September 27, 2010

Married or Single who is happier?

Dear Bloggers,

Last night I had to work and somehow during a break we talked about relationships of our drivers and pretty quickly I calculated that 85% of my new colleagues either is divorced or is in the middle of the separation process. Staying together with the same partner is getting more and more unique. I can tell you from my own experience that it is a bumpy road, and you have to take it slow not to break it.

You have to live with eachothers mishaps as well

 
Diehard romantics say you can't put a price on love, but a pair of European economists disagrees, the two men calculated the monetary worth of marriage at $100,000 per year. Hmmm......surprises me as I am always out of money. But this given I started digging again to fimd out what is normal nowadays.


Despite the potential payoff, people in Europe are putting off marriage later in life than ever before. In correlation with the rising life expectancy, men and women are giving themselves more time before exchanging vows. The average age for an American woman to get hitched rose from 20.8 to 25.3 from 1970 to 2003. Additionally, more adults are living the single life, thanks in large part to the higher divorce rate. According to data, 90 percent more single-person households existed in 2005 than in 1970.

And they lived..........Scary fairytale
Over the past 30 years, marriage has become more of a social choice than a necessity, but all it takes is a few episodes of "Sex and the City" to see that Western culture still favors cohabitation. Humans' animal instincts are wired for mating in one way or another. Moreover, a pervasive idea exists that discovering a soul mate brings joy and makes life worth living. Perhaps we aren't far off the mark; studies have shown that married people tend to earn more money and live longer than singles. Marriage also appears to promote better health. The study showed that husbands and wives are less likely to smoke or drink heavily, experience frequent headaches and suffer from psychological problems than people who aren't married.


But betting on marriage to bring you happiness may be a risky gamble. After all, the odds of holding on to that perfect partner forever have been whittled down to a coin flip -- about 48 percent of marriages end in divorce. Nevertheless, psychologists have pointed to marriage as the single most reliable happiness indicator. Across nations and ethnic groups, people report greater happiness from marriage than career, community or money. A 2005 survey substantiates these assertions. Forty-three percent of married respondents reported that they were "very happy," compared to 24 percent of unmarried individuals. Those results were consistent for all age groups and genders.


As any good scientist knows, correlation does not always equal causation. To close the case on whether marital bliss trumps the single life, we must deduce which comes first: happiness or marriage?

But what when the Honeymoon ends?
Does marriage make people happier, or do happier people get married?


A study of 24,000 German couples demonstrated the existence of the honeymoon phase that newlyweds experience. Tracking the couples' happiness levels over 15 years, a psychology professor from Michigan State University found that spouses exhibited an uptick in happiness soon after marriage. Then, those happiness levels gradually returned to their premarital state.

The Old Sailors wallet (onion leather, as every time you look in it, you will get tears in your eyes.)

This pattern is comparable to the effects of sudden financial improvement on people's happiness. For people living with relatively low incomes, money can buy happiness for a while. Yet the longer someone gets used to having more cash on hand, the more it loses its luster.

Absolutely........ Ehhr, no comment.

This doesn't negate the survey results that show higher happiness rates among married people. Rather, it has led some psychologists to conjecture that married people are merely more inclined toward happiness since they're happier to begin with. Humans are predisposed to certain happiness ranges depending on their genetics, personality and life circumstances. Also, happier people are generally more social, and it follows that people who actively socialize will be more likely to meet someone they'd like to marry.


As with other major life events, people are inclined to return to their innate happiness baselines as time goes on. The study of German couples found that this holds true even with the death of a spouse. Yet the same psychologist who conducted the initial research concluded that bouncing back to that baseline may be harder following divorce. The participants who went through divorce had a slightly lower level of life satisfaction.


Expectations for marital bliss can also play an important role in determining happiness. A study from the University of Florida highlighted a relationship between the skills that people bring to a marriage and people's anticipation for how much marriage will improve their lives. If partners have overly high expectations for marriage transforming their lives into in a joyous wonderland, they need to have the relationship skills to match. Otherwise, it's like going to a spelling bee expecting first place without ever cracking a dictionary.


As we've learned from happiness surveys, wedding bells can portend happy futures. But happily ever after requires more than an "I do." Marriage won't magically create happiness, which makes personal character development during the single years even more important.

Darn, a good marriage is a lot of hard work.

The Old Sailor,



September 20, 2010

Does the new generation of "The @World" parents read books?

Dear Bloggers,

Your child and You too should read a book in our YouTube world!


When I look outside the world looks pretty sad as it is pooring rain all day long, it is cold and wet. These are the first signs that the dark autumn day are coming. After diner I turn on the heating and automaticly I turn on the television. After watching my favorite sitcom two and a half men, I lay on the couch and grab a book. I have not been reading a book for at least half a year. Our two cats hop on my lap and wander what I am doing. But soon they lay down and fall asleep.


