April-May 2023

THE SMILE ISSUE

Pic Joyfulmind

I'm scuttling into your inbox a day early, coz tomorrow is April Fools Day. (This newsletter is usually a first day of the month affair.)

Will you, like me, be looking askance at your emails on Friday with an eye out for trip wires?

April 1st is a sorry-not-sorry kinda day. Enjoying a laugh at someone else’s expense, claiming the “gotcha” moment, speaks of familiarity and fondness!

The expression 'sorry not sorry' burst from the Twittersphere in 2010, same year the world's first i-Pad appeared. Can you believe that's only thirteen years ago!!?

Us five sisters in the early 70s with our very first Christmas bike. One bike amongst five? Yes, life in Mosman was tough back in those days (notice the smiley t-shirts?)

Do you remember having the STICKERS as well?  I plastered pages of tiny smiley stickers across the tiles in mum's new bathroom. Mamma did not quite appreciate my flair.     

The smiley for Gen Z is a smiley-not-smiley: a skull 💀 as in "I'm dying of laughter". They use the wide-mouthed smile 😃 as a sarcastic grimace, "I've just been dudded by an April Fool's joke" 😃. The skull was added to emoji in 2015. No apologies for the boomer-style emojis in this Newsletter! ☠️

FAKE LAUGH

Punctuate the stretched smile with a fake laugh. Why does it work? It tricks the brain into releasing brain-confetti, tiny proteins called neuropeptides. Not that I've ever seen them 😝.

INNER SMILE

Everyone loved the Inner Smile meditation in the just-completed Self-kindness and Meditation course. Catch the audio meditation here.

1957 BBC TV fake-featured Swiss farmers harvesting spaghetti from trees, and viewers clamoured for tips on growing their own.

1976 People reported feeling lighter after a cheeky British astronomer forecast a temporary decrease in Earth's gravity at 9.47am on April 1st.

SALTY:  bitter, jealous, irritated.

SNACK:  describes someone you find attractive.

GOAT:  greatest of all time.

DRIP:  a cool sense of style.

WOKE:  aware of what’s going on; politically aware. 

WOKE 😖

'Woke' is an interesting one, often used in a derogatory sense for progressive ideas. Gina Rinehart launched a book Jokes and Joys on April 1st 2021, celebrating the tasteless gag. Launch guests agreed “laughter is desperately needed in an era of political correctness”. Aw, people aren't finding jokes about asylum seekers and cat dishes served in Chinese restaurants funny anymore?


What do you call a worker with more than minimum wage in their pay cheque? Overpaid. ☠️

A pinch of salt ...

• Fierce Self-compassion: A conversation between Tara Brach and Kristin Neff. 

• Hatred Ceases. A bunch of us put this kids' music clip together 14 years ago in response to the Iraq war.

Why is it, when you reach for a rubber glove, the opposite one always comes out first? For right-handed people the left glove always comes out first, and vice versa. 🤪 

Brainwave: use an indelible marker to scratch a big R on the right hand glove!

That's tope. As in awesome (gen Z mix of 'totally' and 'dope'). 

OK Boomer. 

(Derogatory, refers to when us oldies are out of touch).

Tho here it means 'we've reached the end of the Newsletter.'

That's all folks.

Great to have your company! Prank you for reading this far.

Look out for April Fools tripwires on Friday!

Big hugs, Shakti

The mandatory cafe photo. The Sandbar, Yamba, is run by a culinary French couple. Highly recommended.

- find previous Newsletters here -

JUST COMPLETED: 

• Heartwise, a 4-week Self-kindness and meditation course.

COMING UP: 

• The Eden Creek Mindfulness Day (Heartwise theme) on Sunday 16th April 

• A six-session Heartwise Purr More face-to-face course in Kyogle NSW (fortnightly over ten weeks) starts 1st May.

ON THE HOB:

• JULY: Circus Tent Meditation, a one-hour Meditation Clinic, tba.
• AUGUST-SEPT: A six-week online mindfulness course Purr More: Wrestling the Negativity Bias. All about enoughness. Whet your appetite here, here and here.