New Year

Here is my New Year's post that's a little late written (but who cares!).

I didn't make any resolutions, because I think it's not logical to promise to do something the year following, only because it happens to be the day when our calendar year changes. For me, I prefer making promises whenever I feel ready and motivated to change my life in some way. Right now I'm in a process of cutting down the amount of sugar I eat, because even though I know it's really really bad for me, it's been hard to eat less sweet things. I had thought about it as my one bad habit, but now little by little I decided to reduce my sugar eating. I'm still in the phase of "drinking tea without sugar" and "only bake one sweet thing every two weeks" and "try to invite someone over to eat the sweet thing you've made". Because baking is one of my hobbies, I would like to still keep doing it when I have the chance of sharing the results.

Another kind of change in my life I'm processing right now is doing more sports. I don't see it as very challenging, because I've always loved moving and have had like five trainings per week, but now I just needed motivation to start doing something again. I started dance classes last week, and I've been doing some physical strength training every other day, and I think it's just fine like this. I would really love to have a dog also because of the amount of walk it requires, and for previous experience, most of the time it doesn't feel like I have to go for a walk only because of the dog. It just makes a good habit out of it as far as I know.

I asked my best friend recently what she thinks is the best thing in having your own dog, and she answered me with a novel, and it didn't really help me with my puppy fever (not that I would want to be helped anyway..). She talked about the trust and unconditional love and friendship with the dog, and that someone who has never had pets just can't know how much you grow to care about each other, and how much it can make your life happier. That would be the novel in two sentences (:

Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or soon anyway I'm going to post now actually much more recent pictures, and then I should be up to date with them. Pictures here are from my New Year's celebration, and some things I've been baking (:

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Photoshop!

Yahoooo, now I have a working Photoshop Lightroom - that means soon I'll be dropping some pictures here again!

Against the Light

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Unnatural Death?

This time I'll give you pictures from my trip to Helsinki in early December (it's me in the last pic!), and some talk about death and old age, as it has been much in my mind lately because of my grand parents. I know my opinions are not to everyone's liking, but this is me being honest, and I definitely don't want to make everyone to think the same way either (:

I feel like in this modern culture the naturalness of the death has been forgotten. Surrounded by all these pills, medicines and machines the death is the unnatural thing that comes when you haven't treated someone well, long or strongly enough. I would never want to have a machine controlling my life or death, or even see a loved one get to that stage, because I don't think it is really life - at least not life worth living for. I know many don't agree with me, but I'm not ashamed of my opinion: when the time has come to someone, you should be able to let go. When someone can't recognise their friends and family anymore, or talk or think understandably, it doesn't matter much if the body is healthy. A relative of mine said this about my grandfather who has Alzheimer's disease: his soul (I would say mind) has gone in advance, but the body is strong and still hanging on here. You can't have any rational answers to even normal daily questions from a person in that stage, so who and how is in the position of deciding if the person still wants to live that way. I don't mean euthanasia here (that I agree with totally depending on the case), but that if an old person, whose mind isn't working anymore, has let's say a heart attack, I would think twice before trying to bring them back to life.

(Just to not have any misunderstandings: all this what I'm writing obviously only applies to someone, who's mentally not well for old age or some disease for example. So I'm not telling to kill every old person there is.)

The difficult question must be, who is to decide when someone's life is not worth living anymore. Even fully healthy people have very different points of view about "life worth living", so who's going to decide for those who can't have any rational opinions about anything anymore, or who can't express those opinions. I definitely don't have any answers to how to tell when the life isn't living anymore, I just think that when it gets there, it might be better not to live.

I always try to think my life and decisions by the golden rule ("Do to others what you would like them to do to you, and don't do anything you wouldn't like to be done to yourself."), and I do so concerning death and euthanasia also. Directly speaking, I would like to go quickly without years of suffering in the old age. Of course I would love to live to be an old lady, but only if I would be in good shape mentally and physically at that time too. And I highly recommend applying the golden rule to everyone, because that suddenly might make decisions easier and more logical, even though sometimes it is hard when there are too many points of view (:

I once read about some native tribe somewhere (well that sounds reliable :D) that used to send their elders in a canoe to the river to die when they either for the age of their mind or body could not participate in normal life anymore. According to their believes, this was the way they saved their people from the suffering of the old age, and from the shame of not being able to function normally. Death was not scary or unnatural, but something inescapable, and if I remember well, the ceremony had a positive  atmosphere unlike the sad funerals of today. It was celebrated that the soul is free now and the body isn't suffering anymore. Let everyone think what they like, but I would rather chose this destiny than lying in a hospital, nursing home or even at home extending the suffering.


I'll post more pictures tomorrow with no writing just to catch up with more recent pics!

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Home Again

We came back here in Rovaniemi on Saturday (what a wonderful feeling!), but we have a guest now so I won't write any more than this (:

Aaand real soon I should finally be able to buy the Photoshop Lightroom to be able to edit pictures again at home too :D

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