The absurdity behind the idea of God

Ever since I realized I was an atheist and came out of the religious cloud I had been brainwashed into since childbirth, I find myself constantly shaking my head when I see adults talking about God as if they were 5 year olds waiting anxiously for a glimpse of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.

It is acceptable to believe in God when you are a child. You are surrounded by authority figures: your mother and father, your teacher, your nanny, your grandparents. God is just one more. As a child, you also lack the reasoning skills to examine what does and does not make sense behind the idea of fantastic beings, tales, monsters, fairies and Santa Claus. Many of these beings inspire fear, idolatry or respect in you. When adults, books or TV shows talk about them, you believe them. After all, they are authority figures who know better.

Once someone reaches their teenage years and has access to more information, it is normal to discredit these beings one by one. Santa Claus and monsters are the first to go. You might still believe in aliens and the Loch Ness monster, because maybe there could be a scientific explanation for them after all. And you sometimes carry on believing in ghosts because you still think there might be life after death-and because there are so many ghost movies around.

Why is that this discovery process does not apply to the notion of a God? Why is it that only a few people reach the conclusion by themselves that God is just one more mythological figure? I would say some people are just more skeptical. They have an inquisitive mind and they like Science. They read about and investigate Evolution, Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Or they came across an atheist blog, website or book and had a Aha moment. Or they were fortunate enough to grow up in a secular household.

I grew up with Catholic parents. I used to hear this sentence with frequency: “Let’s leave it in the hands of God”. How can someone with a normal intelligence level and intellect believe that this is a sensible way to conduct your life? Leave it to the hands of God? If you are having a surgery, who will be responsible for the success of the operation, God or your surgeon and anesthesiologist? If you have a job interview, should you be ready and prepared or leave it to the hands of God?

The idea that a power/man/woman/old man with a white beard is responsible for everyone in the planet is daunting. Why would one being have that much power? Who wants to be watched every single second? Why would we want to die and go to heaven for ever and ever floating around? Why would this power (some more open minded people, in the process of becoming agnostics, say they don’t believe in God but in a “higher power”: what is the difference anyway?) make so many mistakes and punish so many innocent people?

We all know that the belief in God is comforting for so many people who need a father figure to feel safe. We also know that many people erroneously associate belief in God with being good and moral. We know that in the early centuries the belief in God was a way to explain natural phenomena which Science was not yet able to explain. Still, the notion of a God Almighty is a lot more absurd than the need to have that father figure. However, we see many educated people believing and defending their belief with passion. There are those who also belief they have a guardian angel watching their back. My first thought is: “crazy much”?

Pen Jillette described in one sentence my disappointment that so many people in this country hang on to the notion of God. He said, when explaining to Joy Behar why he is a hardcore atheist: “I don’t believe that there are people who believe in God”

Never tell a man you want to get married

Hmm…I can see some feminists saying I am telling women to be manipulative. I can see people comparing my advice to “The Rules”. Still, I am not the kind of woman who thinks women have to bend over backwards to please men, and I certainly am for women speaking their mind. However, from living for several decades and seeing women get into all sorts of trouble with the whole proposal/engagement/marriage thing, I have a tiny suspicion: the more you show a man you want to get married (to him, hopefully), the less he will want it. It is sooo biological. We cannot deny evolution, and we cannot deny that men are usually less eager to get married. All those fears about losing their freedom, being accountable, being responsible, not being able to sleep with other women (unless they become rich and famous like David Letterman:)), etc, come into play. So we often hear more stories about men postponing marriage or not wanting to talk about it then women (read my post about commitment phobia from 2008).

Here is the deal: men used to be hunters. They like challenges, and they quickly lose interest in a woman who is too easy a catch. That’s why some of them don’t call after they had sex with you on that one night stand. You can be the most beautiful woman, look like a model, have the brains of an Einstein and the sweetness of honey, but if you pressure him to get married, or indicate that you badly want to get married (even after 2 years of dating), he will drag his feet. Why? Because he wants it to be HIS IDEA. He wants to have to convince you!

What if many years go by, you never say anything, and he still doesn’t ask you to marry him? In that case dear, he really doesn’t want to get married, unless he came from a planet where there is no marriage. You then may want to cut your losses and move on to greener pastures, or accept having a relationship without marriage if you love him (without making you bitter in the process).

Last Sunday I read an interesting article in the Love Me section of the Washington Post. This woman was 32 and divorced. She met this really nice guy, and she told him she did not want to get married again; that she thougt it was an opressive institution for women (??, are we back in the 70’s?). Bingo. That did it. Her BF of course did not take long to propose and asked her to marry him with this original line: “Do you want to grow extremely old with me”? I love it.

