mwananchiDigital: This Is how Indians punish the Kids who fail Class/Grade 8 Exams..(SHOCKING)

mwananchiDigital: This Is how Indians punish the Kids who fail Class/Grade 8 Exams..(SHOCKING)

This Is how Indians punish the Kids who fail Class/Grade 8 Exams..(SHOCKING)

3 Dating Do’s and Don’ts

Time and time again, I hear women complaining about how challenging it is to date men in Vancouver. The complaints range from the lack of quality of single men, to the  lack of efforts made during courtship, or rather, courtship no longer exists, period.  Here are some tips to the bachelors out there on some dating Do’s and Dont’s:

1. Dating DO: When asking a woman out, suggest an activity (eg. coffee/drinks/dinner) and propose a time (close the deal). Dating DON’T: Ask a woman out by saying “We should hang out sometime.”

Texting “whatsup” or Facebook messaging “We should do coffee sometime” is not asking someone out. It communicates lack of effort and intention. It negates you from having to put yourself out there and risk rejection. Or, it’s just plain lazy. Perhaps I’m old fashioned, or maybe I’m just trying to resist the casual culture that’s characteristic of the “hook-up” millennial generation. But think my wise friend Adam Hodge phrased it perfectly, “The passive approach of ‘we should…’ lacks true intention. Not only in terms of dating, but in regards to personal friendships/relationships – as well as business. It says, I’ll only commit, if you commit first. And if not, I’m not really interested”.

2. Dating DO: If you do the inviting, offer to pay for the bill.

I’m not saying you have to take the person on a fancy, multi-course dinner on a first date. But a general rule of thumb whether it’s a first business meeting or a first date is –  if you do the inviting, offer to pay. And, if the date extends beyond the coffee, drink or meal, then it’s fair game after that. It’s not about the amount of money spent; it’s about the gesture.

3. Dating DO: Put in some effort.

Sure, we don’t want to create stuffy situations that create expectations and pressure. But  – that doesn’t mean you should slack on making effort when going on a date with someone. Dress for the occasion with proper footwear (and unless you’re heading to the beach, I’d advise to stay away from flip flops at dinner). Put some thought into where to go and saying “I dunno, what do you want to do?” doesn’t cut it.
Lastly, being passive in anything area of life has never lead to great results has it? Mediocre results perhaps, but never great. I’ve never gotten a great job, opportunity or developed an incredibly enriching friendship with someone by choosing the passive route. Thus, it’s likely not going to produce high quality results in the dating realm either.
Take a risk. Put yourself out there. And yeah, you may get rejected or bruised a little bit, but eventually, that risk will be taken with the right person, and it will be so worth it. =)
Happy dating!

Why Do Good Women Pick the Wrong Men?

Why do great women pick people who treat them poorly? Smart, beautiful, incredible individuals – who give 110% to a man who in return, are only half-vested, part-time, and approach the relationship with a “me”, not “we” mentality.
And while your friends see that your relationship is unhealthy, and your rational mind does too, you just can’t seem to get out.  You know deep down inside that the person is not right for you, but make justifications and excuses over and over again.  You stay. You try even harder. You’re hooked.
Why does this happen?

1. The more you invest, the more vested you become.

When you don’t get the love and attention you want, it may seem natural to give more.  You invest more – only to find yourself more disappointed, depleted and feeling insignificant with each attempt to create/repair the connection. This is what psychologist Dr. Jeremy Nicholson calls the principle of “sunk costs”.
“Doing favors for others and treating them well, leads us to value and love them…They do all of the “doing”. They are the ones waiting on their partner, doing good deeds, buying gifts, etc. As a result, they have a lot of love (sunk costs) for their date or mate. But, their partner has not invested. They have not given a thing. So, they are not at all in love or committed.”
Before you engage in another act of love, ask yourself what your true intention is. Are you giving without expectation of receiving anything back in return? Are you keeping score? Or, is there a part of your giving that is rooted in the hopes you will get love and acknowledgement in return? If there isn’t a foundation of love, respect and commitment with the person you’re dating, giving more and doing nice things will not cause them to love you more, it’ll only result in you becoming increasingly attached.

