Seagulls

Seagulls are scavengers. They eat whatever edible food they can find. We can see them soaring above the shoreline, grabbing errant bits of popcorn, sandwich crusts, and potato chips.




To a seagull, a fish head tossed from a crabbing boat probably seems fit for a king. They relish what they have - or at least they seem to if we judge by the way they dive and soar, in competition for every crumb. We have no way of knowing if they are happy, but they seem to be.




For humans, this is an excellent lesson: Love what you already have, and you'll have more to love soon.

Chameleon

The colour of a chameleon can change according to its environment. It's a kind of self-protection. It picks up the colour of the leaves or the tree bark, and it hides in plain sight. Fascinating right?

How about when you meet an individual who seems to be the human equivalent of a chameleon?

This person seems to change to please whoever he or she wants to impress. It may seem like a kind of deception, but it may not be deception at all. Just like the chameleon, it could be how this person becomes defensive - it might be a way to fit in and to battle low self-esteem.

So once again, I think we should always offer the benefit of the doubt before passing a judgement.

Bad Apple

You have probably heard that one bad apple spoils the whole barrel. This is literally true. That's because an apple that has gone bad gives off ethylene, which speeds the ripening of the other apples in the same barrel.

Because it works this way with apples, you may believe that it also works the same way with people, and it can, but not all the times.

Sometimes we make too many assumptions about someone's integrity and we tend to lump all the players in a certain drama together.

Just because some people hang around together does not mean they are all the same, or that they are all unduly influenced by a group member you don't like nor approve of.

Surface Algae, Overpopulation, Extinction

There is an idea that I can't take off my mind lately... everywhere I go, whether on foot or by car, I can't help but notice: there are so many people!... I've always thought of overpopulation as the main
reason behind all social, environmental and health problems - wars and natural disasters being one way of the overcrowded planet to cleanse itself - and although it raises a lot of existential questions and makes me reconsider so many concepts, theories, suppositions etc... I  am not going to get into that today. Instead am going to explore the social repercussions of this problem.  

Every human being that is born in the "developed" world grows up wanting a car, a centrally heated (or air-conditioned) house full of electrical appliances, cheap flights to holidays abroad and a new
mobile phone every couple of years.

Most of the married couples I know, or even young bride-to-bes regard it as unsatisfactory to have one child – some of them are on their second or third pregnancy. Yet we smile and congratulate them as if they have done us all – and their own offspring – a favour, when the opposite is the case.

Why can we not acknowledge that bringing up an "only child" is a more responsible choice? Or even better, normalise the practice of having no children, rather than regard those of us who choose to remain childless as freaks? Reducing the number of plastic bags we use at the supermarket is mere tinkering. Reducing the number of children we have would mean a better world for them to inherit.

But there might be a far more tragic outcome: the extinction of humankind!
 
Let's take an example from nature itself: just imagine a colony of surface algae living in a small pond in the forest enjoying the pond's perfect balance of nutrients. Unchecked, these algae reproduce so
wildly that they quickly cover the pond's entire surface, blotting out the sun and consequently preventing the growth of the nutrients in the pond. Having consumed everything possible from their environment, the algae quickly die and disappear without a trace.

Could a similar fate await mankind if we don't stop breeding or at least, cut down the size of families? Studies suggest that it could be far sooner and faster than any of us imagine!

Telephone

Have you ever played the old game known as "telephone?" In a roomful of people, one person whispers a message into another person's ear. That person then whispers the message to the next person, and so on until the message reaches the end of the room. But by the time the last person receives the message, it is significantly different from when it began.

That's how news are twisted and rumours are born. Keep that in mind whenever you hear gossips and perplexing stories that someone swears are true.  That individual may not be lying or hiding bad intentions  - it may just be that there is room for interpretation.

Never listen to one side of the story and never believe a news without sufficient evidence. Always take everything with a proverbial grain of salt because most people are naturally drawn to weird and exciting stories rather than plain and dull ones, therefore they always tend to make a mountain out of a molehill.  

From A Caterpillar To A Butterfly

Time-lapse photography is a technique whereby the frequency at which film frames are captured (the frame rate) is much lower than that used to view the sequence. When played at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing making processes that would normally appear subtle to the human eye, e.g. the motion of the sun and stars in the sky, become very pronounced.

In time-lapse photography, you can watch a plant grow from a seedling. You can watch its leaves unfurl and reach hopefully toward the sun. You can see the buds form. You can see the petals open until they are rich and full. But if you sat and just watched that plant grow, you wouldn't notice much of anything.

Changes in life are practically the same; they happen but they are often unnoticed. Don't obsess or overthink about them; just be yourself, live for the moment, let things take their natural course and even if it doesn't seem like much right now, but once the blooming begins, you'll find great joy and fulfillment, and you'll wake up one day looking out the window, and you will realise that you're not the same person you were a day before or even a moment ago.  You will realise that you're a more mature, experienced and complete person.

The process is everlasting because everyday we learn or acquire something new, and the outcome never stops getting better... isn't this the way a caterpillar turns into a butterfly?

To Bee Or Not To Bee

One of the most important and fascinating creatures on this planet is the bee. It's been said that if bees were to disappear, the earth would only last another four or five years. After all, bees provide an overwhelming amount of pollination, which keeps our food sources thriving.
 
But many people rarely even notice the bee. Unless a bee invades a picnic or becomes unwittingly trapped in someone's house or car, this essential creature is often unnoticed.

It is amazing how something so small and so subtle can change the course of the universe. This is why I have always said that everything that happens in our everyday life, even a glance on the streets or a handshake with a stranger, can change not only our future but the future of the world.

In another perspective, we often take things around us for granted and worse yet, we get so caught up with trivial things that we tend to completely forget about the essential ones.

If you think thoroughly about it, we all have at least one important resource that we're taking for granted. Therefore we should always acknowledge its role and make sure that it's safe.