I feel like wombats are underrepresented in our top-level fauna.

I find it strange that all educational philosophy and research gets ignored by modern high school education.

My passion for history often leads to frustration that we seem to learn so litle from the past, and the pain of a friend’s recent and unexpected marriage break up has been exacerbated by so many glibly advising her to move forward when she can’t (yet).

Because this is the area of the ‘refugee debate’ that I don’t understand – why some people feel that they have a birthright to safety, and those born in other countries don’t.

Living with mental illness (my own and that of my husband), I am bombarded with jingoistic slogans like ‘R U OK?’, parroted by gurus of ‘Mindfulness’, and by their minions who wave yellow balloons in my face, or consultants who advise employers to host endless parties, or feign empathy in exchange for docility, or friends who assume we need an ideological revamp. If wellbeing crusaders really cared how we felt, they would be quieter and let us have our contemplation; or ask a complete sentence with rounded vowels, including the last two letters of ‘you’. If a person cannot ask ‘How are you feeling?’ without abbreviating it into an acronym, clearly they have no time to hear us. If we had the power to define mental health, perhaps it would differ from current expectations? Who would the ‘sick’ ones be then?

Just a tongue-in-cheek way of getting to a productive discussion and maybe shaking some skeletons out of the cupboards and wardrobes.

I am adopted which is a life sentence of separation from my family and medical history and I find this situation very difficult as I age and face the fact I will never know the truth. Others should care about this because IVF technicians are making babies without recorded histories and we can expect they will fill the mental health system in the same way adoptees have due to unknown heritage and separation from mothers at birth.

Modern society has taken to mobile technology at an astonishing rate. Most of us are plugged in, connected, friended or have followers; but is our immersion in the online world and our obsession with the next gadget adversely affecting our engagement with, and enjoyment of, the real one?

It is about the future of ours and generations after.

Behind every story in the media that makes me want to cry I can trace the instigating issue to greed and lust for power/control by entities (corps and gov) and individuals who seem classically sociopathic. The way we have decided to perceive success seems to lead inevitably to the ones most lacking in morals, ethics or care for others to be hailed as leaders. I am tired of the cruelty. I would like to see what we could achieve if kindness and social wellbeing were the goal instead of greed.