Religion – One Chance to See the World

This picture from my non-religious perspective

This is a shot I captured whilst walking through Waverley Cemetery on the Bondi to Coogee walk that I recently posted about here. It is a stunning walk, even the graveyard was fairly picturesque.

The picture below was inspired by my friend that stood in this spot to get the great effect. I liked his image that much I had to do the same.

For me, this photo sums up the reasons why I am not religious. For some, this photo is a sign. A message from a higher power that has incorporated two things in life into one glorious view for us to marvel at. A person no longer with us that has been glorified by God at this moment when people are present to witness it. I didn’t look at the gravestone, however I can imagine this moment of spirituality for some would increase tenfold if it was a person with the same name or birthday. We seek patterns and coincidence and love when they occur.

But of course by taking a step to the left or right this picture would not be the same. It would simply be a gravestone with the sun behind it. The same if I held the camera higher or lower. For this shot to work, I had to make it work.

This does not mean that I don’t appreciate the view. This may be my favourite photo I have taken on this recent trip and I often look at it. I love it and not being religious doesn’t take my appreciation away from it. But it does help me to understand that in life we look for such patterns and apply a meaning because it is fun. It makes us feel good and telling ourselves that there is a logical and non spiritual reason why this often occurs is nowhere near as enjoyable as putting it down to something unexplained or wiser than us.

I am not very good at it, but I enjoy trying to differentiate between what I think is true because is it logical and what I think is true because it feels good. We are a very emotional species that likes hearing the truth when it makes us feel warm inside. If it makes us feel crappy, the truth is an inconvenience and this is substituted for a more pleasant alternative. Of course this is my personal belief but this is exactly what I was doing when I was a younger, more religious person. I see it as a blessing and a curse having OCD that I obsess over things and if I think I am believing something contrary to evidence because it feels good, the obsessive part of my brain won’t let it go until I find a rational reason as to why I believe it. If I cannot find one, I stop believing it. This is why I am the person I am now, with my current blog and opinions on religion and atheism. I used to be a lot more direct and not as compassionate in my opinions on religion once I had left it, however I know what it is like to feel rock bottom and having at least something to cling to and this has helped me to transform my blog into a one that anyone of any faith or opinion can reach out too and speak openly on. Of course some religious people are dicks, as any human is capable of being, so my rule is if you are nice to me I will be with you also. The golden rule if you will.

But yes, back to the photo. I think it is good to see this photo with logic, as with life itself. Not to just see it and assume something that reaffirms a belief but break it down and ask questions, maybe contradicting your own opinion. Yes it is good positioning, however why does the cross have to be at an angle for it to work? Why does it have to be this gravestone? Why a graveyard where the person has already passed and the sadness already suffered? To ask questions feels like breaking the shackles for me and liberates us of the thoughts that we have always been told to think, and opens up doors we feel uneasy about opening. Sometimes in life we are so grateful to open these doors and when looking back, do not want to imagine a life in which we didn’t.

Thank you again to all my followers and regular readers, and hello to you if you are new to my blog!

New to this site? Click here to visit my A bout My Blog section

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Happy blogging,

Sam

Why I changed my blog three times in four years

Some of you will know that I used to go under a different name back when I started blogging. And some of you will know that this changed. And changed again. My blog is still on a similar theme as it always has been, but I have adapted it to keep it moving and to keep me satisfied when I feel change is needed.

The original blog name reflected an incident that I witnessed a few years back and wanted to write about. It was a time when I was questioning everything, and I started to think very deeply about life, death, reality and beliefs. I left religion and anyone that has done so will know it is a very weird phase. Everything I believed was no longer, and I felt very vulnerable and my anxiety rose. Withdrawal symptoms you could say.

My website was called religionerased or coincidentally, RE for short. One of my first posts was Witnessing discrimination first hand, a post about domestic violence that occurred one day at work. It shocked me that this could occur and that the man committing the act was surprised he was even told to stop. ‘But she is my wife?’ was his reply. This shocked and appalled me. I admittedly lumped culture and religion together at this moment (they can indeed go hand in hand) and it made me distance myself further from any kind of religious belief. I had a lot I wanted to speak about that was bottled up inside me for roughly 6-7 years and blogging was a great way to do that with people that wanted to listen. It gained a following as I published posts once or twice a week, mainly in the atheist community however not exclusively. I remember a great christian blogger following my work and I followed hers, she was so open about questioning her beliefs and listened to my opinions and I listened to hers. She later blogged to say she could no longer keep blogging as she wasn’t comfortable confronting her own beliefs. This was a shame as I feel we had some open and honest conversations in the community between differing beliefs. She was a loss.

