What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why?
Especially humid. Humidity drains all the energy out of me. We went to Florida in 2014 and hit the weather just right, it was cool enough to need a jacket, until the last day.
The change was startling. Sun blistering the skin, a humidity that weighed me down physically, and not enough energy to cross a rather modest car park, Tony had to drive up to me.
Dry heat isn’t too bad, in Italy it was a dry heat and I fared much better. Came home with a lovely tan for me, walked into work and they said “didn’t you go?” Just because I’m not a show off tanner. I like my warm golden glow.
It makes choosing holidays easy, no heat no humidity. Warmth and no dehydration. But then I’ve never been one for any extremes.
Extremes are too hot to handle
I’m not excessive in my love for others, I don’t throw my arms around people screaming that I’ve missed them so much since they visited the loo! But you turn around and I’ll be there, solidly, quietly, and if I love you, you know it. You trust it. Its real.
I am centrist in my entire life, including my politics. Extremes spend more time being extreme than they do getting on with life and being useful.
I don’t believe in anything strongly except:
Love and everything that means.
Kindness and everything that means.
Respect and inclusion and everything they stand for.
I thank God I have the strength to stand up for those beliefs. You wouldn’t believe how many times you have to face down an opinionated, prejudiced, bully, look them in the eye and say “and?”
It’s harder on social media but I manage it.
But I don’t care. You see my parents, and their parents before them, saw man’s inhumanity to man up close. My mother spoke of walking home and hearing a doodlebug (flying bomb), knowing that if the engine dropped behind her she was probably dead. She was 16! There are uncles I never met.
Some have carried hatred throughout the intervening years, I stand up for the peace our troops fought for. I carry that flame forward. I never met a serving military person who still believed in violence. Mum said the bullies came home cured.
What too
Of this world is going through right now beggars belief. No change to masculine attitudes in thousands of years. And no change in decent men either. I never forget that you exist in your millions.
I’m not woke, or a liberal lefty.
I’m simply a person who knows that harming any living thing is wrong, that my beliefs are not always right, that I can’t understand others when I don’t have their experience so I must simply respect that experience. Therefore skin colour, race, and gender, simply are.
I understand that nothing I am makes me better or worse than any human who walks this earth, unless they harm or kill. Then I’m definitely better. I also know that I’m in the majority there.
People struggle with this commitment and unleash their insults to see if they can phase you, unconsciously proving you right.
In these matters I’m way too hot to handle and I can cope with that kinda of heat.
Love improves everything.
May your life improve daily.
With love
Deb xx
Deb Hawken - Amorah 