Christmas

Since the last essays' topics were rather heavy and because it is less then one week away, I thought that today I should share my thoughts on Christmas with you.

Although I was brought up as a catholic I am pretty far away from being a religious person. I am not an atheist, but no catholic either. This made me wonder, why christmas is still so important to me. It turned out, that Christmas for me is about the people I care about.

This time of the year is about calling people you have intented to call for months and to spend quality time with your beloved ones. We sent out cards, celebrate christmas parties and meet for christmas dinners. All to show: Hey, I still think about you and want to catch up. Usually all these events end with a promise of meeting more frequent in the future and in too many cases this promise is broken.

Many people think Christmas is about gifts and in a way it is, but think about it closely: What do you enjoy more giving gifts or receiving them? Of course everybody likes to receive gifts, but most of us are in the situation that we can easily get ourselves the jewlery, DVD, book or whatever. I find that the true joy is in giving. The happiness I feel, when I find the perfect gift for someone I love. Often a gift they were not aware they wanted until the unwrap it. Also when receiving gift what is most important to me is not the material value, but that the person thought about what I would enjoy or remembered something I said months ago. It is about knowing each other and this way showing our affection.

These are beautiful concepts, right? But what makes me sad is, why do we need a certain time of the year for this? Wouldn't it be better to have "christmas" all the year?

With these thoughts I wish you Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Children - a promise to the future in need of a promised future

When it comes to children it seems likely that everything has already been said at least once, but what matters is not what has been said, but what we listen to. In one way or another, there is one repeating statement: Children are our future. But do we also give them the help they need to face this future?

First of all I want to state that I don't have children. A lot of parents will now think: Oh great, here comes another person thinking she could do so much better. Well, this might be one way of seeing it, but I consider that for this reason I can be more objective. I will use the occasion to tell all parents how much I admire them, because you have the toughest job in the world. But as with all jobs there is a decision to be made: Do we want to get through as easy as possible, with just enough effort to cope or do we have a certain exigence to ourselves as to how good we want to manage this challenge?

Since I am an aunt and often surrounded by children I have a pretty good idea of what a difficult task parenting can be. It is a tough job, with endless shifts and no leave. Still it is the biggest responsibility of all. Our children are our promise to the future and when I see the generation that is growing up now I feel sad. I fully understand that sometimes all becomes to muck and you place your kids in front of a video game to get a relieve. Trust me there is nothing wrong with that, as long as it is not the usual way of dealing with the situation and I am avoiding the word problem on purpose as children should never be considered a problem.

When we take a look at the children of today we can think of many things, that are going the wrong way, but a friend of mine who is school teacher put it in a simple but accurate way: During the break at school, when our generation played together tag or double Dutch, now every child sits in a corner with the newest smart phone playing games on its own. Don't get me wrong, I am a huge supporter of technology, when used in a proper way. But do our kids really need smart phones at such a young age? Aren't we depriving them of a childhood like the one we experienced? One of my dearest childhood memories is, when my friends and I decided to build a shelter from the rain for worms and insect. We used all sorts of twigs, leaves and stones. Today's children would never even come with such an idea, unless they googled a proper design and ordered previously parts on the internet.

By the overstimulation our kids receive, we are killing their creativity and isn't that the most important thing for progress? Because progress is also change and that can only happen if someone comes up with something new.

I am not one of these extreme people saying children shouldn't watch TV until their teens or anything alike. Actually I often watched TV as a child and I think I turned out quiet right. What I am actually saying is, that it is about balance, like pretty much everything in life. Let your kids watch TV, but make sure what they see has a certain "quality". It is really easy to turn almost everything into a useful lesson. For example, if you watch a movie with a dolphin in it discuss it with your children afterwards. Ask them if they would like to one day feed a dolphin and tell them to find out what they eat. This way you can channel TV and the use of a computer into the right direction. Nothing about this approach is new, as even shows like "Dr. Who" juggled the idea of children developing interest in history through entertainment.

But there are also a lot of aspects about education, where we have learnt a lot in the past twenty years. An example is nutrition. While our parents, were not aware of the influence nutrition in young years has on us for the rest of our life we are now very well aware of it. A mistake often made is to use food as a method of consolation or gratification. Never wondered, why so many of us girls grab some chocolate when feeling down or why we order pizza after a hard day? Please don't get me wrong, I am not judging our parents generations, as I have not doubt they did everything as best according to their knowledge, as we should do now.

But it would be wrong to push the responsibility only to the parents. We all are responsible for the following generation. It is us aunts, uncles, neighbours, teachers that will influence them. This is why I always feel like screaming when I am reading about budget cuts for schools, increase in university fees, cancellation of support just to name a few. What is more important to invest in, then our children?

I grew up in a working class family, while we weren't poor, money was an issue, when decisions had to be made, as we were three children. Luckily I had two adult brother who supported me, beside from my parents, when I was in university and still I had to work on the side. I am not looking for pity or anything alike, as I was luckier than a lot of people.

Martin Luther King once started a speech with the words "I have a dream" and I want to borrow this words now. As I too have a dream, where education and studies is not a luxury but a given right to every child.  

Moral Values in the past, present and future

Don't roll your eyes because of the title, I am not about to bragg about good old times or conservative ideas, but I still think that sometimes it is important to look back and check for things we might have lost along the journey.

Not everything our grandparents considered values or important qualities have been outdated, on the contrary. I strongly believe that we should regain some of the past qualities, though always with moderation. As I recently read: A virtue is only a virtue as long it is exercised in moderation, everything going into the extreme turns into a flaw. Imagine a tolerant man starting to tolerate other people commiting crimes or someone thorough checking things so intesively that he never comes to an end.

I consider loyalty to be good example for this. Loyalty is important in any sort of relationship: friendship, family, work just to name a few. But what happens, when loyalty is everything that counts and turns us blind? In this case we might end up following people or ideas, without ever questioning them. We should never forget: Everything worth our loyalty is able to withstand it being questioned, no matter if it is an idea or a person or a group. Unfortunately these days most people barely grin at th idea of loyalty ridiculing it.

Another value that we are loosing more and more is courtesy. Everyday we can expirience that, from kids yelling at their mothers to people barking the waiter for more coffee instead of kindly asking. Why does this happen? How can it be the kindness seems more and more to be outdated? Don't we prefer to be treated kindly and politely ourselves, then why don't we render other people the same courtesy?

But how do we know, which values of the past are still worth adopting? I guess this is one of the most difficult questions ever and everyone has to answer it for themselves. Our parents have given us the values they considered important and it is our duty to carefully question them and maintain those important and let go of those outdated.

Also we need to consider values they may not have taught us, for example tolerance in many cases. Unfortunately this was not a virtue of past generations and this is, why it is up to us to make it a value of the future. We are the ones realizing its importance, developing it and passing it on to our children.

This is what makes us human beings, to become more that the generations before us, by holding on to their good parts and adding more of our own.