Despite this, I started to grow tired of debates. I didn’t feel good at the end of the day continuously disagreeing with people, and it just felt a little toxic. No matter how long I could debate with someone, it was highly unlikely that I would convince them, nor could they convince me. A clash of two small egos on very small blogging platforms. It often led to nowhere with someone I will probably never meet anyway. This is the point in which I felt I needed my first change, instead of clash with bloggers I wanted to do my own thing without trying to convince others. If they wanted to read my thoughts and opinions on topics they could. This sounded much better than what I was doing at the time and I would get much more satisfaction this way. I would build an audience that appreciated my posts and I would spend more time speaking to those that had similar interests and were eager to chat. A time much less wasted.

I remember travelling to Brazil for a wedding and the Olympics in 2016. A trip I loved. One day we headed to the Iguazu Falls, a stunning set of waterfalls between the Brazilian and Argentinian borders and we took a boat right to the plunge pool of one of the falls. It was an amazing experience, pretty terrifying as you could truly feel the immense power of the waterfall. I recorded the footage of us heading right up to it, and stopped recording a little sooner than I wished I did. I could no longer see anything from the mist of the water and didn’t think my camera would have been able to.

Stepping off the boat and onto dry land was the moment that I wanted to blog about travelling more. I still wanted to blog about my personal beliefs and thoughts however merge this with my travelling experiences. I thought if I can show the world that someone without religion can find happiness and motivation to live, I have another reason to blog.

I changed the name of my blog to Living with Atheism, and I posted about the change here. I wanted to post with a little more optimism and fun, whilst preserving my original intentions for blogging. I used the ‘Living with’ to state that I aim to live life to the full but also demonstrate the negatives and stigma around a blog like mine. A blogger friend mentioned that this may look like I am trying to compare it to living with an illness or disability, and this played on my mind. I kept this title for a while before ditching it.

So here we are at my current domain. I was really debating whether to change the title altogether and ditch any association with religion or lack of, but it is such a big reason why I blog I just couldn’t. I love philosophy, debate, conversation and new ideas. Instead I decided to make it as blogger friendly as possible and I want to engage with anyone of all walks of life. I always have, I just feel earlier editions of my blog weren’t very good at achieving this. If anything they would have led people away instead of inviting them in for discussion. This isn’t me. So, I eventually went with My Life Without Religion. It is short and to the point. This is my website address, however I have changed the title of my blog to simply Living!, as living is what I want to do and inspire others to do as best as they can.

I believe change is key to success, or simply survival. No one likes change, however without change we rust up. We get complacent and get bored. These can be small or big changes, but I think it is wise to mix life up every now and then. It is stimulating and provides additional challenges. These challenges develop us as individuals over time and are often looked back on with good feelings instead of regret. I would always prefer a regret due to change in style- as these can always be reversed- than regret not change at all. One regret is much more fulfilling than the other.

Thank you again to all my followers and regular readers, and hello to you if you are new to my blog!

New to this site? Click here to visit my A bout My Blog section

Want to keep up with my travels? Click here for my Travel Diary

Want to introduce yourself and your blog and discover new ones? Click here for my meet and greet page.

Happy blogging!

What do you hate?

Hate is underrated, I guess. If we don’t know or talk about what we hate, we have no way of making life better for ourselves and others. I was just watching a fascinating conversation on YouTube between two of my favourite speakers, Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris. Douglas Murray, someone that I am eager to research more on, was the moderator and to close the two hour long discussion, he ended with a question. If you are eager to watch the conversation on religion, it can be viewed here.

It was a rather humerous end as he had to bring the event to a halt due to time constraints, the topic being discussed at the time was the nature of love.

‘We had a long session on love just then, and I refuse to finish this evening on such a positive note.’

This was met with laughter by the crowd and speakers as, with the previous conversations they have had together, they are always productive and well mannered. Murray went on to say:

‘And I wanted to hand over to both of you to give an idea of not of your loves, but of your present hates’.

Peterson stated after a brief pause that what he hated was the evil inside us all, the part of him that could potentially not just be okay with being an Auschwitz prison guard, but would happily be. The evil that we possess whether we like it or not. Harris stated that he hates unnecessary suffering, his personal capacity for it and ‘everything in our culture that conspires to make the preciousness and the sacredness of the present moment difficult to realise.’

