John Cleese on Creativity

 

Surviving vs. Thriving- it’s your call

Jackie Millar and Craig Sussek in one of their annual meetings.

Life: the constant rhythm of time beating against our every action, the wash of circumstances and responses – the call and echo of humanity’s plight against themselves.

Here in life, perhaps the most certain thing is death, but you have the choice of how you get there. For all the unexpected, the uncontrollable events that bulldozer into your bubble of ideals and crush them without a second thought, there is something you can control, your response.

Survival is dependent on the individual’s ability to respond, the ability to act in spite of every excuse for them to die, to give up.

It seems in this life, no matter where we go, what kind of life we try to live, tragedy will find us. This year itself began with the Queensland floods followed by the Japanese earthquakes and consequent nuclear radiation threat. Just recently the volcanic ash spreading from Chile is grounding people, stopping them from living the rest of their lives, stranding them in a foreign country with depleting food and money. On top of all this, cars are still killing people, drugs are still killing people, people are still killing people- its a wonder we are all still here.

And yet, in spite of all this, there are always those special few, transcending physical circumstances becoming heroes, bringing hope to the media pages for those short days they appear to the public before the newspapers find another sad story to cover.

The life after such circumstances, however, may prove to be harder than any natural disaster, car accident or funeral. Every physical survival seeds from an emotional survival. The psychological battle is constant, often uncontrollable. It is in these circumstances where survival can mean simply coping or thriving.

On the 4th of November, 1995, two teenagers broke into Jackie Millar’s house to steal her car. As they stole the car, Jackie interrupted them causing one of the teenagers, Craig Sussek, forced her to the ground and shot her in the head.

The two teenagers were caught and sent to prison while Jackie was sent to hospital fighting for her life. She survived, a miracle in itself, but found herself stuck in a dysfunctional body with the brain of a two year old. Jackie, a mother of two grown children, had to relearn how to talk, how to walk, how to sit, how to rebuild her life. She can’t remember how her children grew up, nor can she remember the incident itself, but she survived, free to live her life as she pleased.

Jackie Millar had every right to leave such a memory in her old life, to leave those two teenagers that ruined her life to rot in jail, but she isn’t.

As part of the Restorative Justice Project, Jackie visits the now men in prison, every year. She talks with them like they are her sons. She has forgiven them.

She has forgiven them after everything they have put her through- physical and emotional.

Jackie did not simply survive, she is thriving.

This world is full of people who survive from harsh physical circumstances through bitterness and revenge. Gangs open up more and more worlds of violence from vendettas and rash decisions based on retribution. While this can be seen as survival, it simply creates more circumstance to survive from.

For all the emotions and anxiety that comes from circumstances, this energy can be translated into positive action.

So give a second thought on where your thoughts lead you. Will you use them to simply survive or thrive?

 

 

If you would like to know more about Jackie Millar:

http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/about/id/601186/n/Finding-Forgiveness

 

Survival – Introductory Lesson

For the next Creating and Presenting topic we are looking at the concept of ‘Survival’. In preparation for this, and to practice a wider range of styles of writing naturally about this topic we are going to be doing some blogging together as a class.  To start off with we will write a short article looking at coping with difficult circumstances.

To begin with, answer questions 1-4 together in small groups, discussing possible answers. Please keep a note of your own answers and any other answers you think are interesting.

1. What do you think is meant by survival?
2. What do you think might be the hardest thing to survive, either emotionally or physically?
3. Do you know of any real life survivors of the circumstances you suggested?
4. How do you think they were able to survive?

Once the first 4 questions have been discussed, and the initial notes have been recorded we will go to the computer lab to do some more research into the topic and to begin blogging:

5. Look online for other examples of people that have survived similar circumstances. You might find stories in the news, on blogs or on YouTube. Read / listen to those stories carefully and take note of anything that is suggested helped them to survive.

6. Collate all of this and write a brief article detailing how people might survive the circumstances you suggested.

You will need a WordPress.com user account (You do not need to start a blog, just set up a user account by following the link). Please set one up using your school email address. Please enter your username as Firstname+InitialofSurname, eg JacksonB. Once you have set up an account I can send you an invitation to become a contributor to the blog. Let me know when you are set up.

 

Merspi Video: Unpacking Context Prompts

Even though this video looks at a different context (Conflict) to ours (Identity and Belonging), it gives a pretty good set of ideas for how to deal with a prompt in your Creating and Presenting units.

I can’t recommend Merspi enough! Make sure you check out http://merspi.com.au whenever you have a question about any VCE subject that you’d like some help with or just a second opinion on.

 

The Museum of Me

 

Intel have released a fun web-app that shows off their new processor. It creates a museum devoted to you based on the activity on your Facebook wall. Once it’s done, you are taken on a virtual tour of the museum of me.

This is great for Identity and Belonging, because it is a) fun and b) loosely related to what we are doing.

Give it a go for yourself at http://museumofme.intel.com

 

Who am I?

In answering this question thoroughly we need to take some time to really think about who we are and why the labels we choose are important to us.

I can say that I’m a Teacher, Husband, Christian, Small Business Owner, Man, or Show-off…but why are each of those things important to me?

I’ve been blogging since 2007 – essentially writing all sorts of things that I find interesting. The funny thing is, though, that I start up a new blog everytime I have something to say that is about a different facet of my personality. As a result I’ve ended up with 5 different blogs, but they all have ME in common.

I started exploring my own faith when I converted to Christianity at: http://alphamale1982.blogspot.com
I started a ‘personal’ blog containing miscellany at: http://malgalin.blogspot.com
I started a blog about being a teacher at: http://jacksonbates.wordpress.com
I started a blog to promote my business at: http://www.alldailydeals.com.au
I started a blog exploring my relationship with my deceased father through his record collection at: http://mydadsrecordcollection.wordpress.com

Each of these blogs have me writing about my own identity or sense of belonging in some way. If you choose to read any of them, remember that no single one thing I wrote is the complete me, but I wouldn’t be me without what I wrote.

Please tell us all who YOU are in the comments section to this post.