@Balrog99: They're people I see every day, though! And soon I'm going to be a teacher, and I'll be working with the same class of kids for a whole year at a time.
I mean, most people in my life have liked me, but a teacher's appearance in the eyes of their students actually impacts their ability to do their job--one of many, many ways the teaching profession is like being a moderator.
Be yourself. That's the best thing you can show your students. If they don't pick up on anything else they'll pick up on that. My favorite teachers weren't the ones that were 'by the book' they were the ones that were passionate and quirky. They were also the ones that made the most impact. My chemistry teacher was also a basketball referee and it was so easy to get him side-tracked talking about sports. Despite that, he inspired me to pursue chemistry as a career and I've never regretted it! Don't get me wrong, he was also a good teacher, but he seemed more human to me because of his quirks...
Edit: BTW congratulations on becoming a teacher! Both of my parents and one of my best friends were teachers. You'll get the unique opportunity to make an impact on a lot of people. Don't expect a lot of appreciation at first, but later on you'll start hearing from people about how you made a difference. It won't always be from the people you think either...
@Balrog99: I'm not there yet. I still need to finish my certification--the only things left are a PPR exam and some in-class observation hours that might be hard to get since it's the summer--and find a job.
I do think students will find me passionate and quirky when I ask them about the cap I'm wearing, and then I get to explain that it's a trademark cap of Mao Zedong and his Red Guards, and I totally just walked onto school grounds wearing a symbol of mass murder and no one stopped me.
@Balrog99: I'm not there yet. I still need to finish my certification--the only things left are a PPR exam and some in-class observation hours that might be hard to get since it's the summer--and find a job.
I do think students will find me passionate and quirky when I ask them about the cap I'm wearing, and then I get to explain that it's a trademark cap of Mao Zedong and his Red Guards, and I totally just walked onto school grounds wearing a symbol of mass murder and no one stopped me.
But then I have to convince students that
Hmmm, kinda wondering why you'd wear a Mao cap myself. You don't strike me as a Mao supporter. Is it his ideas and not his reality? I have to admit that I'm not well-versed in Maoist philosophy but his rule doesn't strike me as particularly benevolent...
Hmmm, kinda wondering why you'd wear a Mao cap myself.
Mostly because I'm losing my hair (it's taking its sweet time to leave, but I don't have the heart to shave it). But when I look at myself wearing a normal baseball cap, it looks weirdly trashy for some reason, even though none of the other white guys I've seen with baseball caps look trashy. Besides, there aren't a lot of normal, regular hats that would fit with a teacher's outfit.
I was thinking of wearing an assortment of hats from Chinese history as a teacher: the Mao cap, an ancient scholar cap, a rice hat, and one of those cute velvet caps, among other possibilities. It would give me an excuse to wear interesting hats.
I view Mao as the worst thing to ever happen to China, the only other possible exception being Genghis Khan. He attempted to destroy everything good about China while preserving only the absolute ugliest aspects of the culture and amplifying them tenfold. He killed more than 30 million people through sheer incompetence during the Great Leap Forward and millions more by directly ordering his followers to hunt down class enemies during the Cultural Revolution.
But as a historian, you kinda have to accept that the past was a horrible place in general, and you can't stay mad at people who have been dead for 40 years. Besides, once history gets sufficiently grisly, you can't take it quite as seriously anymore, because fully appreciating the sheer horror would destroy you psychologically, if it was even possible for your brain to understand it.
You can chuckle and shake your head at the absurdity of history, or you can vomit with rage.
Hmmm, kinda wondering why you'd wear a Mao cap myself.
Mostly because I'm losing my hair (it's taking its sweet time to leave, but I don't have the heart to shave it). But when I look at myself wearing a normal baseball cap, it looks weirdly trashy for some reason, even though none of the other white guys I've seen with baseball caps look trashy. Besides, there aren't a lot of normal, regular hats that would fit with a teacher's outfit.
I was thinking of wearing an assortment of hats from Chinese history as a teacher: the Mao cap, an ancient scholar cap, a rice hat, and one of those cute velvet caps, among other possibilities. It would give me an excuse to wear interesting hats.