I really like the question because it requires deep thought and in these examples, looking inward and at ourselves as well as the world around us.

And with that, what do I hate?

I agree with both speakers, and especially the answer of unnecessary suffering. This is the main reason why I decided to start blogging all those years ago, I have always desired to get my thoughts out there one way or another. The understanding that whilst I type these words, people are being imprisoned unjustly, tortured and enslaved for simply not conforming to the beliefs of those that have the ability to carry these evil acts out. Beliefs that are unworthy of such suffering.

Selfishness also comes into this and I find this a good and bad aspect of our nature. If I didn’t worry about how horrible it would feel for me to be in this situation and try to avoid it throughout my life, I would really struggle to show empathy and try to understand what it is like to be in their shoes. However this comes and goes from day to day, as I am sure is true of most if not all of us, as I struggle to be content with what I have a lot of the time. The more peaceful our lives are, the easier it is to become complacent, bored and desire more. This is a struggle as there is no end point here, only a desire to keep looking for happiness and the realisiation that we are not there and to become frustrated. I find one thing I strongly dislike about myself is that I don’t reflect enough on how lucky I am to be where I am and have what I have. A loving family, the ability to travel, the technology to be able to communicate with you all anywhere in the world. This selfishness does help inspire me to grow, but it doesn’t always help me appreciate what I already have.

I also hate not knowing the answers to life and the universe and the human desire to crave a bad answer over no answer at all. I am not religious and I feel that there are so many wrong answers about who we are and where we came from, and striving for the truth is like swimming against the current. We often crave answers that make us feel good, answers that we have been told throughout our lives and don’t require a change of thinking. I feel this will- and currently is- causing big problems in the world as this is a universal phenomena across many belief systems. If all of our differing cultures like to stick to what they currently believe, change and agreement will be slow. I wish we could fast forward this.

And with this I ask you, what do you hate?

I would love to know and as always, I look forward to seeing you in the comments.

What was your first blog post title?

I look through the welcome pages frequently because I love to see the diversity in bloggers interests, including those that are just getting started on the site. One of the things that caught my eye was the number of new bloggers posting the following:

‘The Journey Begins’

It fascinated me as I wonder why so many choose that exact title. Are they looking at the welcome page and seeing this title regularly and following suit? This would make sense I guess. Or do we humans think a lot more alike than we anticipate and genuinely see blogging as a path or journey, starting with the first post and seeing where it takes us…

Either way, it is interesting.

And with that, what was your first blog post title? Mine was ‘Truth: The Only Saviour’ and you can give it a read here. This was way back in 2014 when I was fully committed to discussing religion and my reasons for leaving. Now, I still want to provide my thoughts on such topics here and there, but infuse it with travel, art and photography. It helps me to remain creative, more inspiring and less conflicting.

And with that I ask you, what was your first blog post? Feel free to share it in the comments below 🙂

Featured image taken in Newcastle, Australia

Thank you again to all my followers and regular readers, and hello to you if you are new to my blog!

New to this site? Click here to visit my A bout My Blog section

Want to keep up with my travels? Click here for my Travel Diary

Want to introduce yourself and your blog and discover new ones? Click here for my meet and greet page.

Happy blogging!

Witnessing discrimination first hand

Okay my beloved readers, my blog in recent months has transformed into less of a one set up for conversation and debate, instead it has been one that I have used to motivate both myself and my followers. I have needed it greatly, especially in the crazy world we live in.

This doesn’t mean that I won’t post the odd topic that will get us all talking and sharing different viewpoints, as I feel this is equally important if I want to keep learning. I was speaking to a blogger yesterday here on WordPress about some of the difficulties of being a female in her country of residence, and it reminded me of a blog post I was thinking of re-uploading. In a world where there are an increasing number of campaigns such as the Women’s March and the #metoo hashtag, it is probably an appropriate time to reflect on this post.

So this is the blog post from an experience I had back in 2014. It was one of the reasons I started blogging as it hit me hard, and will probably be in a chapter of my book. Let me know what you think and I hope it isn’t too much of a contrast from the recent Christmas and New Years Eve celebration posts, I will have plenty of upbeat posts to come.

Originally posted Mar 19th, 2014.

