The real crime - and the truth about love

I will probably never get some people, because they really seem to live under a rock. They see things I simply have no words for. Then I wonder: do they really live in the same time as I do? I mean they have the same chances as we have, they are not poor, that can't be the reason why they act how they do it. And I don't want to say that everyone who lives in that country is like that. I guess there are also people who live in the 21st century. It's also nothing against the country itself, I mean I have never been there so far, but my mom's cousin lived there for some years and liked it there. And I have met people coming from that country who are nice and friendly and proved me that not everyone is like that.

don't be in denial - picture taken from freedomsphoenix

I mean it's maybe the same with the Iraq or Iran. I guess not all people there want to fight, to make war. I believe that there also live nice people, who simply wanna live and maybe even suffer from the people who give the whole world such a bad picture of their country. No one can say, he is from there or like this or that, so I can't like him or her. I would never say I can't like anybody because of his religion or citizenship or anything else. And in my mind, no one can do that.

So my question to these guys is: what is actual crime? What is your definition of that? Is a person who has another point of view on something already an evil person? Is it wrong when someone likes other things, prefers something else? Of course not - in my mind is this the only right answer. People are equal, no matter what they like, how they look like or how they behave. As long as they don't harm anyone in any way, it all should be okay. Everyone should be treaten equally. I mean, wouldn't it be boring if everyone would be exactly the same? Like from the same line production?

'Oh this human being is from the XYZ-series from the year 2012. They all look the same, have the same abilities and features.'

So why should it be a crime to accept and respect a person for who he or she is? I guess we have all developed in the past years. No one wants to live with stereotypes, because not two persons are 100% the same. Everyone is unique in his or her own way. And we should respect that. So why should it be a crime to talk about love? Is there only one definition of it, the one that these guys created? I'd like to ask them, if they think love is between a man and a woman and anything else is not real, is even 'evil'?
So let's go back to the beginning of this post: do they live under a rock? Probably they sit there, in their own, self-created world. And they see things, and everyone has to see it the same way and they can't understand why everyone should disagree with them.

But no one can be judged for what, and who he/she is. No one has the right to do that. That's why I don't judge these guys, just ask them what makes they think like that. Everyone wants to be free and being free in every decision also includes love. To not allow people to talk about all parts of love, is discrimination - and there is the real 'crime' hidden. People need to be free, free to talk about what they feel and free about to love. So when someone says that the people of a country should accept and respect the gays, how can someone say that's a crime? As I wrote above, I think not everyone in this country is like this, but to the people who are, is my question: isn't there real crime out there? In which century do you live? Probably still in the stone age, just under a heavy rock.

Form a unit

Today is in Germany the 'Tag der Deutschen Einheit', which means 'Day of the German Unity', the national holiday. It's a big and important day, because the two parts of Germany came back together after so many years. When in 1989 the Berlin Wall opened, many people from the East came to the West and vice versa. It was a touching moment, and though I was only one year old when that happened, I saw so often the scenes afterwards on TV.

I also saw when the Wall was built, and the politician Walter Ulbricht said, that no one had the intention to build a wall. But it was built. It was like you opened a window and saw your neighbors and one day later you could only see bricks. Maybe your mother lived across the street, but you couldn't visit her because of the wall that covered the entire road. I mean it wasn't easy back then, and I am happy that I live now.

The future's in the air, I can feel it everywhere, 

Blowing with the wind of change

from the song 'Wind of Change' by the Scorpions 

Some parts of the Wall still stand in Berlin as a memory, and in some souvenir shops there you can buy parts of the wall. It's interesting because you can still feel all the history that is in this city. You can still visit Checkpoint Charlie, some things didn't change. It has all the charm from the past, the future and the here and now. So if you want to visit Germany, make sure you won't miss Berlin.

