence is extremely important to me. Getting my driving licence and being smothered in a relationship both helped me to realise this.

Age 23 – In the outside world many people are far to happy to psychologically tear strips off you. So inside your home should feel safe, full of compassion and be filled with a feeling of care. How I felt at home when I was younger and buying my own apartment helped me to realise this.

Age 24 – Sometimes I just have to do certain things, otherwise I’d always wonder What if?

Heartbreak sometimes heals with the passage of time. A lot of time. More than days, weeks or months. Years. Sometimes even longer than that.

Sometimes the heart doesn’t heal at all, it just scabs over like a scraped knee. Ready for you to pick at it or for something to come along and reopen the wound.

Age 25 – Not everyone gets to live a full and long life. This feels unfair. Life is precious.

The shock of an unexpected death is a thousand times worse than the grief of the loss. It is spiritually, mentally and emotionally exhausting. The disbelief that comes from the shock can last years and make it impossible to grief.

Age 26 – There’s something magic about new babies and they smell totally awesome.

Age 27 – The past is a nice place to visit, the future is a nice place to imagine, but you shouldn’t live in either of them. Live in the present.

Age 28 – The extreme highs and lows of mood I’ve had since my teenage years are not normal. Most people have a pretty stable mood.

Mood stabiliser and antidepressant medications saved more than just my mind, they saved my life.

Age 29 – Travel broadens my mind, fills my heart with goodness and strengthens my soul. If you have the opportunity to travel do. I learned this through visiting India, which has a special place in my heart.

IndiaJuly2015-TajMahal-8

Me with the Taj Mahal in the background (2).

Age 30 – Creativity enriches every aspect of myself. Stories (written, films, etc.) ignite my imagination and develop my empathy. Art and sculptures help me appreciate the beauty that the creators saw in the world around them or in their mind. Music helps me to feel and gives me the opportunity to dance.

To create something, whatever it is, is a learning process. Sometimes creative projects go well, other times not. But I always learn things from them. The process of creating something makes me feel alive and all lit up – even if it’s just a blog post like this one.

To share something I’ve created with the world makes me super-anxious. But when somebody tells me that my creative project has had some sort emotional resonance with them it becomes a privilege.

soulmates-cover-page

Soulmates (Short Story)
The Finished Product: My homemade candles look great (1).

The Finished Product: Just 1 of the 22 completed (unlit).

The Good Teen (Short Story)

Age 31 – When you do something you love for a job, it doesn’t feel like work. It feels like a vocation and a passion.

Write soon,

Antony

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Thursday 22 February 2018

Book Review: How To Be Human – The Manual by Ruby Wax

By Amazon, Books & Authors, ReviewsNo Comments
ruby-wax-how-to-be-human-book-cover
View on Amazon.co.uk
 Ruby Wax’s latest book is called How To Be Human – The Manual. It’s insightful, funny, warm and engaging. A pleasure to read. It’s like somebody is pouring wisdom into your head while you’re having a chat with them.

Each chapter covers a topic and is wittily written by Wax. For each chapter Wax has consulted with Ash Ranpura, a Neuroscientist and Gelong Thubten, a Buddhist Monk.

At the end of each chapter are fascinating transcripts of these discussions. Interspersed throughout How To Be Human Wax shares some of her own mental illness story.

So what exactly does Wax cover in How To Be Human? Pretty much everything. Here is each chapter title:

  • Evolution
  • Thoughts
  • Emotions
  • The Body
  • Compassion
  • Relationships
  • Sex
  • Kids
  • Addiction
  • The Future
  • Mindfulness Exercises
  • Forgiveness

How To Be Human builds on the strong foundations of Wax’s two previously published books: Sane New World – Taming the Mind, which I have reviewed here and A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled, which I have reviewed here.

You can also learn more about Wax by reading her autobiography How Do You Want Me?, which I have reviewed here.

How To Be Human is available to buy on Amazon and at all good book shops.

Review soon,

Antony

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Tuesday 20 February 2018

Ruth Cocker Burks: The altruistic woman who cared for gay men dying with AIDS in the 1980s in the USA

By Gigs & Shows, Health, Inspiration4 Comments

ruth-burks-image-brian-chilson

Ruth Cocker Burks, image by Brian Chilson (from Out Magazine’s Website)

The photo above is of Ruth Cocker Burks.

Ruth is the altruistic woman who cared for gay men dying with AIDS in the 1980s in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA. It started when she was at University Hospital visiting a friend who had cancer. At the time she was 25 years old with a young family.

