Spreading the kindness and positiveness

Nowadays, if you pick up a newspaper or turn on the news on TV, you may easily see or hear a lot of information about the chaos occurring around the world such as wars, corruption, politics, homicides, and robbery.

These things make us doubted the world, is that such a scary place?

I do think that everything has both good and bad sides, just like yin and yang. We can not reject that injustice, discrimination, violence, abuse, and poverty are still out there and become a burden for many people. However, good things also happen in our daily life, for example, love, friendliness, sharing, forgiveness, kindness, learning, and improvement.

So it's a matter of what perspective we choose to see the world.

I'm practicing finding the good and positive side in every situation I'm into because I believe that every challenge that life throws to me is the way the Universe tries to communicate and teach me to become a better person. And from my experience, everything that I have been through makes me who I am today.

However, I do not mean that we just simply ignore the negative things. It's the inconvenient truth that we have to face and make it a motivation urging us to do something, even small things to change the circumstances. Have you heard about the Butterfly effect? A small change can make a big difference.

For me, the small change that I have made is changing my Facebook news feed. Yes, I started to clean it up by stop following some pages, asking myself the question "Is this the type of content that I want to read every day?" And by far, I'm thankful for making that decision because now, I can focus on the important ideas that are valuable to me.

One day, I found the page Nas Daily through a recommendation from my friend.

Nas Daily is a page run by a group of young people, making a 1-minute video every day. Initially, this page was launched by Nuseir Yassin. And on the way of making the inspired 1-minute videos, he has attracted many people to join his team or become his supporters. This page now has more than 7 million followers on Facebook with an average of 1 million views per video.

So the question is how they can make that great impact?

What Nas and his team are trying to do is spreading positiveness. They tell us the stories of innovative people around the world, how they contribute to make their country a better place, how human values should be treasured. By far, they have been an inspiration for a lot of people, including me. Watching their videos makes me realize that despite many conflicts and discrimination, our world is still a good place full of potentials and diversity.

Moreover, they connect people from around the world in the group "Nas Daily Global" This is not an ordinary travel group, it is a place where you can read incredible stories from other people. These stories have helped to open my mind to new viewpoints and motivated me to appreciate the differences.

So if you're interested in the above ideas, check out this video, it's my favorite: https://www.facebook.com/nasdaily/videos/1085290271623124/

The second group I want to mention is Girls gone global (by Dear Alyne). However, sorry guys but this group is only for girls.

Why?

Because the aim of this group is to create a comfortable environment for every girl to share their thoughts without worrying about being judged or misunderstood.

In this group, there are many topics to discuss every day of the week:

1) OPEN TOPIC SUNDAY and MONDAY
2) TALENT TUESDAY -or- CAREER TUESDAY
3) WELLNESS WEDNESDAY
4) TRAVEL THURSDAY
5) FEARLESS FRIDAY -or- FEMINIST FRIDAY
6) RELATIONSHIP SATURDAY

By far, I have read a great number of inspirational posts in this group.
Some of them are about girl empowerment through real-life experience, which motivates all the girls to be strong and do whatever you are passionate about.

Some of the posts show the reluctance, concerns, fear, and thought of many girls out there. Being a girl in today's world is both a gift and a challenge. Yes, with the evolution of women's rights, our girls have been released from many outdated customs and boundaries but not every girl is treated well, and sometimes, we have to face discrimination, the outdated prejudice along the way.

What I do learn from these posts is every girl has trouble to solve, a challenge to overcome, and somehow we are trying to fight as hard as we can. With the support from this group, it seems like our girls are given more power to do everything we desire and as a statement for Alyne: "This is a place to share and build your friendships, to learn about how to fulfill your dreams, and to feel LOVED!"

Well, I would like to end this post with an image that really expresses my opinion

Written by Norah

5 am in the morning

[My bookshelf] The hundred year-old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared

It's funny that right in the label of the book, you already know its story.

Yes, this book is about a 100-year-old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared.

Sound weird huh?

Then, if you think of a 100-year-old man, what would he look like?

Is that a man with grey hair, shaking legs, wearing glasses, a pair of slippers, and old pajamas?

Yes, apparently Allan Karlsson had that typical look, but he was far from an ordinary old man.

On his 100th birthday, he decided to escape the retirement home, climbed out of the fence, and went right to the travel agent. All of a sudden, at the travel agent, Mr. Karlsson stole a suitcase from an angry young man coming from a drug gang and got away on a bus to Strangnas.

The book followed Allan through his past and present adventures. As his escapades unfold, we learn something of Allan’s earlier life in which – remarkably – he lived through three important events of the twentieth century: World War 1, World War 2 and even became an important participant standing behind the scenes of many historic decisions during The Cold War.

The most interesting feature of this book is how the author - Jonas Jonasson placed the protagonist who had no interest in politics or religion, in such political dilemmas.

Allan's carefree acts (sometimes I must say silly acts) unexpectedly impacted the history of the century. He helped to create a nuclear bomb, met, drank vodka, and became friends with the world politicians from two hostile sides: The Eastern Bloc (Soviet Union) and The Western Bloc (The US and NATO allies)!!

Jonas Jonasson used his imagination to connect all of the historic events and link them with the life of Allan Karlsson. Although this is a fiction book, somehow you can see the whole vibrant picture of the twentieth century, especially the Cold War through the eyes of Sweden - a neutral country.

In my opinion, this book is crazy, cleverly funny, and really worth reading. I think the review from the Telegram is the best description for this book: "It’s a silly romp, but the loopy novelty of it can be very entertaining."

PS.: This is my first book review and I want to choose a recent book that I can not put down until the last page. Though this book received mixed reviews on Goodread (some people consider it too tedious, exaggerated, and annoying), I still think it's worth a try and recommend it as an entertaining choice for your reading journey.

A Thursday morning

Written by Norah