Labels

I have become quite an avid label reader.  At first, when food shopping, it was about the total calories an item contained.  Then for those of us who need to take care of our cholesterol level it's more about the amount of saturated fat that a product contains.  The latest in the line of 'baddies' that we need to look out for is sugar, especially it seems in low fat products.  It's amazing just how much sugar and salt are added to just about everything, even to what you think are savoury products.  There is currently a series on TV about such matters.  Last week it looked at sugar in food, this week about the total calories.  Next week they will be taking an in-depth look at fats.  Oh dear, it seems we cannot win.  Years ago we didn't seem to have all these problems but of course years ago, we knew exactly what was in our food as we mostly cooked it from fresh ingredients.  All this labeling is useful if you're trying to maintain a decent quality of healthy food in your diet, especially as so much of what we consume is now already processed for our convenience - although I still prefer to prepare meals from fresh so I know exactly what's in them.  

It's not just in food though that we see people checking labels.  Some people prefer clothing with certain brand name labels rather than others.  When I look at clothing labels it's not so much for the name of the maker but rather how to take care of it and wash/iron it.  When I buy items of crockery, pots and pans etc. then I look to see if I can use them in the microwave, oven or dishwasher.  That's because I really don't want to break something or spoil it by putting it in the microwave or oven if it's not made to withstand the high heat.  As regards the dishwasher and washing machine, it does seem a bit pointless buying something that I need to wash by hand when the whole point of having a machine is to save me from that very activity.  When it comes to clothing if it says 'do not iron', that's an added bonus.  So again, labels are very useful and in some cases quite necessary in order to know exactly what we are purchasing and if it meets our requirements.

Labels tell us a lot about where something was made, what's it's made from and what are its uses.  The problem is that we tend to label things that can't really be labelled.  Sticking a label on doesn't necessarily tell us everything we want or need to know.  When we define people with a label, we might get some idea of what they believe (Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu etc) or where they come from (Britain, Asia, Africa etc) or their sexuality (gay, straight, trans or bisexual) but such labels don't really tell us about the person behind the label.  We can't know from a label if there is any unseen or invisible disability.  We don't know what financial or emotional struggles someone is experiencing just by seeing that they happen to be 'white European' for example (or any other combination of labels).  People can so often put on a brave face, keep smiling when they are actually going to pieces deep inside.  How many people get conned out of money by someone who 'looked' trustworthy and dressed smartly?  Labeling someone by their outward appearance is not really knowing that person.  You can have a fair idea of goods you buy by their labels but you can't use the same method of getting to know a person simply by putting them in a certain box or category.  Sadly we do this too much.  Just as you can't judge a book by its cover, so you can't know a person by a label that some people want to stick on them.  Labels judge people, friendship gets to know them.  

Lord, help me not to pigeon-hole people just by their religion, ethnicity, sexuaity or outward appearance but help me to love and treat them all as You do by looking deeper and trying to get to know them better.  

Noticing The Familiar

When I receive an online order form my local supermarket, fruit and salad goods are put into a paper carrier bag.  The intention, of course, is to show just how 'green' they are by using paper carriers and not plastic bags.  (The fact that they still use plastic bags for other produce is beside the point!) This has been going on for quite some months so I was surprised the other day to notice something about the paper carrier that I hadn't noticed before.  Apart from their name, there was some other writing on the bag.  I read it and found that it was a useful tip for peeling root ginger.  Why hadn't I noticed that before?  I then started looking at other bags (I don't throw them away but keep them for recycling) to see how many other tips I had missed without realising.

They say that seeing is believing but actually when I read the tip about peeling ginger, I thought about it and then decided I needed to try it just to see if it was as they advocated - and yes, it works exactly as they say it will and so easy.  That's something I will be doing from now on.  Of course it could well be that other people already knew this but it was new to me.  It did set me thinking about how much I just glance over things out of familiarity without really noticing.  How much might I be missing?



We live in an instant, press-button world where things are done so quickly and for efficiency, so it's claimed.  The other day I read on a social media about someone who had gone walking with a friend who walked really slowly. The friend's reasoning behind this was, 'When we walk too fast, we forget to be with each other.'  I like that.  How often in life do we walk so fast that we forget to be present to the moment?  How often do we just skip over things without spending time to really notice or listen?  I guess that as a pensioner, I'm fortunate that I am able to spend possibly a little more time on things - or maybe it just takes me longer now to do things that I did more quickly before!  But seriously, we tend to fill our lives with busyness and so miss much that could be beneficial.  I remember when I first retired there was a real danger of suddenly overfilling my diary thinking that now I had nothing else to do!  Then you find that you're busier than when you had employment.