We don’t have to look very deep into the past to see how faith and discrimination can go hand in hand. Nor do we have to travel very far. It was a big shock for me to hear the terrible murder of Lee Rigby in 2013 by extremists, music to the ears of others. Although extremist terror groups are more present in the UK in recent years, hearing news of a human being beheaded on British streets is hard to comprehend. In the same year, Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head in Pakistan for daring to speak out for her right to an education. Religious ideology had almost stripped her of this right for being female, but for an incredible and remarkable recovery. The Westboro Baptist Church in the United States continually protest against supposed ‘issues’ such as gay marriage because of Bible scripture.

From personal experience, discrimination is plain to see. Maybe not on the same scale, but discrimination nevertheless. From our personal perspective we see the grassroots level of irrational thinking and delusion in many situations. My main concern is what I see as discrimination- a percentage of society see as normality. A delusion in itself, or sheer reluctance to change? Neither are healthy.

Although it is unfortunately the norm in so many regions of the world it is important to see the differential between the two. We are very compliant at accepting life as it is, rather than addressing where we could improve. This stark reality became apparent to me first hand when working a shift in a recent hotel job.

One late shift, the assistant general manager was called due to complaints from neighbouring rooms of crying and possible violence. There was brief conversation in Arabic, but those around weren’t speakers of the language. After going upstairs to knock on the door he was greeted by a couple, a Middle Eastern couple however the nationality I cannot recall. It was the response received by the manager that really appalled me.

When asked if he was being abusive to his partner his response was “But she is my wife!?”. From the way the conversation was brought to our attention the male was confused as to why the situation was even addressed by staff. A rhetorical question to answer for his perfectly reasonable abuse.

But that is what it was in his eyes. She was a woman who had deserved physical abuse for whatever reason and being stopped in his tracks was a shock. One regret I have from this was not questioning why we did not take the matter further. I was young and didn’t want to question someone who had dealt with many situations similar to this after more than a decade in the industry. An incident management hear regularly and therefore address but not necessarily prevent. What does make it difficult is that the female did not want to take it any further when asked. The difficulty of the situation grows here. Is leaving it causing less harm? What are the repercussions in the long term for a victim of domestic violence? Regardless, it takes more thought than a five minute conversation. Lesson learned; if someone is reported to be visibly shaken, this person needs attention.

But since then I’ve always wondered the poor ladies fate. A recurring nightmare she may have to deal with on a day to day basis for the rest of her life. Another domestic abuse statistic. Another suicide to escape the inescapable.

Whatever that may be, it’s enough to stick with me and drive me to ensure this doesn’t get ignored again, and one of the main drives I have for starting this blog. Has anyone else been in a similar situation, or been shocked as to how a similar case had not been addressed properly due to it being a common occurrence or a matter of ‘cultural difference’?

I wish that lady all the best.

Reposted Jan 3rd, 2018.

Photo by Paola Chaaya on Unsplash

I got attacked by an agnostic feminist

First of all, I am not one to throw the term ‘feminazi’ around like a frisbee. I have never used it before nor do I intend to. I want equality for both genders and I don’t think the feminist movement is a bad one, although of course like so many movements you get a few bad eggs. One of these eggs hit me in the face last night. It caught me off guard that I really wanted to post about it.

I was sitting in a bar after work. I was with a colleague and she had to leave, I stayed and finished my drink whilst tapping words into my iPhone. It is a bar that generously gives me discount for working in a business nearby. I was sitting at a table when a young couple sat down next to me. It didn’t take long before we got chatting.

The girl leaned over to me a few minutes into them being there. She asked if I had been stood up by someone. Fair enough, I could well have been. Thankfully, this hasn’t happened to me before. I have had girls tell me they didn’t want a date with me, absolutely. But being stood up is something I haven’t had to endure and I don’t know how happy I would have been to admit it if I was indeed left waiting for a date that didn’t turn up. I told her I hadn’t been stood up. I could see she wasn’t entirely convinced, I asked why she assumed I had been.

She responded with, ‘Why did you mention being stood up? Are you ashamed because it affects your masculinity?!

Very confused, I could only respond with ‘What?!’.

I do have to say at this point that I could tell from her eyes that she was very drunk. The guy she was with put his head in his hands in embarrassment, he seemed a lot more sober. Despite her being drunk, she still wrongly assumed I was a male that was out on a date that didn’t want to meet me and that I was precious about my masculinity when confronted on the rejection I experienced. The trouble with this is, I just came here for a cheap beer after work. Judging someone after sitting next to them for five minutes is a pretty bad move. Not just judging internally, but to turn to that person and tell them who they are is not very nice, especially when the radar is so off track.

