Thursday 21 April 2022

Positive thinking to the max! Brief thoughts on Rwanda and resignation.

I am actually a great believer in positive thinking. Not giving in to feeling under the weather, in my opinion, helps a great deal. Believing in yourself helps you get through interviews well. Positive thinking gets you through all sorts of hard times. It has to be said, however, that I have worked with people who have found my sunny disposition downright annoying. This has manifested itself in comments such as “Why are you always so b****y cheerful!” 


Which brings me to this article on “manifesting”.


This is how it starts: 


“Diana Celestine was let in on the secret about 10 years ago. Then an IT consultant in Charlotte, North Carolina, she’d made a passing comment to a friend lamenting the state of her love life – something along the lines of “I’ll probably never get married”.

Celestine had just been joking around. But her friend stopped her, deadly serious.


“If you speak it into the world, it brings it in,” she said.

“It was the first time I’d ever thought that your words and thoughts might make any difference,” Celestine tells me now over Zoom.”


Oh boy! Taking the power of thinking, negative as well as positive to extremes! Be careful what you think and say!


It’s all about “The Secret”, a book by a certain Rhonda Byrne, published in 2006, all about the power to control your life and make things happen. This is one of my favourite bits of the article, after the scare-mongering start:

 

After being given a copy of The Science of Getting Rich: a 1910 guide to “wealth attraction” through willpower, by Wallace Wattles, and reading it very quickly …

“Byrne decided to put it to the test by discarding her reading glasses as the physical manifestation of her “belief” that eyesight deteriorates with age. She started visualizing herself reading in low light. Within three days, Byrne said, she didn’t need glasses at all: “That was the level of my knowing, and my belief”. 


Someone should warn Specsavers! 


The most extreme believers “manifest” themselves better boyfriends, better jobs, a new life on California! A kind of witchcraft maybe!


Even my positive thinking philosophy never goes that far! 


But maybe my positive thinking has been working on the weather. I seem to have “manifested” us another day of sunshine. Yesterday we walked the forest path again, hoping the valley might have turned into the bluebell woods. The bluebells in my garden are coming on nicely. However, the valley must be a bit more shaded than our garden. There are lots of bluebell leaves showing where there will soon be a carpet of blue but the bluebells themselves have barely got started. 







The cherry blossom on the other hand is doing brilliantly all over the area at the moment. 


 

On a more serious note, here’s a social media post passed on by a friend:


“It's worth remembering in the midst of the refugees to Rwanda scandal that France has repeatedly offered to establish processing centres in France and allow them to apply for asylum there.


The UK has turned them down.”


And here is a link to an article about Barcelona where instead of raging against immigrants not speaking the language pf the country, they have begun a project for having the immigrants teach their own language to anyone interested. A different approach to integration. 


And finally here are a couple of Michael Rosen’s “Boris” comments on the question of resignation:


“Dear Carrie

When I resign, we need to make a dignified retreat. Like me presenting a TV series: a trek round the Roman Empire: 'Boris Goes Roamin' with the Romans'. Or a follow-up to Attenborough but more about me: 'Boris Saves the Planet'. 

Orbis in rectum

Boris”


“Dear Queen

It may turn out that I am unable to  continue in office. I would be most obliged if you could indicate to me that should this eventuality coming to pass, you would refuse to accept my resignation. Might I suggest that this would be your duty?

Fossa ultima

Boris”.


Debate on the matter continues. What will today’s Commons vote bring? We shall see.


Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

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