I view Mao as the worst thing to ever happen to China, the only other possible exception being Genghis Khan. He attempted to destroy everything good about China while preserving only the absolute ugliest aspects of the culture and amplifying them tenfold. He killed more than 30 million people through sheer incompetence during the Great Leap Forward and millions more by directly ordering his followers to hunt down class enemies during the Cultural Revolution.
But as a historian, you kinda have to accept that the past was a horrible place in general, and you can't stay mad at people who have been dead for 40 years. Besides, once history gets sufficiently grisly, you can't take it quite as seriously anymore, because fully appreciating the sheer horror would destroy you psychologically, if it was even possible for your brain to understand it.
You can chuckle and shake your head at the absurdity of history, or you can vomit with rage.
Or you can just realize that progress is gradual. I wouldn't want to be in any other time in human history myself (even with nuclear weapons, global warming, anti-vaxers, Trump, Bolsonaro, Putin, Erdogan, terrorists, fake-news or any other of today's problems). Name one time in history where things were better than they are right now.
Ya, I don't know about Genghis being that bad for China. He only conquered the northern portion of China, with the Song dynasty persisting in the south. Even before he conquered Northern China, the Khitan had already conquered most of it before them, it's the reason the Mongol name for China was Khitai, which eventually became corrupted to Cathay, and is why old maps of Europe show China as Cathay. I'd certainly make the case for Qing rulers being worse for China than the Mongols and a lot of the Yuan dynasty (at least the earlier Yuan dynasty).
I do agree you can't hold people to account for the wrongs of their ancestors, though. History is brutal. Especially once you consider the Nazi plans for the final solution and how to handle Eastern Europe were based off how the Americans dealt with the native population.
Ya, I don't know about Genghis being that bad for China. He only conquered the northern portion of China, with the Song dynasty persisting in the south. Even before he conquered Northern China, the Khitan had already conquered most of it before them, it's the reason the Mongol name for China was Khitai, which eventually became corrupted to Cathay, and is why old maps of Europe show China as Cathay. I'd certainly make the case for Qing rulers being worse for China than the Mongols and a lot of the Yuan dynasty (at least the earlier Yuan dynasty).
I do agree you can't hold people to account for the wrongs of their ancestors, though. History is brutal. Especially once you consider the Nazi plans for the final solution and how to handle Eastern Europe were based off how the Americans dealt with the native population.
Good ol' Ghenghis wasn't so great for Eastern Europe or Asia Minor though. Just sayin'...
Ya, I don't know about Genghis being that bad for China. He only conquered the northern portion of China, with the Song dynasty persisting in the south. Even before he conquered Northern China, the Khitan had already conquered most of it before them, it's the reason the Mongol name for China was Khitai, which eventually became corrupted to Cathay, and is why old maps of Europe show China as Cathay. I'd certainly make the case for Qing rulers being worse for China than the Mongols and a lot of the Yuan dynasty (at least the earlier Yuan dynasty).
I do agree you can't hold people to account for the wrongs of their ancestors, though. History is brutal. Especially once you consider the Nazi plans for the final solution and how to handle Eastern Europe were based off how the Americans dealt with the native population.
Good ol' Ghenghis wasn't so great for Eastern Europe or Asia Minor though. Just sayin'...
@DrHappyAngry: That's a good reason to put Genghis Khan as the second-worst thing to happen to China. For me, the sticking point is the impact on human development: destroying a fraction of a productive civilization is much worse in the past than in the past because it slows down future progress, and that means Genghis Khan held back global development far more than Mao because he did it so much earlier. But considering how much China stagnated for unrelated reasons, and considering the incredible potential that China had during the 20th century, the fall to communism seems like an incredible lost opportunity. So I'm not quite sure that Mao is the 1st instead of the 2nd. But then, the very concept of ranking them is pretty hard to do objectively!
I realize I'm speaking in very abstract terms, about economic development, which might not sound as meaningful as a body count, but I think it's an important factor worth considering. It's not just the sheer death toll; it's the long-term impact on the human race. I understand that there are large sections of land across Eurasia that are forested precisely because the Mongols wiped out so many farmers that the land stopped being cultivated.