So girls…if the subject of marriage comes up (YOU did not start it!) and your BF asks your opinion, how about saying you are not thinking of marriage? Do you feel that is acting? That it goes against your principles? That you just cannot lie to him? In that case, how about saying: “I will consider getting married when I find the right person”. That does not make you a manipulator or a liar, and might well make him want to become that right person.

And please don’t break up with him if the years go by and he ignores the fact that you may want to get married and say: “I am breaking up with you because you don’t want to get married”. He might try to get you back and even propose, but it will still not be his idea, not something he REALLY wants. Basically he is marrying you so he doesn’t lose the relationship entirely, and the consequences are known to many people: a not so committed husband.

So..don’t ooh and ahh when you see an engagement ring ad, when you walk by a wedding dress in a window display or try to have “the talk” with him.  He needs to want it too. Badly.

The power of family meals

I was talking to my brother recently and he told me he had discussed a certain issue with his kids over lunch that day. That hit me: wow, it wasn’t even a weekend day, but a work day.

Something almost forgotten these days is the family meal. This is a great habit that bonds parents and kids and provides an opportunity to have important talks with them. In Brazil, they are more common for 2 reasons: parents still come home for lunch, and many families still have maids preparing the main meal of the day, which is lunch. In the US, harried mothers and fathers fix some dinner and many times everyone just grabs their plate and sit in front of the TV, or the computer.

But even in Brazil the family meal is in decline. Less people have maids and more mothers work full jobs. I confess that I only did that with my children on special occasions. Who wants the trouble of setting up the table after working all day? You’re lucky if you have a home cooked meal, as many busy moms just get some ready made food from some supermarket, or even worse, fast food on the way home. Unfortunately, a good opportunity to talk to them without distractions is gone. Maybe we should all use Thanksgiving as that one time a year where we can restore the family meal, a wonderful practice.

The woman’s checklist

It seems that women have so much to do in order to keep up the appearances, literally. Especially as we age, there are so many things we need to do in a regular basis not only to look good but to be healthy. 

There are only 24 hours in a day, and most of us work full time and sleep about 7 hours a night and sometimes have a husband or a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, or children or a pet. We also need want to watch a favorite show on TV, read the news, listen to music or browse the internet. Some of us even try to keep a blog, however sparingly we write on it

On top of all that, there are the little things we need to do to ensure we don’t look like old hags from the outside, and all the health things to ensure that our insides don’t look like an old hag as well. Because after a certain age, all those annoying things start happening to our bodies, and if we don’t prevent them, we will be just like our old great-aunt who complained of every pain under the sun. Tennis elbow, hemroids, Aquilles tendon, heartburn, restless legs syndrome, cellulite, ingrown nail, cervical cancer, high cholesterol….the list goes on.

So besides eating healthy foods and getting your daily exercise, what other things do we normally have to do to keep ourselves looking good inside and out?

-flossing daily

-taking multivatimins and calcium daily

-doing our nails, once a week or so

-waxing or shaving pubic hair, underarm hair, legs, moustache..

-tweezing those unwanted hairs on your chin that start after the age of 30

-plucking or waxing your eyebrows

-retouching your roots everytime they show, whether dark or grey hair

-styling or blowdrying your hair after you wash it

-botox once every 6 months

-fillers if you are over 45, 50

-Pap smear (every year)

-colonoscopy every 10 year if you have no polyps

-mammography every one or two years

-endoscopy if you have any stomach ache/heartburn

-densitometry

-moisturizing your face every morning and evening

-moisturizing your hands

-moisturizing your feet

-moisturizing your whole body!

-getting a tan, whether suntan or fake tan

-walking on uncomfortable high heels to look sexy

-have a complete check up every year-heart, blood tests, etc

-put on make up every single day

-wear jewelry almost every day

-make sure your shoes match your outfit and your purse

-go shopping for the “new season” clothes

-take a shower every day

-make sure you have bowel movements and defecate every day

-brush your teeth completely twice a day

-pluck those nose hairs if you have them

-file your nails

-have plastic surgery when things start going downhill too much

Some men also follow many of the items listed above, and some metrossexuals do it all, but it is clear that the modern woman has many things to remember in her day to day. Whenever we forget any of the above we feel miserable, we feel we are neglecting ourselves.  A lot of women know that feeling. The thing is: we are not perfect, and we cannot control everything. Let’s not beat ourselves on the head if we aren’t able to do it all!

 

 

False Friends

No, this is not a post about backstabbing friends and how to avoid them/watch out for signs. Although I could talk about that too..let’s say, a friend who is never happy for you when you accomplish something, never compliments you and seems to like you better when you are down.

This is a post about words that sound similar in different languages and have the same roots but have distinct meanings. Hey, distinct is one of them .

Also called Colour Words, these words cause a lot of confusion for Brazilians living in the U.S. and Americans living in Brazil. It’s funny listening to my Brazilian friends when visiting; they are not aware of some different meanings because they haven’t really lived in America or spent significant time here to learn all of them.