Hey, she was drunk. I am not proud of who I am when drunk, and I thank anyone who has dealt with my drunken ramblings when I am in such a state. Being the sober one in the situation only reminds me that I have probably been as stupid when drunk and that I have a new found respect for bar security that have to take trash talk on a nightly basis. Speaking to the guy she was with after she went outside on the phone to a friend, I found out they were on a Tinder date. I don’t know if their date was a successful one, only they can answer that. I personally would have ran a mile after her accusation. She did come back and the next thing I know is that she still involved me in their conversation, and that she opened up about losing religion. I could only assume that she caught the title of my blog whilst I was on my phone as it was strange that she opened up to me, withing about ten minutes of knowing me, on a topic I am so interested in. The topic change was out of the blue. She suddenly got tearful and told me and her date- I did not know who was on a date with who at this point- that she was losing religion and that she doesn’t know if this was a bad thing. It was something that she had all her life and that she was suddenly relearning everything.

It was actually at this point that the conversation got interesting and that I was more willing to chat to this seemingly judgmental person. Her dutch courage turned to vulnerability and both Tinder guy and myself tried to encourage her that there is a lot of beauty in leaving religion. It has, in our case at least, made this life one we really want to cherish. It doesn’t mean the final credits will definitely roll as we say our last breath, there could be some kind of afterlife, whether it be a God or an advanced alien setup. We could be in the matrix. The multiverse may well contain the most awesome and infinitely wonderful opportunities once our atoms disperse and head to the stars that we are built from. To be saddened by an absence of religion does take a dose of pessimism, enhanced by alcohol of course.

So yes, I had an interesting chat with an ‘agnostic feminazi’. I hope there aren’t too many of them around, thankfully it doesn’t seem that way. It also doesn’t really alter my opinion on feminists or agnostics, if one person could change such opinions we would have some awful opinions on pretty much everyone.

I finished my beer, thought about the conversation and was grateful that interesting conversations can sometimes pop out of nowhere, even if I am seen as a overly masculine, emotional date reject in the process. Cheers!

Featured Image by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Into the unknown

Just before leaving Newcastle yesterday, I walked down to the beach for a final gaze out over the Pacific Ocean. The sign as I was leaving dry land warned me that the path ahead is never safe, even in calm waters.

This view is beautiful or terrifying, depending on my state of mind on the day. I guess it can be both at the same time. As I was hungover on this particular morning, anxiety overpowered the appreciative side of my brain. I sat next to the sign warning me of the consant danger of the waves and took everything in.

My problem is that I always try to wrap my head around what is not possible to wrap my head around. Life and how we got here, where we are going and what is beyond our universe. The bigger questions. I wish I could settle with not knowing but it doesn’t stop me wanting to know. Staring at this horizon is a window into the infinite. Right there is a view that could potentially go on forever. How astounding is that?! Isn’t it funny that we freak out when looking down from a height but take no interest in the unfathomable drop below earth? It isn’t the immediate threat we face daily, so I guess it makes sense.

Even the huge expanse of the ocean is nothing compared to space. The ocean itself is a depth I struggle to comprehend, enough to trigger some form of anxiety and unease if I was to find myself far from the shore in a small boat. It is an example of nature being something much larger than ourselves, how can we expect to understand when the brains we are equipped with are much smaller than the rocks it throws about with ease? It would be incredible to possess the knowledge of a brain the size of an ocean, what would it know?

There are things we know that we don’t know, I guess that’s a start. And knowing there are things that I don’t know keeps me stimulated, even if it is hard to take in. Although the sky is a window into the infinite, I have to be grateful I have a window to look out of.

Our love/hate relationship with logic and reason

As I wake up this morning I understand that over 50 people in Las Vegas did not get the chance to. Beyond tragic. People having fun, enjoying life and being punished for it. It is hard to make sense of this crazy and dangerous world, a world that opts for faith over reason and prays even harder when unreasonable events occur.

Two people registered themselves safe on my Facebook news feed as they are currently on holiday in Las Vegas. Say what you like about social media, this is a great tool for the peace of mind of loved ones and instant news about dangerous occurances in your area. As long as technology is being used for good, that is all I can hope for.

Sadly, members of the public are still posting on the crisis response page of Facebook about missing loved ones. These posts are gaining many replies, mostly of prayers.