For the 3rd-worst thing to happen to China and after that, it's kinda hard to say. You've got footbinding, the Empire of Japan and western imperialism, opium, and a whole slew of civil wars inside China. There's stiff competition there.
@DrHappyAngry: That's a good reason to put Genghis Khan as the second-worst thing to happen to China. For me, the sticking point is the impact on human development: destroying a fraction of a productive civilization is much worse in the past than in the past because it slows down future progress, and that means Genghis Khan held back global development far more than Mao because he did it so much earlier. But considering how much China stagnated for unrelated reasons, and considering the incredible potential that China had during the 20th century, the fall to communism seems like an incredible lost opportunity. So I'm not quite sure that Mao is the 1st instead of the 2nd. But then, the very concept of ranking them is pretty hard to do objectively!
I realize I'm speaking in very abstract terms, about economic development, which might not sound as meaningful as a body count, but I think it's an important factor worth considering. It's not just the sheer death toll; it's the long-term impact on the human race. I understand that there are large sections of land across Eurasia that are forested precisely because the Mongols wiped out so many farmers that the land stopped being cultivated.
For the 3rd-worst thing to happen to China and after that, it's kinda hard to say. You've got footbinding, the Empire of Japan and western imperialism, opium, and a whole slew of civil wars inside China. There's stiff competition there.
The general Eastern view of human-beings has held them back far more than any individual. Having said that, the Eastern philosophy is far more family friendly than Western philosophy. The jury is still out on which viewpoint will eventually prevail. Or, in my opinion, the real answer will be a blend of the two philosophies eventually...
I don't know enough about Chinese history, but reading your exchange about it was very interesting.
@semiticgod , about your initial worry about how people will perceive you as a quirky, "weird" teacher:
I strongly agree with @Balrog99. First, of course I remember all my teachers, but the "normal" ones weren't the ones who left an impact.
Second, be yourself and to the Nine Hells with their expectations. Life is too short to spend it trying to be someone else. I'm saying from personal experience that the *really* weird stuff is best hidden until people get to know you a bit better at work, but it's exhausting trying to be different than your real self, and it will make you feel bad. The worries about how others see you are part of the journey, of course, but the alternative is worse.
There are always people who won't like us, no matter how hard we try. And they're not even worth the effort, because they will still dislike everyone who doesn't fit into their narrow box.
In my work it's similar that people have a certain expectation about how you should be and behave to be respected. I tried for a long time, unsuccessfully, to fit in. It made me feel even worse.
Now I don't care anymore, most of the time. I'm me, and I've found a place to work where I can be myself and some people still like me, and some who dislike me still respect me, and the others can talk whatever they want behind my back. But of course it wasn't always like this and sometimes I still get those looks and sometimes they still hurt me. But the older I get, the less I care how I'm being judged by people.
You can be a quirky teacher and your students will like you. You can be a good and quirky teacher, and their parents and your colleagues will respect you, most of the time.
Just try not to be a bad and quirky teacher, because then you're in trouble ?.
And I think the best choice is the ancient Chinese scholar hat. With those awesome red silk robes to go along with it, of course.
Edit: hat off to @Balrog99 for mentioning anti-vaxers in the same sentence with terrorists and nuclear weapons. I couldn't agree more.
@DrHappyAngry: That's a good reason to put Genghis Khan as the second-worst thing to happen to China. For me, the sticking point is the impact on human development: destroying a fraction of a productive civilization is much worse in the past than in the past because it slows down future progress, and that means Genghis Khan held back global development far more than Mao because he did it so much earlier. But considering how much China stagnated for unrelated reasons, and considering the incredible potential that China had during the 20th century, the fall to communism seems like an incredible lost opportunity. So I'm not quite sure that Mao is the 1st instead of the 2nd. But then, the very concept of ranking them is pretty hard to do objectively!
