So Good!

How many times have you said that?

"AAAHHH! Sooooo Gooood!"

I say it all the time. If not aloud, in my head. It's the phrase that sums up a good meal, a drink when I'm thirsty, a chair when my feet are killing me. But, when I hear that phrase, doing something morally good and beneficial to all doesn't spring to mind.

We all have those down days. For whatever reason they creep up on us. We can be feeling fine one minute and the next seriously doubting our purpose in life and how we are meant to go on.

Bizarrely, I get this sensation more in Dubai than I do anywhere else. It's strange because that is where my family are and it's nothing to do with them but living in the sand pit can sometimes make you feel trapped. In 40 degree heat, there is no way that I'm going out and doing anything! 

But maybe that's just my problem. Perhaps I ought to be doing something!

Whatever the answer, I can't deny that keeping busy is the key to keeping my mind healthy - so long as I don't continually overwork. It makes those lazy days and moments when you can just relax with a film even more special.

I first noticed this just after summer started at Uni. Before, I had quite an aversion to filling up my days for fear of not having my 'me-time'. I craved the weekends where I could do nothing and I would work so so hard throughout the week so I would have absolutely nothing to do on Saturday or Sunday. But once I had less and less work, I began to get bored. I didn't know what to fill my days with. And when work stopped completely, at first it was a relief, and later seemed like an abyss where I could fall into nothingness forever.

I didn't know what to do with myself.

That was part of the reason why I wrote my '50 Things To Do This Summer' so I didn't feel like a failure whilst I had more time to think about being exactly that. I got myself a little 2 day placement at uni, plowed into writing things for my blog and tried my hardest to fill my days up to the top.

That makes me feel so much better!

But sometimes, there is nothing better than doing something for somebody else to make you feel better. It's such a cliche but I'll bet my bottom dirham (it sounded better than pound) that it's a good one! :D

So I've decided to list my favourite campaigns that I've come across this week:

1. Israel-Palestine Conflict
   http://www.amnesty.org.uk/issues/Israel-and-Palestine

The big thing this week has been the developments in the Israel-Palestine conflict and the amount of people, mainly children, killed in it. The Amnesty International UK campaign urges the government to stop sending ammunition to people fighting in the area. 

  This is a long and complicated war on so many levels but targeting it from so many different levels should, with every pray and hope and donation, bring an end to the violence and a civil resolution. For this reason, the SaveTheChildren campaign to stop children being harmed is also something that you must fill out - and is listed below. 

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    2.  Israel-Palestine Conflict (continued)
         http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/stop-killing-children-gaza-israel

SaveTheChildren campaign.

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    3.  WaterAid - clean water by 2030
         http://www.wateraid.org/uk/get-involved/campaigns (and click on 'Everyone Everywhere 2030')

I love this petition because it depends on the power of belief and, unfortunately, it doesn't have nearly enough signatures. When you click the link, WaterAid congratulates you for believing that everyone, everywhere can have clean water by 2030. Is it so unrealistic? I think that if you believe in something hard enough, anything can be achieved. But, even if you don't agree, wouldn't getting the UN to discuss clean water for everyone as a high priority make a difference?

WaterAid have already helped 19.2 million people access clean and safe sources of water and there is no reason why that number shouldn't increase! 

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So, this was a little different post for me but I've come to realise that there are quite a number of you who do come and read my blog on a regular basis and I feel that if we can do something good together, then that's worth my while to write and having you read! Thank you!!

The pieces of Picoult

Jodi Picoult is one of my favourite authors. When I pick up her books I know I'm in for a read destined to please. I admire her for her insightfulness; the amount of times she surprises me and makes me go; "Ah! Yeah! That's right. Why didn't I ever think of that?" 

She has a way with words that I only aspire to. A manner of stringing together ideas with a multitude of characters that just seems to work. 

Needless to say, I thought I'd share a slither of that intoxicating allure of the book of hers that I'm currently reading; Nineteen minutes. 

She talks about bad things being like a chain. An evolution of real life Chinese whispers. That one person, in a world of good, did one bad thing which sparked others to attack them for revenge and so continued the trail of bad. Everything we do in spite could be in reaction to a fight over 2 goats a thousand years ago. But what made me think most was when she said that 'bad' was only a way of making us remember what 'good' looked like. 

What would the world look like without a notion of bad. Of people doing wrong. I'm not talking about the implications of an absence of crime on the police and judiciary but generally with no concept of bad. 

I still think the world wouldn't work. 

Sure, everyone would be good - perhaps weird and a tad annoying. But whilst one person would be 'good', another person might be an even better version of good. There would be varying degrees of righteousness and so, whilst there would be no malicious intent in the world, no one would be as perfect as the most good person in a race of good people. Certainly, the whole notion of good would topple. People who weren't good enough would struggle for perfection through losing their good spirit and embracing 'bad'. 

Maybe the world was once like this. Whether your religiously Christian, Eve eating the apple might have been the bridging factor. It whether your not, a man with a herd if dying goats looking to his neighbour with a plentiful stock and finding that stealing might guarantee his happiness. 

Because that's another thing; being good is not synonymous with being happy. What's good for you doesn't always make you happy. A hungry vagrant avoiding stealing from a shop owner and refraining from taking the money he's gained from begging might not make him happy; may not even keep him alive. But he would still have been a good person. 

And whilst I can't stand crime, feel threatened by thugs and constantly have self-evaluation sessions with myself in order to ascertain whether I'm "still on the right track", I don't think I could stand being in a world of goody-too-shoes!