Prayers are fascinating. They are literally the most paralysing action we can carry out without tying ourselves up. The very nature of a prayer is to close our eyes and put our hands together. If someone else did this to us it would be a kidnapping. Think about that for a brief moment. The reason prisoners have their sight and mobility taken from them is to rid them of freedom. They are now immobile. Useless. Extremely vulnerable to external threats and actions. For thousands of years we have been urged to do this to ourselves if we want to see change. Do as little as possible and be wrongly convinced that it will be the quickest route to an answer. Is it any wonder why these prayers accumulate to nothing? To me, it makes absolute sense. There will be another mass shooting. There will be another million prayers. Change comes when we open our eyes and use those hands.

The problem is, the alternative is to look away from faith. This is a very scary concept for many, and illogical one for others. I understand the desire for faith, however if we choose to look at faith over reason we have to accept that we need faith even more to cope with the unreasonable acts we read about daily. If our societies were driven by evidence instead of ideologies passed down through families, think of how much progress could be made. Think of how soon we may be able to understand the mind of a man that desires to shoot hundreds of people with firearms from the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas hotel room. Think of how soon we could persuade a suicide bomber that they don’t have to blow themselves up to please a God that they have never met before and tha a nice walk is a better option. Think of how soon we would render prayer useless as we no longer need it to comfort ourselves when human beings turn against one another in the most horrific ways.

It may take a thousand years to unlock the countless mysteries that plague our existence, this should not be seen as an excuse to do nothing in the meantime. Typing a blog post does little to help the situation, it is probably as effective as prayer. I personally believe that understanding that you aren’t being productive is more beneficial that believing you are when in fact you aren’t. It frees up so much time to make an actual difference and we should all have an aim to free up as much of our time as possible before it is taken away by dangerous minds.

The world is too beautiful to spend large parts of our day with our eyes closed.

Have a safe day everyone and use your free time to make the most of life, not to please others.

Where we choose to look in life

We are a very proud species. What is better than admitting defeat is to keep looking the wrong way, hoping something on the horizon looks vaguely like the thing we are wanting to see.

I felt this picture deserved a post of its own. I knew right away what that post would be as I looked beyond the spyglass and onto the horizon and its constantly changing weather patterns.

Taking a step back and viewing the horizon as a whole can be much better for gaining an accurate perspective. It may seem better to keep looking deeper and deeper into something to find meaning, sometimes the true discoveries are found by looking elsewhere.

This is how I try to see life. If I am looking somewhere and get no results I will look elsewhere, even if that takes me out of my comfort zone. Looking elsewhere isn’t admitting defeat, and defeat may well lead to quicker success.

What a wonderfully flawed world

The beauty in a flawed world is that some humans will strive to perfect it.

Some, being a key word here.

If we pretended the seas were always calm, we wouldn’t have built strong enough boats.

If we choose to believe there is no danger out there in the dark nights at sea, lighthouses wouldn’t line our coastlines.

Going a little off topic, I decided to look up the origin of lighthouses. I often go in various directions whilst I post to my blog, I find it is a great way to learn. I just don’t often post on my random wanderings!

The Lighthouse of Alexandria was one of the tallest man made structures for centuries after it was built between 280 and 247 BC, with an estimated height of between 120 and 137 m (394 and 449 ft). It is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It then became a ruin after a series of earthquakes damaged the structure.

Can you imagine sailing towards land and seeing a structure on a scale never seen before helping you to shore? I can only imagine what that would have been like. Before lighthouses, mariners were guided by fires on hilltops. This then led to the creation of lighthouses.

Again, thanks Wikipedia.

To state the world is perfect is to disregard the millions that spend their days each year evading natural disaster and threats. I was reading a post by a lovely follower of mine, atheistsmeow, posting of her current situation escaping a wildfire in Canada. It is an interesting read, and makes me think twice about complaining about living in a country that rains as much in summer as it does in winter (I was guilt of this as recently as my last post).

If we were to suggest these events were not occuring, where would we find the inspiration to learn about them and more importantly, learn how to prevent them? If we were to suggest everything is always good, where would we find the time to see the goodness in the emergency services working hard to save people?

I do not like the fact that the world isn’t perfect, I just like to admit that it isn’t because it is the quickest way to improve.

The difficulty in improving is to say that we don’t need to. If you believe this, that is fine. Just please make sure your towns tornado siren receives maintenance regularly, for the sake of everyone else.

Featured Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Photo by Jean-Pierre Brungs on Unsplash