Perhaps you had an unstable male figure in your life as a child, or your first relationship was one that left you hurt and wounded. It is possible that you are choosing relationships that repeat the unavailability, rejection or abandonment issues that were familiar in your earliest relationship with the opposite sex. In a sense, you seek comfort in that familiar scenario – even if it is one filled with angst. These are attractions of deprivation, and it’s possible it stems from your childhood.
The problem is, the longer you continue the cycle, the more your sense of self-worth erodes, making it harder and harder to remove yourself from the pleasure/pain pattern of unhealthy, inaccessible relationships.
I once started to develop feelings for someone and as I started to open up to him, he reacted with aloofness and indifference. It was clear he was emotionally unavailable to me. My natural reaction was to try harder, initiate more, and stick around in hopes he would turn around.
This is what I would have done in my early twenties, but a decade later,  I’ve learned to recognize the signs of an unhealthy dynamic. My craving and desire to make it work with a guy like him is similar to those same attractions in my early twenties. I admit, I was attracted and craving a connection with a man who was unavailable.  But what’s different now is my response.
I can choose to not engage. I can recognize that I’m worth more than to invest in someone who likes me just a little, but not enough. And this, is the decision that starts to break the unhealthy cycle.
Don’t ever forget your worth. The moment you accept less than your worth, you will get less. The moment you tolerate disrespect and disregard, you set precedent.

3. It’s chemical.

Dr. Larry Young, the director for Translational Social Neuroscience, notes that experiencing a loss from a partner – such as a separation or death, is akin to an addict craving drugs. A study showed that voles separated from their vole partner showed high levels of a stress chemical, corticosterone, and experienced an overwhelming anxiety due to their partner loss.  The voles are driven to go “home” to their partner because only then does the oxytocin (the feel good hormone associated with pair bonding) can help ease the anxiety the separation caused.
Dr. Young states that the vole behavior is similar to humans  – they come back not because they are positively motivated to be with their partners, but because they want the misery of separation to stop.
“We have this normal together, whatever that normal is. And the bad feeling forces you to come back.”
He points out that both men and women who have been verbally or physically abused often refuse to leave those relationships similarly to how drugs addicts cannot leave their relationship with drugs. They are chemically hooked. Then, “They rationalize their choice to stay by focusing on positive traits their partner might possess.” Sound familiar?
I truly believe that when it doesn’t work out with someone in the present, it is because it is meant to work out with someone else in the future. But you can’t leave it all up to fate. There’s work to be done on your part too. Each relationship that comes in your life is the universe’s way of delivering a lesson for you to learn. If you don’t learn that lesson and evolve, you will only face the same issues with each relationship moving forward. If you want to avoid a lifetime of dating the wrong men, you have to be conscious of the old wounds you need to heal and take action to stop destructive habits and patterns.  After all, you have to be the “right one” until you will meet the “right one”.

Disclaimer: This is not a bash on men. I am a woman and writing from a woman’s point of view. You can flip the genders and the same points would apply.
source: http://justmytype.ca/

Always the Mistress Never the Mrs.

Sourec: http://justmytype.ca/
Another weekend, another one-night stand. The cute guy you slept with from the bar still hasn’t called. The guys that do contact you only text, (and only after midnight). You get asked out to meet for a drink but never for dinner. Any of these situations sound familiar?
These scenarios are far too common amongst single females, and unfortunately, a lot of the times we don’t know why we are stuck in the same patterns – attracting men who don’t want to commit.
I’m not saying that commitment and true love is the be-all and end-all for everyone. There are definitely Samanthas out there that consider sex a sport, and dating as sheer entertainment. If that works for you then, hey – all the more power to you. But many, if not most single women, actually want sex, dating and courtship to result in one thing… love.
But after countless dates, hooking up and still no ring, it is apparent that there is something that these women have in common. Men want to sleep with them, but don’t want to date them. If your dating and sex strategy (or lack of strategy, that is) isn’t working for you, here are a few reasons that may explain it:

You’re easy

You ooze sex, smell like sex and give up sex easily. Opportunistic men will jump at the chance to get a few drinks in you hoping to get you in bed at the end of the night. But you wake up alone.
When men see you as sexual prey first and foremost, they are blinded to all the other great stuff you have to offer. Not your good heart, your inner domestic goddess, your charming personality or resemblance to their mother. Nope, they see the one thing you’ve presented as your value: sex.
Men who want to settle down do not want to take home the woman who sleeps around. They want to feel proud of their “catch” and be able to introduce you to their friends and family. So what can you do? It’s simple. Stop putting out so easily. Stop pushing out sex as your main attraction and you may find that men will start to notice all the other things about you that make you special.
If you put out quickly and easily, men will automatically assume that you’re doing the same thing with a bunch of other dudes – and that isn’t something their egos find attractive. They automatically put you in the “don’t take seriously” pile which explains why they don’t make an effort to date you.