Here is a website with False Friends in Portuguese and English: http://tiny.cc/lrC7c

That list is very short though. There are many others, more than I can think of now, and I invite my fellow Brazilians who come across this blog to add some more:

ENGLISH                                    PORTUGUESE

1. Compromise (to setttle)-Compromisso (a date, appointment, commitment)

2. Assist (to help)-Assistir (to watch)

3. Absolutely (totally, yes)-Absolutamente (No!, completely)

4.Office (workplace)-Ofício (profession)

5. Condone (to agree with something someone did)-condenar (to find guilty, to disagree)

6. Academy (Learning Institution)-Academia (gym!)

7. Gymnastics (Olympic sport)-Ginãstica (any kind of exercise)

8. Preservative (chemicals added to foods)-Preservativo (condom!)

9. Push (to push!!)-Puxe (to pull!)-this is a source of great confusion for both Americans and Brazilians

10. Distraction (something that takes your attention)-Distração (also entertainment)

11. Distinct (different)-Distinto (Honorable)

Anyhow, False Friends can add to the stress of living in a different country (Germans, French, etc, all have colour words with English) as well as cause some communication problems for Brazilian-American couples.

One of them is the word sleepy. For us Brazilians, sleepy means wanting to sleep.  Americans say “tired”.  In Portuguese, you can be tired without wanting to sleep. You can be tired after a game of tennis and not want to sleep. And you can feel like sleeping without being tired. In Brazil tired is after some strenuous exercise…it took some time for  my husband and I to understand each other on this

Twitter Addict

I never became addicted to Facebook or Orkut. I would check it once in a while but I felt that I had to read too much junk from too many people. People called “friends” who I hardly knew.

When I first heard about twitter, I immediately thought: “one more social networking website trying to compete with MySpace”. One day, I was watching “The View” when I heard the women talking about Twitter.  Their enthusiasm caught my attention and I decided to check it out.  In a matter of a few months, Twitter became my number one source of news as well as website I most spend time on. The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I look at before I put my phone down at night, much to my husband’s displeasure

I now follow many people, most of them news like CNN, where I get good information, latest news and links to interesting articles right there and then. I suppose my number of poeple I follow will increase to the point I will miss many interesting tweets, since I cannot be fon the site all day. Unfortunately, there is someone or a new interesting organization to follow.

The evening Michael Jackson was pronounced dead, I was at the gym. I was reading my tweets in one hand and checking the news on the gym TV-which was still saying Michael Jackson had been rushed to the hospital. Looking at my tweets, I read MJ was already dead.  It took more than one whole minute for CNN to mention his death.  I can only imagine how the 9/11 news would have spread if Twitter already existed in 2001. Accounts from witnesses in real time.

It may be a fad, but so far Twitter has affected my Facebook account, which I rarely check now, and this blog-greatly ignored. Let’s see how long will Twitter reign-and how long we will enjoy receiving several short messages one after the other. After all, everything has a cycle. AOL, Yahoo, MySpace…people always want something new.

Marriage, Relocation and Long Commutes

A certain reality many of us have to endure in big urban areas is a long commute. I traded a 5 minute commute for a 45 minute commute. Yes, shoot me. Sometimes it’s more, depending on traffic conditions/construction/accidents/weather. Why would I switch a wonderful commute for a terrible one, masochism? A desire to live in the country? A much better job with better pay? None of the above. I remarried.

In the old days, people would get married in their early 20’s and build a life together. Whatever their career would be, they would have roots in one place. If the husband was sent to a different city, state or country, the wife would invariably leave her occupation to follow her husband.

Nowadays, with many couples meeting when their career is already consolidated, or when they have children from their first marriage, they are forced to move to an area where both can maintain their jobs-equidistant to each’s work.

That entails long commutes. Long commutes that shorten your life span, create health problems (especially back and hip problems), add to your stress, eat up your free time, prevent you sometimes from exercising and just plain drive you nuts.

Maybe our President should create a mandatory work-from-home-one-day-a-week policy for all office workers? There are so many of them in the Washington DC metro area! Imagine 1/5, or 20% less cars on the road each day.

We already have all the technology to work from home. Only firefighters, nurses, teachers, salespeople, security, doctors, dentists, cleaning crews, handymen, contractors and other in loco professions need to relocate every day. We also have technology for meetings, if that is an excuse for why office workers need to be at their offices.

There has been even a trend for “office” spaces in the suburbs with internet connections where people who work from home can meet.  Places near their homes where they can connect to other people and not feel so isolated. They can pay a small fee for using a workstation each day, or a monthly fee. Some folks have used the local Starbucks for that.

One, two days a week working from home. Seems like a smart idea for me.

