vision about life

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I would like to share my vision about life with you. I talk with Marthe, Jeannette and Erik about all subjects we come and came across in our lives.

I see a totally different world before me, in which cooperating and growth is the essence. Every time when I'm walking on the street and see how we all live in separated houses, I'm astonished again about how separated we live. Everybody goes to school or work, comes home and goes to school or work again next day. Than you have weekends or holidays. Some people have less work or no work. Beside that you have your social contacts, nightlife or other activities. We go to shops and buy our food and everything we need and that's it. photo from a red admiral on Leonoor's hand
red admiral on Leonoor's hand in our garden, 13 August 2011

I believe family (two parents and one, two or three children), school, education or work are forms that are no longer sufficient. The family is too small, the school too big, the work too busy and not focused on giving meaning to life and getting on with each other in a social way and living conscious.

The worlds of all members of the family are already separeted very fast. Children often go to day nursery en later they go to school, brothers and/or sisters in a separate class. One of the parents or both go to their work. In the evening you come together and than there is only few time left for contact and talking with each other. Parents don't know what the children experienced and children often cannot tell it. And when our parents get old we can't take care of them anymore.

Because everyone lives in separate houses too, we don't share the questions and the problems we meet with each other. With that much knowledge and experience gets lost, which just would be helpful to get on better with each other.

Usually it is not seen as postive that you have problems or difficulties. Like this we don't learn to talk about what you come across. The treshold to talk and to trust each other is very high. I think it's very much worth it to look for how we want to live. What do you want, what do we really want to learn (at school). What would you like to do in this life and how would you get on with the people around you.

I think that it is especially about the quality and content of contact. For me the contact feels good when:
- I have the feeling that I'm talking in a meaningful way, and when I am able to exchange ideas and can do something with those ideas.
- I can show that I'm happy with what happens in my life.
- I feel that I can be loving towards the other/others and experience that others are like that towards me.
- There are slow positive changes.
- Everybody feels free to say what he/she has on his/her mind.

I wish we would look more human instead of medical if we have problems with behaviour or disease. Now we seek help from doctors or social workers. We take medicine very easily, without solving the real problem. I think we can do much more by ourselves and I think the self curing ability of our body is much greater than we think. But I also think we underestimate how difficult it is to be honest towards yourself and others. How difficult it is to say that you don't like something, without getting the feeling that you are irritating or rejecting someone. We hardly talk about difficulties and we therefore hardly experience that talking is nessecary to solve problems and to get further.

If a child is restless or has no confidence, we easily say the child has ADHD or it is autistic. If somebody is getting old, he or she is easily labeled as demented, which we call 'dement' in Dutch. When you only change one letter in Dutch, the 't' into the 's', you get the word 'de mens' (Dutch for man or a human being), a much better word. I believe labeling isn't good, because the message is that you're not good. I think we must try to talk about what we feel or experience with each other without these terms.

A child that would have ADHD, even gets medicine. We don't ask ourselves whether we are so calm ourselves as we think we are and we don't start to look for what is needed to experience more rest together. That is also true for insecurity, having few confidence, not being able or willing to talk, making no contact, being nervous or forgetful.

We hardly dare to talk with each other about what we like and dislike, too afraid that there might come a quarrel or that the contact ends. If we would realise that we don't dare to enter into difficulties, we might be aware that talking and communicating with each other is essential and you can never do that enough, the same as doing things attentively.

I think we are ready to work on becoming conscious. We find biological food and durable energy more and more important, but in the meantime we pollute ourselves with more and more use of medicine. If we fall ill severely, we have, in my opinion, only very cruel ways of cure, heavy medicine, operating, radiation treatment, chemotherapies. I find it horrible and unbearable that we get on with disease like this.

If we would live conscious and start talking with each other about what we would like to do with our lives, what is social and meaningful, of which everyone gets better, I think we prevent many diseases. If we would think less medical and more human, disease might be a curing process.

To earn money shouldn't be the motive for a job, but giving meaning, social consciousness. Than work, school, and educations would become social occupations. The houses got 6 six times as expensive in 20 years time, we push each other to work harder and harder, but exhaust ourselves by always work harder and getting less happy.

Children ever start smoking and drinking earlier and come into touch with sexuality earlier. Many tv programs and computergames are about competition, fighting, war, emptiness. Sports are often directed at competition, wanting to win. And music is also pointed at achievements, wanting to be the best, music matches are also about winning. Music should be serving and should provide people who play, listen or join, to feel more engaged with each other.

I think children are very well able to indicate what they like or dislike, but then we have to listen carefully to that as adults. Children still have an open mind, can be spontaneous. Adults can learn a lot from children. Children are able to look very different at what we already accepted as normal and can help us to ask ourselves again why we do the things we do.

In the world I see before me, adults and children cooperate.