I realize I'm speaking in very abstract terms, about economic development, which might not sound as meaningful as a body count, but I think it's an important factor worth considering. It's not just the sheer death toll; it's the long-term impact on the human race. I understand that there are large sections of land across Eurasia that are forested precisely because the Mongols wiped out so many farmers that the land stopped being cultivated.
For the 3rd-worst thing to happen to China and after that, it's kinda hard to say. You've got footbinding, the Empire of Japan and western imperialism, opium, and a whole slew of civil wars inside China. There's stiff competition there.
I still put the Qing ahead of the Mongols as being worse for China, they were foreign invaders from Manchuria and forced the entire male population to wear those ridiculous hair cuts (shaved up front with the pony tail in back). The Hong Xiuquan rebellion, opium wars and republican rebellions all happened under their reign. Genghis just conquered a region of china that had been conquered by the Jurchid's and Khitan before him, so a lot of the place was already wrecked when he got there. Sure, initially he wanted to turn it into a big pasture land, but one of his advisors, a half Chinese half Khitan, explained to him that if you just tax the populace, you'll make far more money over time. The Mongols also loved Chinese engineers, it was the only way they could siege and take cities. They also rebuilt Northern China pretty fast, and Kublai had his capitol at Kaifeng. The Pax-Mongolica turned out to be one of the biggest movers for the advancement and exchange of ideas across the old world. The silk road became safer than it had ever been.
@DrHappyAngry: I understand that the Qing was actually rated as one of the better regimes for China. It was only very late in the game that the Qing was faring poorly, but that was pretty standard for non-Western countries in general at the time. For most of the Qing, China was pretty prosperous and unified, and the Qianlong emperor oversaw China expanding its borders further than any previous dynasty had. Qing China was the strongest China ever got before Deng Xiaoping came along.
Interesting perspective on the Yuan dynasty. In terms of global development, the shift in trade might have outweighed the destruction that ushered in the Yuan (though again, that's hard to objectively measure). The Yuan wasn't very popular within China, though--it was even more blatantly foreign than the Qing, with emperors who didn't even learn the Chinese script or adapt to Chinese customs. If I recall correctly, even today the dynasty is viewed with ambivalence, and the justification for accepting it as a Chinese dynasty (which you have to do, if you want to maintain the myth of the "continuous Chinese state") was simply that the Song was weak and somebody needed to take over.
Heh, of course it's the latter portion of any dynasty that's the worst. Kublai definitely embraced Chinese culture, but he was the last good Mongol leader they had.
I view the Mongol conquests of China and the middle East much like how I view Alexander the great's conquests of Greece and Persia. I'm sure some people have argued Philip and Alexander were the worst things to happen to Greece, but they opened up trade routes and the exchange of ideas across the Mediterranean.
In a lot of ways you could make the same for and against arguments for Qin Shi Huang Di. He was a horribly brutal tyrant and a book burner, but his roads and standards made travel and the exchange of ideas easier after his death.
I'll third what Balrog and Arvia said about being a teacher. If you have a strong enough personality to maintain authority over your class without having to enforce it - which, based on my impression of you here on the forum, doesn't seem exactly untrue, - then you can't really do worse than put a mask on your face and play a human gear in the bureaucratic system. Inspire your students to be their own person walking their own path and unafraid of their own quirks, rather than raise exemplary citizen clones.
A minor unhappiness: I found out I was whispering to myself when a couple other people were present and they found it a little weird. They're people I know, but still, it feels awful to find out you ever seemed off-putting to someone. That's really not how I want people to see me.
My favorite quote in the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy is when Gandalf says his habit of speaking to himself is actually just a habit of talking to the smartest person present. My minor unhappiness is that they didn't include that in the movies.
Also, I think there are actual studies showing that it's easier to keep your line of thought and stay focused if you're whispering to yourself.
@DragonKing , I'm sorry that you're having such difficulties. I don't know you, but I just can't look away when somebody says such things.
I'll repeat what I said last week: I really think that you should look for professional help for depression. Sometimes life sucks, and I guess we're all kind of broken, but if you can't see any light for weeks, it's time to do something about it. You have to spit fate in the face and continue, and eventually you'll find something positive to hang on to, but maybe you have reached the point where you can't get out of that black hole alone. Do something, please, before you reach the point where you don't want help anymore.