Forming a unit, being back together. That's what the Germans celebrate today. Being separated led to many differences, as the Eastern part couldn't do that much, and hadn't got as much as the Western part like food or possibilities to choose where to go on vacation. So the differences grew bigger, and it was like two different countries. But in their hearts they were still together. Maybe no one would have admitted that, but you noticed that it was true when the Wall opened.

So when someone tries to be more special it will mostly lead into nowhere. Everyone is special, but we all belong together, also in the world. War is never the right solution. We all want to live, we all want to interact with other human beings in a kind way. We all want to be respected for who and how we are. No one is better, no one is worse. Let's stop the war, and form a unit. That's what I hope for the whole world. That one day people will stop fighting, and appreciate the special gift of life.

Here is the song, which is the song of the German Unity, 'Wind of Change' by the Scorpions.

Two worlds

What is the most important thing in our life? Right: love. Nothing is more important than love because love made and makes us. There is not only one definition for love, one sentence can’t put in words what exactly it is. And that’s good. Because love is not just about a man and a woman, love is also the friendship between two people, the love for our parents, our kids. Even hate is some sort of love.

Everything started with love, our life started with love. The more love we receive, the more we can give and the happier we are. Love is free, like we are. We can choose who we love, what we love to wear, to eat, to drink, to see, to listen to. Love is what makes us, what surrounds us. We can show other people that we love them, and that’s what makes us stronger. Together we can reach so much more than on our own. We shouldn’t fight against each other, we need each other and we all have to know, that life is a precious gift that can be over way too soon and most when we least expect it. But when we live together, our weakness can become a strength, two people can do more things than a single person.

Besides love we also need freedom. Freedom for being ourselves. We don’t want to act, pretend to be someone else, we shouldn’t have to lie because we are afraid people wouldn’t like us the way we are. We want to be loved, we want to be expected, but we don’t wanna hide. We want to live the way we love to. No one should be judged about what or who they love or how they’re dressed. We should not lie, that’s in the Bible. But wouldn’t it be a lived lie, if we change the way we are, only that we get accepted?

When two worlds collide, that’s the start of a song by Amy MacDonald. These two worlds can be a mother and her child, a man and a woman, two men or women who love each other, brothers and sisters. They show their love, they change their life, become part of each other’s. The people who are close to us, the people we meet in life, these are the people who inspire us, who let us grow and makes us the persons we are right now.

And I believe that, when one day the time will come, and I have to close my eyes forever, that I won’t be completely gone. As long as the people I know and love, will keep on thinking about me. Because love is life. Love can’t be described with words. It has the power to survive everything. Because love has the freedom to be immortal and infinite.

Criminal minds: Teenage life

It may sound like the name of a new crime show, but it’s not. It’s actually real, unfortunately. You maybe know the show Criminal Minds and maybe you also ask yourself while watching the show, what brings some people to have such mean thoughts. Something has to be wrong in their head, not from the beginning of course. Something that happened to them in their past, that changed the way they see things.

Yesterday I heard and tweeted about the so called Facebook murder. A 15-year old girl who paid money to a 14-year old boy to kill her friend because she wrote on Facebook that the girl had intercourse with several boys. I wrote lately about the risks of the internet and most of all the social network sites, and so I thought I should write about this, too. 

be careful what you put on the internet

What that one girl wrote and published for everyone on Facebook should have been kept private. No one should care about someone else’s sexual life. That shouldn’t be discussed in public. If it’s the person herself who publishes some of her private life, well, it’s her thing, but in my mind, no one has to write about another person’s private life. It’s all on them with whom, how and what ever they do behind closed doors - as long as both want that, it’s okay. I know the girl was only 15 and so very young, but I don't wanna discuss this here either.
I just ask myself is something like that already a reason to kill that person who wrote something like that about you?