If only we took notice of God's wisdom, making sure that we have a day of rest.  For those whose 'day of rest' is actually quite busy, maybe you should choose another day to rest.  He also tells us 'Be still and know that I am God'. Stop, look and listen or we'll miss so much of real value, for us and for others.

Planks and Splinters

How not to park a car

I guess most of us have pet hates, things that really irritate us.  One of my pet hates is people who think that the rules apply to everyone else but not to them.  As a driver I used to get annoyed when in a parking lot, there always seemed to be someone who didn't park properly between the lines so left it almost impossible for another car to park next to it.  Or drivers who never seemed to indicate where they were going, expecting others to use telepathy to guess which exit they were going to turn off at a roundabout.  Now, as a pedestrian those irritations have been replaced it seems by others.

Blocking the aisle at the supermarket

The other day, my son and I were in town doing a bit of shopping.  We had been to the supermarket and were walking back to the town centre when my son said,'Do you realise that this morning you have done two of the things that you get irritated about when other people do them?'  Me?  Never!  I wouldn't!  Then he began to gently remind me of two incidents when I had suddenly stopped in one of the aisles at the supermarket blocking the whole passage with my trolley, making the lady behind me stop suddenly and unable to pass me until I moved.  Then later on our way into the town centre I moved across the pavement in order to cross the road but in doing so walked right in front of somebody else without looking or realising that I nearly bumped into them.

Mrs Do-as-you-would-be-done-by

The truth is that if that had happened to me I possibly would have made a comment that people should watch where they are going and that  people wander around in their own little world oblivious to those around them.  And I had done just that.  Guilty as charged.  They are not grave sins or criminal activities but little niggles about thoughtlessness towards others.  The thing is that I hadn't even noticed that I had done exactly the things that I moaned about when others do them.  The words of Jesus came to mind about seeing the splinter in the other person's eye when I have a plank in my own.  Or the character from the children's book The Water Babies, Mrs Do-as-you-would-be-done-by.

Oh dear!  How easy it is to notice flaws and failings in others and how we delight to point them out and yet how often we are guilty of similar, if not the same flaws and failings.  Somehow we don't see our own faults, only those of others.  Something I read many years ago that said that we should be prepared to forgive and overlook the faults and flaws of others because they have to do the same for us.  Ouch!  I am humbled and reminded that no-one is perfect, myself included.

The Irony of Life

On a Wednesday morning I always get up at 6.30 to sort out the recycling and rubbish.  The bins need to be out by 7 am.  You can put them out the night before but most people, myself included, prefer to put them out in the morning, mainly to avoid the animal wildlife (including fox and badger) that comes out here at night and that would make a real mess rummaging in the stuff we throw away.  This week I noticed that it was quite light when I put the bins out.  Until now the early mornings have been dark but the lighter mornings and the longer evenings before nightfall are becoming noticeable.  It makes it much easier when you can see clearly what you are doing even if you have got a security light to help.  There's no light to compete with natural light.  The other day I was also able to hang the washing outside to dry.  When I brought it in the house again it was completely dry.  I had managed to wash, dry and iron the clothes all before our evening meal.  I haven't been able to do that for quite a few months.


Anyone who knows me knows how I love my garden.  When living in England, I have always had a garden, except that is when I first came to live in Yeovil.  My son and I shared an upstairs flat.  The thing I really disliked was that I had no plot of land to grow anything and when we opened the (only) door of the flat all you could see was stairs.  Ugh!  You couldn't even see outside - just stairs.  So I was over the moon when we were able to move to the house we now live in as I have a nice big rear garden.  The thing is now at 74 I wish I had the energy I had 10 years ago but I still manage to potter around and enjoy it.


The thing about these three experiences is that having experienced the down side of things, I have come to appreciate the positive side.  If I were always able to put the bins out in daylight, then I wouldn't appreciate the lighter mornings.  During the winter months, the drying of clothes has to be done indoors and I really prefer to hang things out to dry by the natural warmth of the sun and the movement of the breeze.  I think clothes smell nicer if they've been dried outside.  At least that's my opinion.  So I really like it when I can get things washed and dried all in the same day without having to live with damp clothes hanging around.  Having lived in an upstairs flat made me realise just how much I enjoy having a garden and how much I missed not having one.  So it seems that experiencing the negative side of things helps us to appreciate the positive side more.

Just this week I read something that brought this home to me.  It said:

Life is so ironic that we have to have known sadness in order to savour happiness, noise in order to appreciate silence and absence in order to enjoy someone's presence.

I think that is a sentiment we can all relate to.  Take time and dwell on each one for a while.  It's a bit like the two sides of a coin.  You can't have one without the other.  So even out of the not-so-nice experiences in life, we can gain something good.