The 5 minute doctor

Yesterday I visited a “5-minute doctor”. That seems to be more and more common. I have PRIVATE insurance, a PPO, which I pay a lot of money every month for (and barely use), but I am seeing this happen very often: a long wait followed by a 5 minute check up from the doctor.

My last visit was to an orthopedist. I have something called “tennis elbow”, not from playing tennis but from moving heavy objects late last year. My arm has not healed so I went back to the same doctor I had gone early this year to(he knew my history and was walking distance from my office).

The same thing happened: I waited for one hour (with no good magazines in the waiting room ); first in the reception area and later in a small room.

What really peeved me is that I had written in the form that I had actually two problems. Everyone knows the human body is like a machine. One thing affects the other. I had pain in some other area, which he totally disregarded. He probably wants me to pay for another consultation so he can charge to look at my other “pain”.

He spent 5 minutes with me, told me what to do (immobilize the area) and asked me to come back after 6 weeks,  hurriedly answering my questions. What a terrible experience! I think doctors don’t think empathy is necessary anymore in their consultation with patients. All they need is some knowledge. Why not then consult with a robot? A robot who would scan your body, inform you what kind of problem you have (in a robotic voice like Kanye West’s songs ) and than print a list of recomendations?

Are doctors being forced to see a certain number of patients per hour-or may I say, per minute? If that is a private PPO, I prefer that all the money I pay go to an universal healthcare system where I would probably have to wait just the same!

LET”S ALL MAKE HEALTHCARE REFORM HAPPEN. THIS COUNTRY NEEDS IT!

Babies need touch and holding

Another difference that comes to mind between the USA and Brazil is the way how mothers and fathers transport their babies.  Brazilian mothers still carry their babies in their arms a lot. American mothers prefer strollers all the time. I could guess that that is a matter of economics: strollers are too expensive for the low income population in Brazil.

I remember when my kids were babies,  I carried them a lot. I also used the “front-pack”, where they could actually listen to my heartbeat and feel the warmth of my body.  Even though I could afford a stroller (and owned one), I loved carrying them in my arms. I felt that the touch they received from me was important. I also felt that the closeness made them feel safe. I never though I was spoiling them.  Dr. Spock theories about “spoiling” babies did not feel right to me. After hearing a lot about “training your baby by not picking it up when it is crying all the time”, I once let my older child cry herself to sleep in her crib, breaking my heart in the process. It felt terrible. I wish I did not make her more fearful and distrustful in the process.

American parents use the stolller all the time (strollers in busy malls and sidewalks are very annoying). Maybe  holding their babies more often could be better for their babies’s health. Touch, as it has been documented by various research, is fundamental to babies’ development and emotional well being.

Brazilians are passive about corruption-David Goldman case an example

I had some Brazilian visitors at my house and they know my disgust with the fact that David Goldman still does not have his son back in the United States. I asked them their position on David’s case and they are in favor of Sean being returned to his father (“obviously”, they pointed out). However, their attitude is of “defeatism” and “apologism”.

They gave me a very grim picture of Lula’s government and the ever existing corruption in the country. They said Lula is almost dictator-like and the poor population loves him due to popular actions like a “basic basket” of free monthly food items to those who have an income lower than a certain amount, the “school-scholarship” which is a certain amount of money given to parents who guarantee their kids go to school, etc.

Apparently Lula bailed out the Globo media group, which was struggling, and now they never badmouth him. Globo is the largest TV station in Brazil with the most viewership.

Meanwhile, corruption runs wild in a big scale, and most Brazilians feel helpless. Even though I lived in Brazil most of my life, it still shocks me to hear that the population accepts the corruption passively. They complain and complain, decade after decade, but they simply do not get together and act against it. They claim is has gotten better than in the past, but still has a long way to go.

I tried to argue that Brazil is an avid internet user and that widespread information is the best weapon to bring corruption to light and provoke enough ire that public opinion forces change. I gave as an example Twitter, extremely popular in Brazil, which has corruption stories availabe for all to see. My visitors said it doesn’t matter. The majority of the population just doesn’t care. All they want to watch or read about is SOCCER, Formula 1 and SOAP OPERAS. They skip the news on TV and watch the “novelas”, the soap operas that millions and millions of Brazilians watch every single night. If you try to discuss something more serious with many people, even the “educated” ones, they immediately lose interest. Girls are raised to try to be “models” and boys aspire to become soccer players.

They accept corruption with passiveness. They shrug their shoulders and say “fazer o quê, né?” (“do what, right?”). There is little sense of organization, community and activism. They say that it will take “100 years” to change the mentality, instead of trying to change things NOW. I blame only one thing for the state of affairs and corruption in Brazil: the Brazilian population. Finally, they did not try to find out more and showed no interest when my husband and I talked further about David’s case. I think they think this is small potatoes in the grand scheme of corruption. I believe that is the attitude of many educated middle class Brazilians now.