I think a lot of people spent their childhoods being very deliberately forced out of their comfort zones by parents / teachers / whomever in a way that was just deeply unpleasant and degrading and so, when they reach young adulthood and are finally allowed real control over their lives, become set on only doing things they know they’re comfortable with forever. that’s a really important thing to be able to do, especially if you’re so used to having your boundaries routinely ignored that you aren’t even certain what you like vs what you can bear, so I absolutely see why a person would have a negative reaction to being told that discomfort is good: it can very easily sound like being told that all that work they’ve been doing to prioritze their needs for the first time ever is Bad and Selfish, actually. and to that I will say two things:
one: as long as you aren’t hurting or, like, being a dick to anyone, just staying in your comfort zone isn’t an immoral action. if you just want to read one type of book (or just fanfiction), or just eat one type of food, or just watch one type of movie, or not go to new types of social events, you aren’t being a bad person for that, and if people say that, they are soundly wrong and just trying to get a self-righteousness kick.
two: trying new things because you want to expand yourself feels a hell of a lot different than trying new things because you’re being forced to. you’ll feel better about trying new foods if you know you have a back up familiar one in case you can’t stomach the new one, it’s easier to read new books if you can experiment with audio versions or reading it in little five-page chunks by yourself, you can breathe a lot easier going somewhere new if you aren’t chained there for three hours because your parent is your ride home, etc.
tl;dr: new things are good. I get why you might not want to try new things, and that’s fine, but it’s also more comfortable to try new things as an adult with your own agency so, yeah, what have you got to lose by trying a weird old art film?
It’s really important to recognize that the negative reaction you might have to being forced into something new might make your reaction much worse than if you had the no-pressure option to explore it on your own. I always try new foods when no one is around, or only some few close friends I trust on that level, because I feel judged for being a picky eater - even if people aren’t *actually* judging me, I feel judged anyways and the pressure makes the whole experience unpleasant and I’m less likely to enjoy the food
It’s also important to recognize that sometimes, newness, in and of itself, can trigger a disgust reaction. For this reason, when i’m genuinely trying some new food/drink, I take a small bite/sip or two to get over the initial “this is new and new is bad ew ew ew” reaction, and then take the next bite/sip to actually evaluate how I feel about the flavor/texture/etc. Even when i don’t end up liking the food, this often takes a food I’d be super grossed out by and moves it closer to the “eh i simply don’t like it” category.
It’s about to hit us here in Oklahoma and the rest of the southern states that are not used to this level of cold.
Please take this seriously if you live somewhere this is going to impact significantly.
I just sincerely hope texas’ power grid doesn’t fail them again.
but at least a small blessing is that this isn’t bringing much precipitation with it and the worst of it will be the wind.
Anyway. Stay inside, wear layers, and bundle up. Get your cold weather shit prepped now if you haven’t yet.
0.0?!
This is “if you go outside you will have frostbite in minutes” type cold, this is “your car may not start up” type cold, this is “your schoolboard should be advising you not to send your kids to school by foot” type cold, i live in Ontario and I’ve only ever seen it get to -44C here.
If you are in this swath of area and have never experienced this type of cold before please take whatever precautions you can. in extreme circumstances like this the best way to do that is to isolate activity to one or 2 rooms of the house that have as few outward facing windows as possible, make sure you wear lots of layers and even insulate those layers by putting wadded up paper between them, keep your extremities covered, keep your face covered, if you have blankets or pillows to spare and non-carpet flooring lay those out to help insulate the room, you can hang bath towels in front of any windows to help absorb the cold. Please limit going out to as little as possible, and if you have to make sure anything that can be covered is indeed covered, if you have to wear denim please layer something underneath it, wear ur heaviest fabrics, double up on socks and gloves if you need to, if you can get thermal underwear you can always layer those. When in highschool and had to wait at the buss I would often microwave some potatoes or perogis and keep them in my pockets to warm my hands as I waited for the bus. Keep extra blankets and candles and clothes in ur car. For whatever reason if you get wet and you’re outside, please find somewhere to get inside while you dry. If you live in an area that’s getting this and you don’t have winter clothes like scarves or mitts take whatever thick insulating cloth you can find and use that instead. it might not be comfortable but it will be better than frostbite, I promise.