Certainly not. In my mind there is no reason at all to take someone’s life, or hire someone to do that. I don’t understand what brings people to do that? Has that girl not seen any other solution? Maybe she could have talked to her, asked her why she did that, asked for an apology. Why didn’t she do that? Why did she pay someone to....? Did she want to show everyone her power like no one writes such stuff about me, or you see what will happen? What’s in her mind, that let her had such thoughts and really hired someone to kill her own friend? And why did the boy do that? To impress the girl?

So many questions are still unanswered. It all sounds like an episode of Criminal Minds, but it’s real. It started on the internet, maybe the other girl felt safe as she only saw her computer in front of her while typing the words. The internet makes so much possible but it also changed our life. What we write and what we do, is saved - FOREVER. And even when we think that no one would ever read what we once wrote or only the people who should know, well, it’s not true. There’s no cache for our real life, but for our virtual one. So maybe you write someone, someone else you’d not considered of reads it and might get it wrong. 

You can reach more people in less time, even if you didn’t mean it in a negative way, you always have to be careful what you put on the internet. And we shouldn’t pay that much attention what people wrote about us. Some things can hurt us, but the people who are really important to us know the truth. You can’t be liked by everyone, but that makes a 'real' person. Who knows about her good and bad sides, and has the bad one’s under control. People should know how to handle the internet correctly, kids should learn that in school. Not everyone or everything on the internet is good and true. I think when the kids would be prepared, something like that might not had happened.

The way I am

You probably have met people in your life and recognized that they weren’t just that nice and friendly as they seemed to be in the beginning. When someone talks bad behind your back about you, it’s not quite easy to deal with such a thing. So what are you doing? Just going to that person and say he or she should stop saying such mean things about you? Would you even dare to do that?

People judge, they complain, they try to find a way to make someone else bad. Maybe to distract attention from their own mistakes which they try to hide. I have seen it pretty often while I was working in an office. You can do so many things good and one single thing wrong and what will be seen by the boss? Right: the wrong one. So even when you do 99 % right - no one talks about that, it is assumed that you do it all correctly. But when it comes to the 1 % you did wrong, the boss will only talk about that and only see that.

when people talk bad about you, you sometimes just wanna hide

The same when you are not that good as anyone else. Maybe you were taught to act differently in a situation or you have a disability that you try to hide or you made an experience that changed your mind and attitude on something. So you might handle a situation differently than your boss expect but no one would ever care. No one is interested in why you are different, everyone sees that someone else can do it, so why not you?

Everyone is challenged in life, mostly in the working world. It is a tough place, you have to fight hard when you wanna survive. You can only do that when you know what you can do best, when you know about your strengths but as well as about your weaknesses. You have to turn your weakness into a strength, or at least convince the others that it is not a weakness. That will make you stronger.

Some guys wanna see you perfect? No, they just don’t want you to be better, so they have to make you bad. But you can strike back - be who you are, know more about you than anyone else. Someone is maybe better than you in something, but worse in something else, and that’s what you try to find. Not to blame the others for that, but prove that you are special and absolutely essential.

The big difference

No, this blog post is not about the difference between man and woman. It's about two different worlds: reality and virtuality.

Some years ago we only had a real life. We met our friends in person and we talked to each other. But things have changed. Now we have a second life, too. A virtual life. We blog, we tweet, we write emails, we have friends on facebook and so on. Some guys even have more virtual than real friends and do only communicate with the computer or the smartphone. When the youth nowadays would be asked what can be used for communication, I guess the last thing they would mention would be the mouth. Instead of talking to each other, they send texts. I've watched a TV show about a family in which the mother sent texts to their children that they should come to the dinner table. Unbelievable, isn't it?

