The Spoon Theory

There's a woman named Christine Miserandino. She has Lupus. She came up with The Spoon Theory to explain to people what's it's like to live with a disability or chronic illness. Her website is www.butyoudontlooksick.com.

The Spoon Theory explains what it's like to have to prioritize and choose which activities you do during the day and which ones you exclude because sometimes the simple things take up more than their fair share of energy when you have little energy to spare and more pain and immobility than others.

While I have to watch what I do, on a scale of 1-10, I'm a 2. I'm lucky. I don't have (yet) a lot of the issues that many of my friends with MS have. The Spoon Theory applies to everyone who has some sort of physical difficulty. Some of us just start off the day with more spoons than others.

The Universe is Awesome

This site is absolutely amazing:  UDF SkyWalker

The Ultra Deep Field obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope is the deepest view into the sky by humankind to date. The 10,000 galaxies that are visible have distances out to times where the universe was just 800 million years old, one seventeenth of its current age.

If you move the green circle to a dark area of the sky, it's astounding how many unseen galaxies appear. Or if you put it on one of the brightest "stars," the detail of some of the galaxies is breath taking.

If you're bored

Draw lines to change the course of th dropping balls: http://balldroppings.com/js/

3 Consumer Justifications That End In Crap

In my previous blog about stuff, I mentioned I needed to get rid of stuff. The next day I came across this blog (3 Consumer Justifications That End In Crap - David Michael Bruno) which gets rid of all the justifications we use to hold on to stuff we no longer use.

The following is copied straight from the blog.

There are at least three excuses those of us with too much stuff use to justify our excess.

It would be wasteful to get rid of it. Uh, no. It was wasteful to get it in the first place. Now it’s just plain stupid to allow it to keep cluttering up your life. What’s wasteful is the mental and physical space that the stuff you don’t need and don’t even want is taking up. Stop wasting your life. Get rid of the crap.

I might need it some day. The moment this justification passes your lips you know it’s not true. Seriously. Here, try this experiment. Go into your garage, find that box you haven’t opened in a decade, dig inside of it, and pull out that graphing calculator. Now go stand in front of a mirror and, speaking out loud, convince yourself that you might need it some day. Liar, liar, pants on fire. Get rid of the crap.

It has sentimental value. Then why did you bury it in the closet? Besides, you don’t even like the uncle who gave it to you. The nostalgia you’re really missing out on are all the good times you could be having if you weren’t constantly reshuffling stuff inside your garage and closets. Get rid of the crap.

One thing is for sure. If you use these three justifications to keep loads of stuff, at the end of your days you are going to have, well, loads of stuff. Do you want the end to be filled with crap? Purge the things that are messing up your house and dominating your material and spiritual space. Then go live a joyful life that blesses others.

Stuff

I read this blog on stuff. Then I clicked on the links in the blog to read other blogs about stuff. I also read their comments. And I came to conclusion I've come to many times before. I have a lot of stuff. More specifically, I have a lot of unimportant and/or unnecessary stuff. And so does my family.

Recently, my nephew Sammy came to live me and my brother full time. He already had a room of his own filled with more toys than it could hold when he was just here part time. But when he moved in, another roomful of stuff came with him. Right now, he can't play in his room because it's filled with too much stuff.

It's time to pare down and live more simply. It's going to take a while, but it'll be worth it.

Here are a few of my thoughts:
1. I don't want to define my life by the stuff I have. I don't want my stuff to have so much of a hold on me that I place a higher value on it than on the truly important things in my life.
2. I need to simplify by REDUCING what I have, REFUSING to buy more, and REJIGGERING my priorities.
3. If something new comes in the house, something old has to leave the house.
     Phase 1: Stasis
     Phase 2: Reduction
4. I could never live with only 100 things like some people have. Certain items are grouped, but even then it would be a stretch.
5. I complain that my little house doesn't have enough storage. Why? What am I storing? Stuff I haven't used in a very long while or only use 1-2 times a year. Why is it more important to hold on to them than to make room for what I use on a regular basis?

If you want to feel bad about yourself, watch this 20-minute video The Story of Stuff. It was a kick in the pants. It helped me reprioritize.

Time to get to work. Time to simplify.

And now for my next trick, I'll stuff myself into this sugar cube.

All the matter that makes up the human race can fit into a sugar cube. This is because atoms are mostly empty space. If you crammed all the atoms in all human beings together, without any wasted space, they wouldn't be any bigger than a sugar cube. However, that sugar cube would weigh 5 BILLION TONS. 


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/6546462/The-10-weirdest-physics-facts-from-relativity-to-quantum-physics.html

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