Paradox and Inspiration 162: What's So Contemptible?

I have been scratching my head over a guy's contribution of his 4-sentence long comment to my blog post about honey labels. In that brief paragraph he basically stated that he studied law and what he understood about E.C law for honey standards. That was perfectly fine. It was what he said in his second post that really baffled me. "How embarrassing..." he said, "I didn't realise the comment was linked to my Facebook...I do not spend odious amounts of spare time commenting on honey blogs."

Well, according to Oxford dictionary, odious is defined as "extremely unpleasant; repulsive".

His perspective posed an incredible challenge to my intellect. Is such a strong reaction and defense really called for?

Paradox and Inspiration 161: Better to be Busy Than Not?

I smile as I read "The Busy Trap" article dated 30 June 2012 in nytimes.com. Surely, not only the Americans have fallen into the trap. It is a phenomenon of the modern society where the keen pursuit of wealth to create a better life marks the very focus of everyday living. “Very busy!” as a response to “How are you?” is a way of telling others that everything is well and fine, that one is no loafer, is gainfully employed and much valued in the job and have no time for any form of idleness. I laugh at how the author describes busyness as an hedge against emptiness and how people are always sounding so insanely busy and dead tired, because I was no different in the past and now have been trying to do the opposite. Somehow, now I like to sound as free and relaxed as I could no matter how occupied I am. Why feign indolence? I’m not sure exactly why. Perhaps I have become a bit irritable from constantly hearing how busy people are, that time is against them and they have absolutely no time for this and that, how they are going bonkers and how stressed they are at work. I just want to appear to be out of line and atypical. I don’t remember meeting anyone who is not frantic with work or their kids, so maybe I could just be that breath of fresh air. What difference would it make if I add myself to the perpetually busy crowd? So what if I go around announcing to my friends that I am hysterically busy? Idelness doesn't equate with slothfulness, does it? Maybe someone who appears as more free than them or a freak who is busy keeping up with some trivial sounding hobby like drawing or reading would confound them and inspire them to drop their pace a bit?

Paradox and Inspiration 160: Little Chloe, Giant Spirit

My P1 niece, Chloe did her parents extremely proud recently. She was paired with the naughtiest boy in class for a class assignment. Knowing that she would have a hard time getting the boy to work on the assignment, she made a chart with many boxes after school and asked her father for some nice stickers. The next day, she showed her partner the chart and the stickers and promised that she would give tick a box whenever he behaved well and the more ticks he collected, the more stickers he would get. The boy was so thrilled and motivated to fill up the boxes with ticks to get the stickers that he did his best to cooperate with her in the assignment. Their work was assessed by the teacher and Chloe and the boy were named the best-performing team!

What great problem-solving ability and exemplary attitude toward life from a seven year-old girl! Chloe could have just gone to look for the teacher and beg if she could partner with someone else, complain to the teacher that the boy wouldn't cooperate with her, cry and whine to her parents or even threaten the boy that she would inform the teacher if he didn't behave. How often do we adults throw in the towels so easily when we are run into difficulties, even before we could take a step back and think how we could rise to the occasion, how ready are we to grouse and protest that life isn't fair, and how quickly can we brace ourselves during challenging moments and create a win-win situation for everyone?