One day she saw a door to a patient’s room with a big red bag over it. Inside was a gay man dying of AIDS. Nobody came to visit him. He was asking for his mother. So Burks called his mother. His mother told Burks that being gay had brought shame on the family. His family didn’t want to know. Even the healthcare staff treated him as cursed. So Burks cared for him. She visited him in hospital and when he finally passed away she buried him.

Burks then went on to give this end-of-life care to hundreds of gay men and to bury at least three dozen herself. Luckily for Burks, her mother had bought 262 plots in a graveyard when she was younger due to a colossal family argument. This meant that Burks has plenty of space for the burials.

From the bottom of my heart and on behalf of those gay men, I just want to say: Thank you Ruth Cocker Burks. Nobody deserves to die alone, afraid and without care or love.

Burks believes that a higher power led her to her destiny of caring for these gay men dying with AIDS. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But what I do know is that Burks’ actions represents the very best aspects of humanity: care, compassion, kindness and love.

Burks is an inspirational woman and I wish we could all be more altruistic, meaning that we care for the well-being of others more.

The blog post above is a shortened paraphrase of Meet the Woman Who Cared for Hundreds of Abandoned Gay Men Dying of AIDS from Out Magazine’s online website.

Blog soon,

Antony

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Friday 22 July 2016

Book Review: Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

By Books & Authors, History, Reviews4 Comments
Diary-of-a-Young-Girl-by-Anne-Frank

 I remember being at school in that history class, the desks lined up facing the front. The old floor wooden, worn and dusty. The view from the third floor windows down to the concrete playground. And yet, I never really found myself looking out of the windows wishing to be elsewhere. Why? History fascinated me. We had one of those great teachers who was so enthusiastic about her subject. Yet despite this my memory of what we covered isn’t great.

However I remember seeing clips of a film about the Anne Frank Story, perhaps we watched it all, I don’t remember. But I recently remembered bits of the story from class and wanted to learn more about Anne Frank. So I bought and have recently finished reading The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.

The Frank family were Jews at the time the second World War started. They along with another family had the foresight to hide from the German authorities. They knew from German propaganda that the authorities were blaming Jews for the problems the country had. They also knew it would not be long before they faced persecution if they didn’t hide. The Frank family went in to hiding in The Secret Annex, which is the place Anne Started to write her diary.

Anne starts off by introducing herself and explaining she wants a friend that she can write to and tell her deepest thoughts. She names this friend ‘Kitty’. Then she begins to write regular dated letters always starting “Dear Kitty”. These entries start by covering a lot about her family, the food they eat, the other family in the Annex and how they get on (or not).

You continue to read on through the diary and you start to see that this was a very intelligent girl. She self analyses, shares her dreams (of being a writer) and a huge driver in her life is to improve herself. As her body begins the transformation from girl to young woman she writes about the changes she is under going both physically and emotionally. She starts to get frustrated with her parents, they don’t understand her; she starts to have feelings for the boy who lives upstairs Peter. You begin to connect with her and remember your own adolescence, the dreams you had and your first crush.

Throughout The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, Anne keeps you informed on what is going on in the war and what the families living in the Annex think it means for them. Anne discloses how her paralysing fear gets the best of her at times and she reflects on how lucky she is to still be alive. She often thinks about her friends from life before the Annex and wonders what’s happened to them.

Although in the war things are going well, Britain and the other Allies are making progress; things worsen at the Annex. The are break ins at the factory below The Secret Annex, the food is poor with little nutritional value and toileting is limited. But at least they are alive with renewed hope that British and other Allied troops will soon be at their rescue. And then the diary ends.

Throughout the diary I looked for those famous words “In spite of everything, I still believe there’s good in people.” But I never found them.

The Afterword explaining the details of the families discovery in The Secret Annex by the authorities and what happened to the the two families members individually as well as their hiders. The conclusion also covers what’s happened historically since then. Otto Frank (Anne’s Father) deciding to publish the diary, the diary selling well, the house of The Secret Annex being saved from demolition and becoming more than a museum. Become a place were people can learn tolerance, in the hopes nothing like this ever happens again.

The Afterword explains that the famous quote (above) was actually said by Otto in a news paper interview after the diary had been published.

I felt that I knew Anne after reading her intimate diary and that she displayed the true spirit of humanity. The true spirit of humanity consisting compassion, hope and love on all levels. That through dark and tough times we should keep these good aspects of humanity and know that we will come out of the dark times stronger. The book is a aids as a reminder of the mass genocide that happened during the war and that intolerance breeds the conditions that would be necessary in order for mass genocide to happen again.

You can buy The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank on Amazon.

Write soon,

Antony

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I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


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Tuesday 4 January 2011
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