I really want to know how to raise a confident reader? Should you read a book, scan blogs, go to YouTube, or watch TV? What is the best method to get my kids to read? Modern parents have lots of options for finding information, we had to figure things out by reading in the encyclopedia or borrow detailed books from the library. Every parent knows you are supposed to read to your child, but in the print versus digital world do busy parents have time to read a book.



Lucky me as my youngest is just learning to read and is pretty frustrated that this reading thing is taking time. So grandma gave her a book with pictures and readable words for a kid from her age. And she is so proud that she can read a book. My eldest daughter is reading a book a week from Carry Slee who is famous among the Dutch teenagers. She is writing in her typical own style, it is mix of excitement, romantic and fictionary passages according to my daughter. I am happy that she is reading good old fashioned printed on paper kind of books. As there is nothing so nice then sitting on the couch reading a book.




In 1955 Rudolph Flesch wrote “Why Johnny Can't Read” and reached millions of parents. Maybe it is time for a comparable guide for 21st century parents, and maybe it should be a short film on Youtube. As statistics tell me that today's parents don't read books! Are we at risk for failure raising our children due to tech-forward approaches? Why should we read a book if you can pop it in a video, plop your kid in front of the tube, and let the machine teach her? Hmmmm……I learned a lot by reading all kinds of books, but I hardly read newspapers anymore, the headlines I read on the internet version on my smartphone.




If it was up to me and I had to choose between television and a good book. My choice will be easy it will be the book. Do not think that I don’t enjoy the modern technical enhanced world that we are living in. A downside is the haste that we have created in our fast lane lives. Maybe we should take things a step slower and enjoy the things around us. Eventhough the weather is miserable, there is no reason to become depressed but just relax and read a book. Or even better sit down with your kid and read to them. A lot of fairytales are made by great storiytellers as well.



In my passionate attempt to help guide these poor parents, in this admittedly tech-challenged world and this digitally befuddled author is sandwiching blog posting, driving the bus, reading books, watching television and all of this spiced up with YouTube, Hyves, Twitter, and Facebook.

And they lived happily ever after…..

The Old Sailor,

September 14, 2010

Hire an older unemployed person

Dear Bloggers,


During one of my breaks I was reading the newspaper and suddenly a article about unemployment drew my attention. I am one of these people I have a job for a certain period and all the rest is based on insecurity. Maybe I will be unemployed soon again. And it is pretty hard too find a suitable job if you are over 40 as you are too young not to work and too old for a lot of employers. This idiotic theory should come to a halt as an older guy or girl can be as good as young one. The young generation is normally there only to earn some money and is furthermore not interrested in the goal of the company. Employers should use their brain as in certain jobs there are young people that do not give a ......


Last week, thousands of Dutch who have exhausted their unemployment benefits. The forty plus group, named after the maximum number of living years are living on state and federal benefits This group has kids that study, high mortgage bills and hardly any money left to spent. They sent letters and petitions to The Hague as part of a futile campaign to convince the government to pass a bolstered version of the jobs bill, now stalled and being snowed under by the formation of a cabinet. There were many common themes in their stories, but one of the more surprising was age.



One woman from Haarlem, wrote: “I am (or was) a legal secretary with several years of experience (30+ years). … I have applied to jobs that are more than one-half less than what I was earning. I search for a job each and every day. … Where do people in my age bracket go? Too young not to work but too old to work?”

Such stories of older workers too young for retirement but struggling for months if not years to find jobs have policy experts concerned as the recession drags on and long-term unemployment continues to rise. Experts say that age discrimination is illegal and severely compounding the jobs crisis for older workers, although the phenomenon is difficult to quantify or to prove, and remains under-examined by the government. This time, it is not just making it more likely that these workers will be laid off. It is also making it much harder for them to gain new positions.


Last week, a hearing called by the UWV examined the issue, attempting to determine whether part of the reason older workers have such trouble finding work, on aggregate. The unemployment rate is a comparatively moderate 9.1 percent for workers over the age of 40 It’s 3.7 percent over 55 as older workers are more likely to retire early or leave the workforce if they lose their jobs. But that hides the troubling reality for those who can’t afford to leave the labor force. They should take action now as in a few years these people you will need the most but they will be used to staying at home and try to survive. Most of them have lost their faith in politicians already a long time ago. The ones that have failed the most have the biggest mouths or have been chosen to make a new cabinet.



The unemployment rate for over 40s is at the highest level since 1948. Since the recession started, both the number of older people seeking work and the rate of unemployment for over 40s have increased more sharply than for all other demographic groups. And older workers comprise a high share of the long-term unemployed. In May, the average duration of unemployment for older job-seekers climbed to 44.2 weeks, 11 more weeks than the national average. Nearly six in ten older job-seekers have been out of work for more than six months.

