This week Melanie has a Dalek to introduce this week’s Share Your World!

Questions

Fill in: ‘If I were really completely honest, I would say that …’ This is a question for ‘radical honesty’. What are the things you wouldn’t normally say? Things you would otherwise actually hide?  What’s on your mind? What would you really like to be able to say?
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I would talk about the emergency facing our planet: that is, climate change and the havoc it will wreak, not just in a once-a-month meeting of an environmental committee or a conversation over dinner – I would talk about it ALL THE TIME! I would tell people not to litter their masks on the ground – instead, take them home, cut the loops, and dispose of them. I would insist that people recycle. I would chase after scofflaws who litter. I would tell managers at supermarkets that it should be against the law to use plastic bags for loading groceries and demand that they stop or at least charge a quarter for each bag. I would not bite my tongue when someone I’m having lunch with asks for or uses a plastic straw that the wait staff leaves on the table. I would go immediately to the management of the restaurant to tell them not to use straws because plastic straws represent 7% of plastic waste that ends up in the ocean and in landfills. I would be much more “in-your-face” aggressive about anything I were to see relating to pollution of the water or air and other environmental problems (diminishing animal habitats, etc.) and I would demand that our politicians DO SOMETHING NOW!

But of course, I can’t really do much to influence politicians, because it’s not just American politicians – it’s leaders all over the world who are not doing enough to address this crisis.

I would tell everyone to watch the Netflix movie Don’t Look Up and discuss how the premise of the movie is an allegory for the attitudes of politicians toward the serious, life-threatening problem of climate change.

Have you ever broken anything? What about rules?
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I have broken things, although not many, considering my klutzy-ness. But rules? Sure, I’ve broken many, but not serious ones, nothing that would hurt or impact another person. In high school, my friends and I used to joke about how many rules we broke – we even made a list of all the school rules we’d broken. I think there were at least 25 on the list! As a mature adult, overall, I obey laws and rules if they make sense.

Are you  also  afraid of spiders? What is your biggest fear, other than spiders?  (if you’re not afraid of spiders, use your biggest phobia instead).
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I’m not really afraid of spiders. I see them all the time and usually they aren’t bothering me so I let them be. Sometimes I like to watch them. I had a boss once whose son had tarantulas in a tank behind his father’s desk. It was really cool when they shed their skins – it looked exactly like a tarantula itself! Once, I tried to take one of these shedded skins home to show my son, but it disintegrated almost as soon as I touched it.

I have a phobia of pests that run really fast, such as mice and cockroaches. Oh, and also millipedes! We used to see them often in our old house because the basement was often damp. Fortunately, I haven’t seen a millipede where I live now. I hope never to see cockroaches either; we did have a mouse in the garage once. Management put out traps for them near the garage door, but no mice ever got caught in them, so they were eventually removed.

Do you think time goes faster as you get older?
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Oh, definitely! There is a scientific basis for this perception. Older people literally have so many memories stored in their brains that ordinary happenings barely register, so they lose track of time easily. (This is also the reason why older people forget things that happened yesterday, but can remember seemingly inconsequential things from their childhoods.) For example, I might get on my computer, expecting to be on for about an hour but then when I’m ready to get off, I look at the time and it’s 3 hours later!

GRATITUDE SECTION (as always, optional)

Please share something that really inspired you from this last week or month.

I joined a group which met this week for the first time in my senior community. One of the activity directors thought of it. It’s called “The Bright Side” group. We met on Tuesday and discussed ideas on what this group could be or do in the community. For example, I suggested that we buy birthday cards and give every person who has a birthday that day a card, signed by at least one of us. Even if we don’t know the individual personally. We used to have a birthday party every month for people whose birthday was in that month, but Covid restrictions put an end to that.

The group is going to meet twice a month and share positive stories or brainstorm ideas for making the people in our community look on “the bright side” of life!