You’re a golddigger

You meet a rich guy and imagine how you life would be without having to work another 9-5 again. You salivate over the nice bags, trips and fine dinners of your future.
While that fantasy may play out in an episode of Desperate Housewives, it doesn’t work out in reality. When you date a man in hopes that he’s your lottery ticket out of middle class, you’ll only end up being disappointed.
First, dating a rich guy does not mean there is a transfer of his wealth to you. You get a leased lifestyle. This means you have to return it once he finds someone newer and prettier. Second, these bachelors aren’t rookies to the game. And you are definitely not the one to break their sugar-daddy cherry. They are not naive to the fact that the reason you’re with them is because of their financial status – and often have no intention of committing to you.The fairytale usually ends like this: the dude finds another flavor of the month, and you end up 10 pounds heavier from the wining and dining with a few new designer bags. He continues playing the field and you end up alone.

You sleep with taken men

Research shows that men rarely leave their wives for the person they’ve cheated with. And even if they do, often the relationship that begins with deception usually ends in deception. In fact, according to Dr. Phil, “relationships born out of affairs survive less than 5 percent of the time.” You can lie to yourself all you want, justify and live in denial believing you really are the special one – but the reality is, he’s not going to end up with you. Plus, you’ll have a ton of karma, guilt (if you have a conscience that is) and shame to deal with at some point. It’s a lose-lose situation. There are over 18,000,000 single men in America alone; surely there is one in that sea of fish that could be a better soul mate?

You have no substance

You gab about clothes, celebrities and other fluff stuff that nobody really cares about (except for your BFF and hairstylist). You think that working in retail or as a waitress at Cactus Club is a career path. There is nothing wrong with this scenario – if you’re in your teens or early twenties. But if you’re looking for a husband, you need to have substance. Your passions, ambitions, stories… that’s what makes an individual interesting. If you don’t show any of your substance, it really doesn’t matter how pretty you are, because eventually, pretty gets familiar, and then it gets old.
You’d think that the points raised in this article are common sense – but why do so many females constantly repeat their dating strategies even when it clearly doesn’t work? Part of it has to do with issues of self-worth and self-esteem. Another part of it has to do with what the mainstream media teaches us. The mass media inundates us with images, stories and celebrities where females are sex objects. What they don’t tell us is that this positioning of women is really meant to serve the male. We are trained that being pretty and sexual is how you win a man. So what do we do? We use our looks and sex to play the game, hoping to win validation and love in return. This strategy doesn’t result in love, in fact quite the opposite, chipping away at our self-esteem. Then we’re back at square one, repeating the cycle in a quest to find love and validation.
If you want to find true, committed love, the first step is changing your mentality. Respect your body and be respected. Love yourself, and you will be open to receiving love from others. Find ways that nurture your confidence and empowerment that doesn’t involve using your looks or sex. For example, perhaps a weekend in with good girlfriends is healthier for your soul than trolling a nightclub for men who are looking just to have fun. And when making decisions about who to invest your time in and who to share your body with, ask yourself if it’s taking you closer to finding love (both with another and with yourself) or further away.

Gettting Over an Ex

Source: http://justmytype.ca/
Do know that this is a normal and natural phase to go through – and it is just that, a phase that will pass. You are mourning, your brain is still wired with attachment to this person. You can feel physical pain as your brain craves that attachment and doesn’t get it. A study from the book The Chemistry Between Us by Dr. Larry Young notes that relationship separation causes an anxiety and pain similar to what a drug addict experiences when fiending for another fix.
But the less of him you see, the less he will be in your thoughts. And slowly, your heart will heal. Sometimes you’ll go through a setback, and feel like no progress has been made at all. But the journey of healing is one that goes up and down, and hopefully, with a positive trend upward in the grand scheme of things.
Whatever he did to hurt you, it likely came from an unhealthy place. Perhaps one of fear, insecurity, lack of self-worth or disconnection. Hurt people hurt people. So while it may look like he’s moved forward on the outside, the hurt he had in the inside while he was with you, is still likely still within him. And sooner or later, in some shape or form, it’ll out in his present relationship too.
That’s the way unresolved issues go – they keep reappearing, relationship after relationship, until the person finally decides to work on it, heal from it, and move forward.
I know you may not be able to feel it now, but as someone who has been exactly where you are, and has come out of the suffering, I’m telling you – it gets better. And trust that there is a bigger plan out there for you – you were meant to go through this to evolve into the next part of you.
Remember, when it doesn’t work with someone in the present, it’s because it’s meant to work out with someone else in your future. Each relationship that comes and goes happens to prepare you for the next one, and the next – until you finally are at the right point to meet the person you’re meant to be with