There are structural reasons that the unemployment crisis is hitting older Dutch so hard. Older workers are more likely to be underwater homeowners, unable to sell their house and move away. They often have highly specific marketable skills, and seek positions more selectively. They also often have skills that have been taken out or being combined due to the recession. But too often, employers illegally presume that older workers will be harder to train, more likely to leave for other positions, less productive, less technologically able or less willing to move and so they do not hire them for those reasons. In my opinion the government should help out with this by tax profits if you hire an over 40 worker. As it is all about money anyway.



Incidences of age discrimination in firing are much clearer to see, and have risen along with the recession. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says age discrimination cases have jumped 17 percent since the start of the recession, and climbed 30 percent between 2007 and 2008. But virtually all of those cases involve layoffs, rather than the lack of job offers.

Unfortunately, policy experts fear that age discrimination in hiring, compounded by the recession, is a problem without a solution. Individuals can bring cases against individual companies, but discrimination is virtually impossible to prove, even if it is easy to see as an aggregate phenomenon. Plus, the phenomenon is so prevalent that discrimination simply seems like reality. “As a society, we’re willing to tolerate age discrimination, more so than other kinds of discrimination,” “People sense that, and it gives older job-seekers a sense of futility. Why even bother applying for jobs, or bringing a discrimination case? I won’t win.”

The Old Sailor,

September 8, 2010

Nobody said it would be easy, Nobody told it would be this hard.

Dear Bloggers,


Sundayafternoon we visited my Dad who is hospitalized with stomachproblems.
When I entered the room I saw a broken man who became very quickly old and fragile.
Not really the picture that I remembered from the last time that I saw him.
He was sounding depressed as he was telling that his head could not follow all the things that he wanted to do. He had not that long ago a few minor strokes which effected his memory.

I all of sudden realized that he feels trapped in his body as the mind and body are not working on the same frequences anymore. and that I can tell you is a horrible feeling. I had a similair feeling after I fell of the stairs a couple of years ago and my brain was heavily disturbed by the fall. My God I was so frustrated as I knew excactly what I would say but there were no words. I still have problems in places where a lot of people come together and make a lot of noise.



My Dad is not a real complainer but you can easily sense that he had enough. My mind is making overtime and I somehow had the feeling that this might be his last moments, hours,days of his life. He is mising my Mum still every day, eventhough she passed away a couple of years ago. She was the engine of our entire family as friends were always welcome and most of the time she had fresh brewed coffee. It really grabs me by the troath if I think about what might come, do not think that I am down or depressed as it is all a part of the daily life.


I have to call myself lucky as I did not loose a parent on a younger age due to a car accident or what so ever could have happened. This came to my mind as a car crashed in front of me when I drove back from Leeuwarden on line 14, the things that flashed through my head when I saw the fire brigade busy to cut the victim out of his vehicle. I will light a candle for a dear lost one today and I should do this every day.

No one said it would be this hard either. Screaming, shaking, crying. Cascades of water running like rivers down my face. He doesn't care. She doesn't care. Does anyone in this world care anymore? If you care so much for someone, why do they continually hurt you? Is this what life is going to be? Loosing yourself is like a never ending domino effect. Is that how every decision in life is? Every decision effects someone in an entirely different way than you can even imagine? I think that's how it is. If it weren't for that, crazy things would be happening all over the world.


We are a generally self centered people. We say we don't want people to kill themselves (or whatever... make a bad decision, ect.) because we care, which is true, we do care, but we are mostly worried about ourselves. What we would go through if they were gone. What would happen to us, not neccissarily what would happen to them. Why is it this way? Why can't we be focused on the others and not ourselves? I believe there are some people in the world that would care if about the person more than what happened to themselves, but honestly how many are there? Are most of the people in this world just as selfish as me?

What about the people who don't know how to care? How do we teach them? Can they learn to care if they don't care? I honestly don't know if they can. Man there are a lot of questions in my head. If you care for someone who has no need to be cared for or anyone that is done with this life their reaction is not a fun thing to recieve. They push you in every direction away from their heart. You can't even know their true colors anymore. It's a difficult thing. It makes you feel that you want to give up and give in, but you can't. Because you swore to yourself you never would. How can you be there for a person who has no idea what to do with his life? How do you go about showing them that they have a future? I don't understand these things. Are they pointless, or worth it. There are so many thoughts spinning and whirling through my head. I don't know what to do in this case with myself. He doesn't care. She doesn't care. Does anyone care?

Nobody said it would be easy. Nobody told it would be this hard.

The Old Sailor,

Talking and Writing

Dear Bloggers,   Why is it that some folks (such as myself and my daughter) talk so much? This visit, I am learning how I process throug...