What would you change?

sweetpea27 · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 11:02 pm Post subject: What would you change?

If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?

Frank 013 · Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 12:05 am Post subject:

I would fix my knee!

Later

tarav · Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 11:37 am Post subject: Making a Change

I am glad to see that it seems we are all generally happy with ourselves! Fixing a bum knee is a reasonable wish for change. Or could it be we don't want to think about our shortcomings? Or is it that there are so many to list, we don't know where to begin? Could it be we don't want to make public our faults?
I've been sitting here thinking that I am pretty happy with myself and my life. There is one area in need of improvement, but I wonder if in a month or two or year of two I'd look back on this post and feel silly about it. Right now, I wish I could change that I seem to be unable to find the partner I want in life. I am not sure if this has something to do with my ability to choose correctly or what! I just wish that aspect of my life would change!

sweetpea27 · Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 1:49 pm Post subject:

I can relate to you there for some reason it is so hard to find that special someone,And I often wonder about alot of the mistakes i've made and if i didn't make them would I have found mr right? But I don't regret them too much bc we all have to learn from our mistakes and just hope for a good outcome.

tarav · Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 3:03 pm Post subject:

Thanks, sweetpea! I am trying to be like you and hope for a good outcome!

Frank 013 · Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 5:23 pm Post subject:

Ophelia · Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 7:00 pm Post subject:

Frank, what you wrote made me think...

The mistakes I've made are, I find, always mistakes of appreciation or evaluation, and now that I'm aware of them... I still find it very hard not to make the same mistakes again!

Some of the worst errors made in appraeciating and understanding what was being said to me was when I was about 20. During my student days, I was really living on my own planet, the impact of reality hadn't hit. Well, at that age what can you expect.

Later I found that in some cases I had not been listening to or hearing the clear signals that people were giving me-- I was yet on another planet at the time.
In one case it resulted in people getting really angry with me, and there was nothing I could say-- really embarrassing, how could I not have heard?

Now I'm more careful-- I know that my antennaes have not been perfect in the past and I'd rather avoid the old mistakes if possible.

One thing that I still find very difficult is evaluating what young people tell me. In the old days I could mostly ignore their complaints, and, with certitude of my own youth, believe that this was nonsense and should be treated as such.

Now you can't do that, I have to address their complaints, and my problem is sorting out what should be addressed from the nonsense to be ignored.
My colleagues seem to know how to do this -- I know for every day use, I don't bumble into mistakes day in and day out, but occasionally I find it difficult to have the correct appreciation.
Some years I have ignored the complaints, which were also in a vocabularyI did not understand and honestly made no sense to me. And on one or two occasions the results were near catastrophic.

Often it just seems to me that this is play acting: young people get as worked up over last Friday's test or the trampled rights of students in our schools as over the invasion of Tibet.
Once, after an outburst of indignation, I asked them if they really believed in all this or if it was a show: I honestly didn't know.
They said of course they believed in what they were saying!

And the thing is, I think that at the time, the quibbling about their marks is as important as repression in Tibet. They probaly don't know themselves.

Still, teachers are supposed to know those things.

My colleague Baba Cool can speak volumes about unfairness and the young, and how he himself could not abide unfairness when he was a student... and really none of it makes sense to me.

One of my colleagues and friends is much more clever than I am about all those things, and has the ability to think the way young people think, sometimes in their words, and often defends their point of view-- a very impressive case of empathy for me to study; she's not a beginner, so the empathy is not due to the age factor.

One day I asked her how one could tell whether those young people were really indignant or were just faking it.
She, the defender of the young, answered: "Ah... the thing is, you can never know."

Sad

ralphinlaos · Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2008 10:29 am Post subject:

I would be less selfish and more tolerant.

And about twenty pounds lighter.

Penelope · Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 10:40 am Post subject:

I would be less concerned about whether people like me or not and be far more concerned about whether I like myself. I am working on this.

I would get rid of my baby fine...fluffy hair....and have really serious, sensible hair.....that looks grown-up and adult......for when I am pretending to be grown-up and adult.

coffeeaddict · Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 3:55 pm Post subject:

For me, it is an easy choice. I have been legally blind since birth, so I give myself full vision if I could.

Penelope · Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 2:21 pm Post subject:

Wow.....Coffee.....

And there's me waffling about my bloody hair!!!!! Embarassed

However...I am interested in how you cope with your condition.

How can you read the computer screen? Is there some kind of braille mechanism or a speech facility? Is the text written extra large?

How wonderful that you can do this.....

I hope you don't mind my asking.... but if you do mind.....please just ignore me.

Pen x

coffeeaddict · Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 5:17 am Post subject:

Penelope · Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 6:07 am Post subject:

Coffee - that softeware sounds great. I will take a look at that link.

It is great that you have a sense of direction though. Having a really good reason for achieving your degree will help you along I'm sure.

I know so many really bright young people....who seem to be floundering around not knowing what subjects to take because they have no idea what they want to do on graduating, which must be a curb on enthusiasm for study.

Still, none of us is enthusiastic all the time I suppose. Now I'm waffling....still, I can waffle for England.......I could get an Olympic Gold Medal for waffling.

Very Happy

Ophelia · Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 7:00 am Post subject:

Hello Charlie,

I've looked up the zoomtext demo, it's great to see that such software exists and helps you to have access to books, and also communicate with us.
It's a shame such things are so expensive.

Sometimes all it takes is a clever group of people and some volunteers to do something very helpful. A few weeks ago I saw a short report on french television-- I missed the beginning with the practical details of who and where, but it seemed to be a group coupled with a library. They had volunteers who read books onto CDs, which were then sent to people whose eyesight did not permit them to read the paper version of the book. The readers were often elderly ladies who could not travel to the library, so the CD was sent to them by mail, and it was very cheap.
I wondered how they got permission and how the authors were persuaded to wave fees-- if indeed that was the case.
Everything in the association looked pleasant and efficient.

It looked like something local, but actually there is a larger association which takes care of this nationally:

http://www.giaa.org/-Qui-sommes-nous-.html

Do you have an association like this that you can borrow audiobooks from in Australia Charley?

ayemea · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2008 5:13 am Post subject:

I would change my communication problem. I'm not really good at talking to other people and most times I just don't know what to say. Sometimes this part of me is really annoying myself.


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