Differences Between Dating a Boy vs a Man

When I was in my early twenties, if a guy acted aloof, called back only sometimes and showed minimal interest, I would get hooked. You could say I was addicted to the bad boy/ unavailable boy/ player. I was drawn to what psychotherapist, Ken Page terms as “attractions of deprivation” – when we are drawn to people who embody the worst emotional characteristics of our parents. Basically, the theory explains that we are attracted to people who can wound us the same way we were wounded in our childhood, as our psyche tries to recreate the past void and save us by changing its ending.
“The child in us believes that if the original perpetrators — or their current replacements — finally change their minds, apologize, or make up for that terrible rupture of trust, we can escape from our prison of unworthiness. Our conscious self is drawn to the positive qualities we yearn for, but our unconscious draws us to the qualities which hurt us the most as children.”  - Psychology Today
So games used to work on me because 1) I had unresolved daddy issues and 2) At the tender age of 20, I was trying to figure out who I was and to top it off, I was ridden with insecurity and a low sense of self-worth.
But somewhere in between the passing of a decade, something changed.
I learned to love myself.  I became independent, confident, and started to value my self-worth. I went through hardships and heartbreaks and picked myself back up which built my strength and courage. Instead of relying on beauty as my source of empowerment, I focused on basing my empowerment on my intelligence, successes, values, contributions to the world and how I helped others. In a sense, I finally grew up. I went from being a girl to becoming a woman. And as a woman, you are attracted to very different things than you are as a girl.
A girl is attracted to boys. A woman is attracted to men. Now, this has nothing to do with the actual age of a person. I’m referring to maturity, life vision and stage of life. In fact, some people regardless of their age, will never really grow up. You can switch the genders in this post and most points would likely still apply. Or, read this post on “The 11 Differences Between Dating a Girl vs a Woman“.
If you are a girl (lack independence, are ruled by insecurity, lack self-respect, throw tantrums, have princess syndrome, don’t have strong values or boundaries and can’t hold yourself on your own) then expect that you will attract only boys. However, if you are a woman (independent, ambitious, knows your worth and value, has a strong moral compass, is considerate and an able communicator and doesn’t let insecurity dominate your psyche), then you should be dating a man. And if you can’t spot the difference just yet, here are some pointers.

1. A man knows what he wants, and goes for it. A boy may have somewhat of an idea, but not really. He doesn’t think too much about it, and even if he does, doesn’t exert much effort to get it. A boy is passive, a man is assertive.
2. A man plans for his future and is working towards building a foundation and infrastructure in order to have a family (at some point in his life).  A boy lives only in the moment and his plans are mostly around which bar he’s going to hit up on the weekend.
3. A man looks for a woman with intelligence, who is supportive, grounded and encompasses a shared set of values when choosing a partner. A boy cares mostly only for girls who are hot, wild and exciting.
4. A man knows a good woman when he meets one and will take initiative to get to know her. A boy may make an attempt if you’re lucky, but gives up before ever really trying.
5. A man has the courage to have uncomfortable conversations. He is honest with his intentions and lets people know where they stand. A boy avoids. He ignores confrontation or any serious talks about feelings. Instead of dealing with a situation, he runs away from it or creates drama or excuses to mask the fact he’s not that into you or a relationship.
6. A man knows when to invest in a woman and jump in with two feet. A boy is always “testing” – he doesn’t fully commit because he never knows if he is quite ready. But the truth is, because he is a boy, regardless of who he meets, he will never be ready due to the stage of life he is in.
7. A man knows how to have a good time and be social, but is often busy making strides in his career and building his life. A boy is getting crunk with his buddies at the bar every weekend.
8. A man takes the time to reflect on the type of man he wants to be, the example he wants to leave and the vision for his life. He has put thought into his values. A boy has not established his moral compass or values and consequently, is often inconsistent.
9. A man has integrity. He means what he says, and says what he means. He has follow through and actions his promises. And if he can’t he has the guts to tell you why. A boy makes promises but doesn’t follow through.
10. A man is afraid of rejection but will put himself out there anyway. A boy is afraid of rejection and acts passive so that his pride and ego won’t ever get too banged up.

