Never Let Your Dreams Die

“Our dreams do not die because we grow old; we grow old because our dreams die.“

Gabriel G. Marquez

Ethics, Morals, The Media and Governments

When we feel sympathy with someone, or an event, it is their pain we are sharing, their heartache.

When the media, and through the media our various governments, choose what we hear about, what we watch and what we read, they are manipulating our sympathy and our pain for their profit. 

That profit could be monetary in the case of most media companies and media groups, or political power and election votes in the case of governments.

I'm not thinking of any particular TV station, or newspaper, or country, government or political party.  I'm thinking of our planet as a whole, and how our so called ethics and morals have become screwed up with politics and monetary gain.

We are all human, even the most evil of us.  And we are all responsible, even the most kind and thoughtful of us.  If these few words make just one person think about what's really going on in the world, makes them want to change things even if only a tiny bit, it will become a better place by degrees.

Be Yourself - Be Happy

Can You Hear Feelings ?

Music is what feelings sound like...

This is why I love to write lyrics for film and tv.

I can make the listener feel what I am feeling, or what I want them to feel...  deep down inside themselves where it is real, for a moment, where it brings back a memory or a feeling or a thought, and makes it real again for a minute or two...

Well I try !

NB This post is from my Lyrics & Music blog, http://amandajandersondotcom.wordpress.com/

Depression, Mental Illness & Stigma

Why is there such a stigma around depression and mental illness in general ?

Who among us creates this thought pattern and passes it on to others ?  Creating this mindset in the general population that it is somehow less good, less decent, less strong, less nice, and even dangerous, catching and nasty, to have a mental illness or to simply be depressed.

My husband, who is also my best friend, always tells me, “You are blessed not to have a mental illness”, and I do feel blessed.  I would far sooner have the physical illness that I have, than to live coping with depression or worse.  Unless you have lived it, you cannot conceive how life shattering, life emptying and totally overwhelming it is.

And no, I can’t really know how bad it is, I can only imagine the feeling from what others have told me, from what I see first hand, and what I have read.  But I can see how others close to me suffer.  Suffer not only from the illness itself, but maybe worse, from the stigma surrounding the whole label ‘Mental Illness’.

The stigma means that many never tell anyone else how they are feeling.  The stigma means that many die alone, seeing that as the only way to stop the pain.  The stigma means that some of your friends, and probably your family too, are suffering this horrific illness and you don’t even realise…

What can we do ?  I don’t have any magic answers.  But what I do have is the ability and desire to force people to see this illness, I can write about it, I can post about it now and then on my private Facebook page so that people I know will think about it.  I can be a minute cog in a massive wheel and help raise awareness about mental illness in general, especially depression.  You can too.  Please.

Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries

"Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries" is a song written by Ray Henderson, Buddy G DeSylva and Lew Brown, published in 1931.

I wonder how many people choke on the stones.

Any Excuse for the Perfect Time

It's 7.26am on a rainy and grey Irish morning.

I wouldn't normally be up and working so early, but my beautiful, if overly vocal, cockerel woke me at 6am crowing for Ireland, as they say...

So, it just has to be the perfect time to start a new blog !