This is the type of cold that also comes in insanely dry so if you are prone to nosebleeds this will be a problem. Make sure you have moisturizer for ur hands and lip balm so you don’t end up cracked and bleeding on top of freezing, its a shit combo.
Fun fact because of the water in the city of tears the bugs of hallownest can’t be actually be bug sized or else individual water droplets would be waist height at least
Not to be dramatic but “all I ask of you” from phantom of the opera is THE most tender love ballad ever written and I can’t listen to it in the car because I become so overcome with yearning that I’m a hazardous driver
The fact that only two songs after the Phantom sings “music of the night” for Christine she sings to Raoul “all I want is freedom, a world with no more night,” and Roaul says
Im
The fact that the phantom’s love song to her is him asking her to sacrifice everything she knows, to “purge all thoughts of the life [she] knew before,”
And immediately afterward Raoul’s love song to her says “anywhere you go, let me go too. love me, that’s all I ask of you,” telling her her life is her own and all he wants is the chance to be a part of whatever she decides that means……..
That she doesn’t get to sing a line in Music of the Night but in All I Ask of You she gets to tell Raoul what she wants and he responds that he’ll deliver it……..
01010101010101010111-deactivate :
Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.
Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.
(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)
Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.
All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.
I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.
Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.
And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.
Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.
I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.
Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.
No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a responsibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.
They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.
This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.
In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.
At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.
I think the least we can do is remember them for it.
I can’t begin to describe how happy and flattered and a little teary I am that this just broke 100k.
I may be the actual only human being on Tumblr with a post this popular that I not only don’t regret making, but am actually HAPPY whenever I notice a surge in its circulation.
I never intended this to gain any traction at all (you’ll notice there’s no sources or anything–this was a personal ramble, prompted in good humor by a friend after I jokingly said that I wished someone would give me an excuse to cry about Carpathia on Tumblr so I could get it out of my system.) I literally expected to get, like, maybe 20 likes and a reblog, from friends, indulging me in my nonsense.
It just….means a lot to me that it’s touched so many people. I see a lot of tags to the effect of “HOW DARE YOU HURT ME LIKE THIS AND MAKE ME CRY ABOUT A BOAT” that are often really funny, but overwhelmingly the tags on this post are from people saving it for a rainy day, or remarking in a sort of quiet awe that they never even really thought about her role in the story–and God knows I never did, I learned it by complete accident much as most of the people who’ve found this post.
And so many of you guys are taking strength and reassurance from the reminder not only that people are capable of amazing things together, but simply that kindness matters and that a simple, tiny act of compassion is never wasted. I’m just really glad to have been able to do that for some folks.
If I can just add one personal note. I need to emphasize something I only touched on in the original post.
I need to emphasize that Carpathia failed.
A lot of the tags and comments have a tinge of…despair, or guilt, or wistfulness about things like this happening so rarely. Or inadequacy, or just being overwhelmed or unhappy about not being in a position to step up in a comparable way. And I want to gently bring up the fact that this is still the sinking of the Titanic.
They did not get there in time. They did not save the ship. It can be argued that they may not even have saved a single life; we have no way of knowing. This was still a horrific maritime disaster mired in arrogance and incompetence and a lack of care.
If the response to this story shows anything, it shows this: It matters that they tried.
Even though they got there too late, even though the ship still sank. It matters that they tried. The difference between making the best reasonable speed after confirming the seriousness of the situation, and the miracle they pulled off–it matters. It makes all the difference. Even if it made no difference at all. Not one of you read this and concluded that I was stupid for caring so much when the Titanic still sank and all those people still died.
You don’t have to fix the world. You’ll likely be cold and sick and miserable and testy and scared, and unprepared, and in over your head, and entirely too small to be of any real use. It feels stupid, passing out blankets and coffee in the middle of an ice field knowing what just happened. It’s hard to feel anything but useless when all you can do is tap a wireless transmitter and promise help that you know will come too late.
It matters that they fought for those people. It matters that they cared, and it matters that they tried. It matters that they didn’t stop. If it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t have read this far.
ALT