Now, a lot of these differences require taking the time to know someone to figure out if the apple of your eye is indeed a man, or a mere boy. However, one of the quickest filters that you can notice from the beginning is this:
11. A boy plays games. A man doesn’t.
*To clarify, when I’m referring to “games” I mean mind games.
Photo credit: Jaclyn Auletta

Differences Between Dating a Girl vs a Woman

A girl jumps from one social circle to another, making fast friends that don’t last. A woman values her deep friendships and nurtures that bond with time, gratitude, energy and thoughtfulness.

A boy is attracted to girls. A man is attracted to women. Now, this has nothing to do with the actual age of a person. I’m referring to maturity, life vision and stage of life. In fact, some people regardless of their age, will never really grow up. Also, this isn’t to say that a woman won’t ever have “girlish” or immature tendencies or vice versa. This post refers to one’s maturity and most points would also apply if you switch the genders as well.
If you are a boy, then expect that you will attract only girls. However, if you are a man (independent, knows your worth and value, has a strong moral compass, is considerate and an able communicator and doesn’t let insecurity dominate your psyche), then you should be dating a woman. And if you can’t spot the difference just yet, here are some pointers.
1. A girl throws tantrums. When displeased, upset or angry, she reacts just as she did as a child when she didn’t get her way with her parents. This often consists of screaming, pouting, giving the silent treatment, being passive aggressive and/or punishing. A woman still feels the emotions of being upset/displeased, but has cultivated the skill of responding versus reacting. She comes to the table as an adult, and communicates clearly what is bothering her.
2. A girl perceives herself as a princess and believes people should treat her like so. She is entitled and feels that she is owed and therefore expects more than she appreciates. A woman, has standards (what she holds herself to) not expectations (what she projects on to others).
3. A girl uses her physical beauty as her currency and basis of value. A girl may be so used to feeling validated through her looks and sexuality, that she uses this as her primary tool to get what she wants in life. A woman, knows her worth is beyond her physicality. A woman bases her value on her intelligence, her strength, her integrity, her values, her contributions, her humanity.
4. A girl banks on a man to be her financial strategy. A woman plans to be financially independent – she banks on… herself. And if she so happens to enter a relationship dynamic where it makes sense for her partner to be the primary breadwinner, it’s considered a bonus, not the expected life line.
5. A girl sees the world from a place of lack and scarcity. She competes and will even tear down another in order to secure resources or a mate. A woman helps other women. She knows that there’s plenty enough to go around and takes the high road of integrity to get what she wants.
6. A girl cannot be bothered with anything domestic and is proud of the fact that she cannot cook or clean. A woman understands that being domestic is not a duty, but understands that it is one way of taking care of herself and others. She also understands that in the event she wants to create a family, having a person in the household who can contribute domestically is important.
7. “A girl wants attention, a woman wants respect. A girl wants to be adored by many. A woman wants to be adored by one.” -anonymous
8. A girl does not respect her body.  She has not yet understood that her body and heart are sacred, and that it’s important to be mindful of how she treats it and who she shares it with. “A girl cherishes handbags, diamonds and her shoe collection as her prize possessions. A woman cherishes her health, her sense of self, and her talents as her greatest assets.” – N. Mah
9. A woman takes the time to reflect on the type of human she wants to be, the example she wants to leave and the vision for her life. She has put thought into her values and what she stands for. A girl has not established her moral compass or values and consequently, is often inconsistent. “After spending time with a girl, you feel exhausted because she takes more than she gives. After spending time with a woman, you feel invigorated, because she empowers you with possibility, and a passion for life.” – N. Mah
10. A girl has a checklist that prioritizes superficial qualities above anything else. Here is an example of how this checklist may look: Hot, popular, wears skinny jeans, over 6 feet tall, rich.. This is the checklist of what a woman may look for: High integrity, intelligent, kind, good communicator, emotionally available…
Now, a lot of these differences require taking the time to know someone to figure out if the apple of your eye is indeed a mature woman, or someone with an immature mindset. However, one of the quickest filters that you can notice from the beginning is this:

Now, a lot of these differences require taking the time to know someone to figure out if the apple of your eye is indeed a mature woman, or someone with an immature mindset. However, one of the quickest filters that you can notice from the beginning is this:
11. A girl plays games. A woman doesn’t.