@Arvia Do you have a regular doctor that you see for checkups? Getting a primary care physician is more stable than just going to outpatient clinics as needed.
@Arvia Can your primary care physician contact the specialist on your behalf? They might be able to set up a further supply of your medication over the phone or something.
@Arvia , so sorry you're having this problem. Let us know how it turns out. I really hope it works out. Sounds like there can be a lot of frustrations with the health care system no matter what country one lives in. I can't believe they put you on a new medication with only one month's supply, and then are refusing to see you or renew the prescription for three months. You have a right to be angry.
@Arvia, I'm a bit dumbstruck by how unthoughtful putting you on new medication has been handled. I thought things where better with us in Europe than the stories I hear about people in the United States and their health care that make me cry, but like @BelgarathMTH says, problems with the healthcare system are ubiquitous, apparently. I don't really know anything to say that might be helpful, but you have my sympathies.
Thank you all for your concern. Yes, I also thought that our health care system was different, but I usually don't see it from a patient's perspective...
I've been too afraid to call there again because my emotional reaction to that conversation had left me feeling so bad for a whole day that I really wanted to suppress every thought about it.
But hiding is useless, the problem must be solved, so I found the courage to call again this morning. The evil secretary had a day off (yay!), and a very friendly woman listened to my concerns and squeezed me in for a short appointment in June to get at least an extended prescription for my current medication. That's still underdosed, and I still hope that the doctor will call me, but at least now I know I won't be left completely without medicine and have bought enough time to get a real appointment to adapt the treatment as necessary. I'm relieved, which is good, because I'm working 24 hours again and can't afford feeling depressed now ?.
Our little dog is in the hospital, currently undiagnosed. He's under 24-hour care and is getting some medication and fluids to stay hydrated, so he's about as safe as he can get, but his condition could be pretty ugly depending on what's causing the problem. If the problem is the sago palm we apparently have in our yard--a tree which apparently is highly toxic, and which our dog might have chewed on--then liver failure and death is a possibility. He's probably going to be fine now that he's hospitalized, but it is a potentially serious situation.
Our other dog appears to be upset with us. I tried to pet him twice tonight when I got home, and both times he got up and walked away--which is something he practically never does. He probably knew his brother was sick, but he doesn't know we were trying to get him treated. He has absolutely no idea what happened to his brother; all he knows is that we took him away in the car and then came back home without him.
I don't think people think much about the language barrier between them and their dogs. People know their dogs don't understand what's going on, but I don't think they realize that their dogs are still thinking about the situation and trying to figure things out.
I'm less upset about this than you might suspect, since my emotions tend to partially shut down when things get serious. Still, it's not good news for the family, and the dog at home isn't going to be okay if his brother doesn't come back.
Comments
Be yourself. That's the best thing you can show your students. If they don't pick up on anything else they'll pick up on that. My favorite teachers weren't the ones that were 'by the book' they were the ones that were passionate and quirky. They were also the ones that made the most impact. My chemistry teacher was also a basketball referee and it was so easy to get him side-tracked talking about sports. Despite that, he inspired me to pursue chemistry as a career and I've never regretted it! Don't get me wrong, he was also a good teacher, but he seemed more human to me because of his quirks...
Edit: BTW congratulations on becoming a teacher! Both of my parents and one of my best friends were teachers. You'll get the unique opportunity to make an impact on a lot of people. Don't expect a lot of appreciation at first, but later on you'll start hearing from people about how you made a difference. It won't always be from the people you think either...
I do think students will find me passionate and quirky when I ask them about the cap I'm wearing, and then I get to explain that it's a trademark cap of Mao Zedong and his Red Guards, and I totally just walked onto school grounds wearing a symbol of mass murder and no one stopped me.
But then I have to convince students that
Hmmm, kinda wondering why you'd wear a Mao cap myself. You don't strike me as a Mao supporter. Is it his ideas and not his reality? I have to admit that I'm not well-versed in Maoist philosophy but his rule doesn't strike me as particularly benevolent...