What I learned at school didn't touch me, rating and exams lead to external motivation and not motivation from inside. I wanted to learn calculating, reading and writing, but everything beside that didn't interest me. I was never able to say something out of my heart and I never heard an adult talking out of her or his heart.

I missed it very much to talk freely about how you feel and what you really think about everything you experience and what you think about your parents, your brother(s), your sister(s), all the people you meet and what you think about school, work. It's important to be able to talk freely, without getting the feeling that you are annoying.

I think it's important to talk about what you want with your life to be able to work on it. I looked very long for content of my life. I found it nowhere. I couldn't understand that what I was looking for seemed nowhere to find. I wanted to talk with each other on a deeper level, think about everything. I wanted to talk and make discussable how you get on with each other, but I nowhere heard a talk about it or something that really touched me.

The essential change in my life is that I started to talk about what I feel in contacts. I'm surprised how little we're used to talk openly with each other. We are not inclined to search for new ways. Talking about what you dislike is very important, in my eyes. In everything you experience as not nice, the solution is already enclosed.

When noise bothers you, you want rest. When you think people talk superfluent, you know you look for depth. When you're troubled that you can't talk about your feelings, you thus want to talk about what you feel. That's the beginning of every change.

When you agree with each other about how you experience behaviour, you can work on changing negative behaviour into positive behaviour.

When we see this as negative behaviour:

- smoking
- drinking
- use injurious substances
- unhealthy food

but also:

- being silent
- exclude people
- isolation, loneliness, being apart
- being alone
- wanting to be independent
- boredom, emptiness
- superficiality
- tension
- war
- pressure and noise
- grudge
- ignore each other
- indifference
We then know that we see as positive:

- not smoking
- not drinking
- not using injurious substances
- eating healthy

and especially:

- talking, talking out problems
- staying in conversation, especially if you differ in opinion
- being together, making connections
- cooperating, sharing responsibility
- realizing you need each other
- being at work meaningful
- search for depth
- relieving tension
- peace
- rest and silence
- stimulating each other
- listening to each other, taking each other seriously
- feeling empathy for and feeling with each other

If we would live in larger communities (more than two parents and one, two or three children), we could start to help each other to cooperate and to live together in a new way. I also believe schools are too big and too anonymous. I think parents, or other adults, are very well able to teach children reading, writing and calculating. Adults and children can also learn from each other. It's important to think about new forms to pass and to share knowledge.

To do something where your heart goes out to and that you experience as meaningful and social, is essential to feel happy in my eyes. Talking with each other about what you experience in your life gives direction to do something meaningful with your life. In small communities, you could share and exchange knowledge. By putting into words experiences, you get distance from situations and from yourself, that's how you develop consciousness and how we can learn from our experiences and look for improvements.

Few people talk seriously and openly with each other, and it's neither easy to talk about sexuality. Sexuality is everywhere around us, but on the same time we hardly talk about it and much of what happens stays being hidden. It's important that you can say what you like and dislike. When the contact with somebody doesn't feel good, than the sexual contact naturally does't feel good either. You are the same person. Now sex is much seen as a lust, which doesn't do good the (sexual) contact. If you want to keep out of it, you have to be sure of your ground.

Young people get in touch with sexuality ever earlier. Girls and women are often (very easily) on the pill to prevent from getting pregnant. Sexuality hardly has anything to do with building up confidence and to feel responsible for each other. When you are on the pill you don't feel a connection any more with yourself and even less with a new life. You are also less inclined to get on careful with yourself and you more easily exceed bounds. Actually I don't see that you start to be on the pill when you love yourself and children. I think it's bad that we all do that and that parents and doctors also seem to think it's normal, without thinking or talking about the consequences for your body and your person and your attitude to life. Maybe that's why there are teriffiying many women with cervical cancer and ovary cancer. I don't hear anybody talking about that. Boys and men are also not critical about girls and women that are on the pill.

People hardly talk about love, feeling empathy for each other, liking each other. You should work on it every day, so that you feel your life is meaningful. If you don't like each other, how can you change that, nobody talks about it. We leave it very easily and say that's how it goes, we don't get on together, that's how I am or how the other is. There is nowhere a standard for that. We have standards for sound, food, maximumspeed in traffic, (health) insurance, education, in how many minutes you should wash somebody and get somebody dressed, what the fixed time is for a music lesson. We judge each other about all sort of things, you have to perform, by preference getting good marks, but how we get on with each other socially, if we are happy, what and how we really feel, is not an issue, there doesn't seem to be a standard for it, we hardly work on that.

There are people who get better without medicine or unpleasant medical treatments and there are people who get through difficulties. We can learn from that and that's what science should direct at. For everyone wants to cure, to be born, to live and to die in a natural way.

Because I can talk about everything with Marthe, Jeannette and Erik, I got the opportunity to give words to my ideas about how I see life and how I would like us to get on with each other. I'm grateful to them for that.

Leonoor