I have also read an article lately that showed that most young people speak in the short language like they use on Twitter. They mix the reality with the virtuality, and so they use words like lol or omg in their daily language. They also don't write whole sentences anymore and that is a big problem for school teachers when their students have to write essays. The beauty of the language will get lost when more and more children use the smartphones and start texting. The earlier they start the more they lose the ability to use the language correctly.

even when they sit together they prefer to communicate with their smartphones

We change. Every decade is different. And so the use of our language and the language itself will change, too. People these days speak differently than, let's say, about 50 years ago. The virtuality is for sure a world we can't live without and the technical development changed our life completely. But it's not only a good thing. When it goes on like this and people use such devices more and more, which I think will definitely be so, then this could, sooner or later, destroy our language. Or at least the language we now know.

I am really glad that I had no cellphone when I was eight. And I don't like it when the eight-year-old foster child of my aunt wants to play with the Gameboy all the time, or the Play Station or Wii or whatever. He also wants his own mobile, but my aunt don't want him to have one and I agree with her on that. At that age no one needs a phone. It's great that you can call your kids, ask where they are when they wanted to meet a friend and aren't back at the stipulated time or when they don't know their way home anymore. Then they can call you and so you can pick them up. It all has advantages and disadvantages.

I was also shocked when I heard about a 1 year old boy who could already handle his father's iPad better than him. For the kids these devices are their life, they would be nothing without their smartphone and without their tablet. They see it as a cool toy and because everyone has such a cool device, everyone thinks it's necessary to have one. I have to admit that I only have a smartphone, which I bought this year. I also have a netbook but I use it for writing only. It's for my college, to work and write. I hate it to read books on my smartphone, I still prefer a 'real' paper book. I also still love to write letters instead of emails - so call me old-fashioned. I don't like to write that much on my smartphone, so I only write short texts or some tweets with it. I guess I could live without my smartphone. I can even leave the house and not take it with me. It wouldn't be a big problem and I wouldn't miss anything, but I'll only do that when my friend or the one I am out with has a phone or I won't be out that long or when I'm not far away from home.

How do you prefer to communicate? What do you need your smartphone for? Do you think that writing in the short language will destroy our language we have now? Not in a blink of an eye of course, or do you think that our language will change anyway? Do you use these short expressions? When is the best age for a kid to get his or her first own device? And could you live without your smartphone?

Good behavior exclusive

So often that I heard, mostly older people, say that the young guys aren’t that kind and friendly anymore. I hear many of them say that we don’t say yes and please and thank you. That we aren’t polite, don't open doors or let the older sit on our seat on the train or bus.
But do we have changed so much? Were the ones who are now complaining about us so much differently? I can’t imagine that. Things were different back then. I think their parents said to them that they should give them more respect, that they have to know how to behave. Maybe some decades ago the parents were more focused on their children’s good behavior than they are now – not all of them, of course.

source: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I know some parents who place their kids in front of the TV, giving them some sweets and then leave the room or even the house. They don’t do anything, so they think that they can’t be blamed for their kids’ bad education in behavior because they haven’t done anything (wrong). My aunt has two foster children and the parents of them acted that way. I would never allege all parents are like that. But in my mind blaming the teachers and what’s on TV for the bad education on their kids isn’t the right way.

We also have some classes in college about how to behave. Some of you might know that I study Media Management, and as a future manager I should know some rules like how to eat correctly, how to greet someone in the correct way and stuff like that. Most of the things I already know and at the beginning I thought this would be senseless. My parents taught me a lot about how to speak to people who are older than me, that I should not talk when someone else does and that I always look into the eyes of the one I am talking to. But I also learned in that class in which order to use the cutlery on a multicourse dinner, what topics you should talk about during a dinner meeting and what to do in various situations like when you need to go to the restrooms.

It helped me a lot, and I know in the future classes I will learn more because we never know everything. And of course some things can be excused, but as you wanted to be treated politely, you want to do the same to others. You can’t know everything from the beginning – you have to learn it and you need someone who explains you how it works.

Do you think that the young guys nowadays are less polite than some years or decades ago? Do you think that only teachers can be blamed for that? I think it is important how to interact correctly with other people because I am like a mirror: I reflect what others show me. I guess everyone is a bit like that. Am I right?