I was thinking of wearing an assortment of hats from Chinese history as a teacher: the Mao cap, an ancient scholar cap, a rice hat, and one of those cute velvet caps, among other possibilities. It would give me an excuse to wear interesting hats.
I view Mao as the worst thing to ever happen to China, the only other possible exception being Genghis Khan. He attempted to destroy everything good about China while preserving only the absolute ugliest aspects of the culture and amplifying them tenfold. He killed more than 30 million people through sheer incompetence during the Great Leap Forward and millions more by directly ordering his followers to hunt down class enemies during the Cultural Revolution.
But as a historian, you kinda have to accept that the past was a horrible place in general, and you can't stay mad at people who have been dead for 40 years. Besides, once history gets sufficiently grisly, you can't take it quite as seriously anymore, because fully appreciating the sheer horror would destroy you psychologically, if it was even possible for your brain to understand it.
You can chuckle and shake your head at the absurdity of history, or you can vomit with rage.
Or you can just realize that progress is gradual. I wouldn't want to be in any other time in human history myself (even with nuclear weapons, global warming, anti-vaxers, Trump, Bolsonaro, Putin, Erdogan, terrorists, fake-news or any other of today's problems). Name one time in history where things were better than they are right now.
I do agree you can't hold people to account for the wrongs of their ancestors, though. History is brutal. Especially once you consider the Nazi plans for the final solution and how to handle Eastern Europe were based off how the Americans dealt with the native population.
Good ol' Ghenghis wasn't so great for Eastern Europe or Asia Minor though. Just sayin'...
I blame Subotai for that
I realize I'm speaking in very abstract terms, about economic development, which might not sound as meaningful as a body count, but I think it's an important factor worth considering. It's not just the sheer death toll; it's the long-term impact on the human race. I understand that there are large sections of land across Eurasia that are forested precisely because the Mongols wiped out so many farmers that the land stopped being cultivated.
For the 3rd-worst thing to happen to China and after that, it's kinda hard to say. You've got footbinding, the Empire of Japan and western imperialism, opium, and a whole slew of civil wars inside China. There's stiff competition there.
The general Eastern view of human-beings has held them back far more than any individual. Having said that, the Eastern philosophy is far more family friendly than Western philosophy. The jury is still out on which viewpoint will eventually prevail. Or, in my opinion, the real answer will be a blend of the two philosophies eventually...
@semiticgod , about your initial worry about how people will perceive you as a quirky, "weird" teacher:
I strongly agree with @Balrog99. First, of course I remember all my teachers, but the "normal" ones weren't the ones who left an impact.
Second, be yourself and to the Nine Hells with their expectations. Life is too short to spend it trying to be someone else. I'm saying from personal experience that the *really* weird stuff is best hidden until people get to know you a bit better at work, but it's exhausting trying to be different than your real self, and it will make you feel bad. The worries about how others see you are part of the journey, of course, but the alternative is worse.
There are always people who won't like us, no matter how hard we try. And they're not even worth the effort, because they will still dislike everyone who doesn't fit into their narrow box.
In my work it's similar that people have a certain expectation about how you should be and behave to be respected. I tried for a long time, unsuccessfully, to fit in. It made me feel even worse.
Now I don't care anymore, most of the time. I'm me, and I've found a place to work where I can be myself and some people still like me, and some who dislike me still respect me, and the others can talk whatever they want behind my back. But of course it wasn't always like this and sometimes I still get those looks and sometimes they still hurt me. But the older I get, the less I care how I'm being judged by people.
You can be a quirky teacher and your students will like you. You can be a good and quirky teacher, and their parents and your colleagues will respect you, most of the time.
Just try not to be a bad and quirky teacher, because then you're in trouble ?.
And I think the best choice is the ancient Chinese scholar hat. With those awesome red silk robes to go along with it, of course.
Edit: hat off to @Balrog99 for mentioning anti-vaxers in the same sentence with terrorists and nuclear weapons. I couldn't agree more.
