Emma Massingale

If my fairy godmother were to appear all of a sudden and tell me my life had been cursed by some envious sorceress and that the only way to save me was to switch lives with someone, I would choose the life of Emma Massingale.

In fact, I wouldn’t need my own life to be threatened to choose a life like Emma’s. #lifegoals

That she has a lot of animals is unquestionably awesome, but the way she does it is what I admire the most. The bond she shares with her furry friends is incredible.

She is an adventurous soul. She is a dreamer who learned much about life and herself the hard way (by being too bold and breaking important bones). She is naturally charming and unapologetically awkward.

But don’t take my word for it, take a look:

All the work she does with the animals is based on fun and never force. She uses their natural way of being to teach them tricks. She is their leader but most definitely also their friend and part of the pack.

She goes on fun trips around the country with beasts of all shapes and sizes and makes it look effortless. One time she might take all the tan colored horses (of all sizes) out for a stroll. On the next occasion, she might take the speckled team (including the dalmatian) along. And sometimes, like in this video below, she’ll go on a ride with two ponies, a lamb, a dog and a cat.

I am a fan, as you might have suspected by now. I love all of her work and am thrilled every time a new vid comes out.

I even love it when she dresses up her animals in crazy outfits, even though I usually can’t stand that. In her case though, I know that she wouldn’t do it if the animal was uncomfortable with it. Also, I believe that her animals live very natural lives, outside of the work they do with her.

I guess that, if my fairy godmother were to appear, I might ask her to adjust just one aspect of my new life as Emma. I would be tempted to ask her to transfer it all to a place with slightly better weather. I’m sure English moors are lovely on a sunny summer day but in the winter, maybe not so much…

Then again, if at the end of the day you can warm up by the fire surrounded by some furry friends, it would totally be worth it.

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This dedication to Emma Massingale is a contribution for my own personal A-to-Z challenge, which I will be adding to once a month. Alphabet so far:

• A is for Axolotl
• B is for Bird buddies
• C is for Comfort food
• D is for Dystopia
• E is for Emma Massingale

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All the images in this blog were taken from Emma Massingale’s social media accounts. I do not own them nor have rights to them.

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Language

This is Blog 12 in my A-Z Blogseries:
Language

My boyfriend, G, and I share a love for language and linguistics.

It happens almost weekly that some odd expression, pronunciation or unusual word makes my ears perk up (and often it is something that I see is simultaneously happening in his mind, which is obviously a huge turn on).

We then tear the matter apart, googling the heck out of it (after we’ve agreed on the best search terms, which sometimes can be challenging enough).

The last word we dove into was “psychopath“, which I now know stems from the Greek words psykhe, meaning mind and the word pathos, meaning suffering.

So a psychopath is, in the purest sense of the word, somebody who has been diagnosed with suffering of the mind.

In modern times we envision a psychopath to be a manipulative charmer that spends his days fantasizing of all the ways he could make you disappear. We would say a psychopath is more often the cause of suffering than the victim of it, wouldn’t we? I suppose we have TV crime-series and horror stories to thank for that.

G and I debated on how much empathy a psychopath really would have. I decided that they actually could have some empathetic abilities in the sense that they recognize feelings and know how to respond to them convincingly. What they lack are soft feelings such as pity and compassion (making them perfect for politics or wall street).

Another word we tried to decipher was “discussion“. Not something you would normally need to look up the meaning of, right? We came to the conclusion however that our personal definitions were quite different, with his being much more negative than mine.

In his view, there is no such thing as a “good discussion”, given that there are always two (or more) people participating with opposed opinions and no real willingness to change that.

In my opinion a debate can be a tool to get closer to the truth and changing your mind about your argument is actually allowed.

This made me realize that being in (his definition of) a discussion is an experience he does not enjoy at all. Now that I know that, I can change the way I react to him when he mentions a discussion he’s had with this or that person.

These elaborate exploratory talks we have (often during breakfast) remind me of how important it is to check during conversations if we are actually talking about the same thing.

Even when your convo partner is using the same words as you are, you may be missing the point completely because you do not know the weight it has for the person across from you.

We are a species blessed with the ability to use language, in spoken form and also through gestures and posture. Putting a little effort into the way you communicate can make life so much easier!