I still put the Qing ahead of the Mongols as being worse for China, they were foreign invaders from Manchuria and forced the entire male population to wear those ridiculous hair cuts (shaved up front with the pony tail in back). The Hong Xiuquan rebellion, opium wars and republican rebellions all happened under their reign. Genghis just conquered a region of china that had been conquered by the Jurchid's and Khitan before him, so a lot of the place was already wrecked when he got there. Sure, initially he wanted to turn it into a big pasture land, but one of his advisors, a half Chinese half Khitan, explained to him that if you just tax the populace, you'll make far more money over time. The Mongols also loved Chinese engineers, it was the only way they could siege and take cities. They also rebuilt Northern China pretty fast, and Kublai had his capitol at Kaifeng. The Pax-Mongolica turned out to be one of the biggest movers for the advancement and exchange of ideas across the old world. The silk road became safer than it had ever been.
Interesting perspective on the Yuan dynasty. In terms of global development, the shift in trade might have outweighed the destruction that ushered in the Yuan (though again, that's hard to objectively measure). The Yuan wasn't very popular within China, though--it was even more blatantly foreign than the Qing, with emperors who didn't even learn the Chinese script or adapt to Chinese customs. If I recall correctly, even today the dynasty is viewed with ambivalence, and the justification for accepting it as a Chinese dynasty (which you have to do, if you want to maintain the myth of the "continuous Chinese state") was simply that the Song was weak and somebody needed to take over.
I view the Mongol conquests of China and the middle East much like how I view Alexander the great's conquests of Greece and Persia. I'm sure some people have argued Philip and Alexander were the worst things to happen to Greece, but they opened up trade routes and the exchange of ideas across the Mediterranean.
In a lot of ways you could make the same for and against arguments for Qin Shi Huang Di. He was a horribly brutal tyrant and a book burner, but his roads and standards made travel and the exchange of ideas easier after his death.
My favorite quote in the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy is when Gandalf says his habit of speaking to himself is actually just a habit of talking to the smartest person present. My minor unhappiness is that they didn't include that in the movies.
Also, I think there are actual studies showing that it's easier to keep your line of thought and stay focused if you're whispering to yourself.
There's other things that I'm tired of today but I'm literally too tires of this world, this life to even complain anymore.
What little light I've been holding onto is just ready to die.
I'll repeat what I said last week: I really think that you should look for professional help for depression. Sometimes life sucks, and I guess we're all kind of broken, but if you can't see any light for weeks, it's time to do something about it. You have to spit fate in the face and continue, and eventually you'll find something positive to hang on to, but maybe you have reached the point where you can't get out of that black hole alone. Do something, please, before you reach the point where you don't want help anymore.
And of course, being an empirical person, I tried if it was really bad. Twice.
It was.
I've been too afraid to call there again because my emotional reaction to that conversation had left me feeling so bad for a whole day that I really wanted to suppress every thought about it.
But hiding is useless, the problem must be solved, so I found the courage to call again this morning. The evil secretary had a day off (yay!), and a very friendly woman listened to my concerns and squeezed me in for a short appointment in June to get at least an extended prescription for my current medication. That's still underdosed, and I still hope that the doctor will call me, but at least now I know I won't be left completely without medicine and have bought enough time to get a real appointment to adapt the treatment as necessary. I'm relieved, which is good, because I'm working 24 hours again and can't afford feeling depressed now ?.
Thank you all.
Our other dog appears to be upset with us. I tried to pet him twice tonight when I got home, and both times he got up and walked away--which is something he practically never does. He probably knew his brother was sick, but he doesn't know we were trying to get him treated. He has absolutely no idea what happened to his brother; all he knows is that we took him away in the car and then came back home without him.
I don't think people think much about the language barrier between them and their dogs. People know their dogs don't understand what's going on, but I don't think they realize that their dogs are still thinking about the situation and trying to figure things out.
I'm less upset about this than you might suspect, since my emotions tend to partially shut down when things get serious. Still, it's not good news for the family, and the dog at home isn't going to be okay if his brother doesn't come back.