PHOTOS: See Female Preacher Who Preaches With Her Breasts ExposedShe is a preacher who sees nothin wrong with exposing her bust while spreading the word. Her sermons aptly named "The Gospel From The SKRIPPER POLE" gets a lot of fans, mostly men. See a picture of her while giving one of her recent sermons; READ MORE: http://news.naij.com/26202.html

She is a preacher who sees nothin wrong with exposing her bust while spreading the word. Her sermons aptly named "The Gospel From The SKRIPPER POLE" gets a lot of fans, mostly men.
See a picture of her while giving one of her recent sermons;

READ MORE:  http://news.naij.com/26202.html

The lady preacher with exposed boobs! Preaching for God or Satan?SHOCKING>MUST WATCH

How to End Your Fear of Love

Love is a very complicated thing. It is one of the most common emotions in the world. One word cannot truly express the meaning of love, so it is only natural that a fear of love can develop in anybody, you, your sister, even the person next to you Maybe you're afraid of being loved, or you're afraid of falling in love. Whatever the case, and whatever your past experiences that may have caused this fear, you can turn your fear into love.

1)

Figure out what you're actually afraid of. There is a good chance that you are not afraid of love itself, rather, something more specific. For example, you may think you're afraid of being loved, when in reality, you fear getting to know a person who is interested in you. Or, you may think you are afraid of falling in love, when you are actually afraid of losing control in your life.

2

Identify a cause for your fear. Once you know what you are afraid of, figure out if there is something that caused you to fear it. In most cases, a fear can be caused by past experience. Maybe you got to know someone a couple of years ago and you realized that they were not who you originally thought they were. Or, maybe you used to be madly in love with someone and all of your other interests and hobbies suffered because of it. 

 

3

Figure out what you learned from the experience, instead of blaming yourself over and over. If that person wasn't who you thought they were, then now you know that you shouldn't assume that you know someone, when you barely know them. Or, if the person you were madly in love with was detrimental to all of your other interests, then you now know you should find someone that supports your interests and hobbies and is a positive influence on your life.

4

Work on conquering your fear, keeping what you've learned in mind. It won't happen overnight. In fact, you shouldn't try to make it disappear at once, or you will overwhelm yourself. Face your fear as much as possible over a long period of time until it no longer is a fear for you anymore. 

 

5

Realize that it's all right if you fail at love. Everyone fails at love at some point or another so you're not alone. 

 

 SOME USEFUL TIPS 

 

• Concerning the common worry, "Is he/she the right one for me?," or , "Should I ask him/her out?," remember that you probably never will be 100% sure. Sometimes you just have to take a chance and learn from it if it doesn't work out. But if it does, you will be very glad you took a chance and made it happen.
• Don't worry about whether or not you're beautiful or ugly. Everyone's beautiful in their own special way. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise, and believe it.
• Don't idolize this person. They have flaws too.
• Be yourself! People will notice if you're trying to be someone else. The best thing you can be is yourself. If they don't like you for who you are, then they're not worth it.
• Don't over-think - use your heart!
• Have confidence in yourself! And be sure to love yourself!
• Be real and don't dress or act in ways that are not true to yourself.
• Good luck!
• There's someone for everyone

• Nobody wants to be lonely! So if you think about it, would you rather try your hand at love or just give up and be alone your whole life? Everyone is a pretty decent person and kind.
• You will have many good experiences and bad experiences when it comes to love. You may feel the desire to just give up. You should never completely give up. Instead, choose a different path.
• Sometimes people can't find love because of their high expectations for a potential relationship. Sometimes it's just best to settle for less as long as the person you're eyeing is a decent person in all respects.
• Don't be sad if you have never had a boyfriend/girlfriend before. There are other people who have never had a relationship before so you're not alone.
• There is somebody for everybody out there. Sometimes, the best thing to do is to give it time and someone new will come along. Time heals all wounds. All you have to do is give it time.

Photos of the Mtindwa accident

Could the Al Shabaab be using KTN’s Jicho pevu as their mouth piece?

 

 

 Source:http://www.nairobiexposed.com/2013/10/23/mohammed-alis-jicho-pevu-al-shabaabs-mouth-piece/

Could the Al Shabaab be using KTN’s Jicho pevu as their mouth piece? Granted our soldiers and security forces did not behave well before, during and after the Westgate Attack, I would like to WARN Kenyans against believing Jicho Pevu. As usual I will lay facts on the table- and avoid emotional and illogical arguments.

(Written By Gordon Opiyo) First- I will declare my interest: I have been writing on Islamic Fundamentalism, especially the brand that attacks Christians for more than ten years- I have studied the modus-operendi of Terrorists and their propaganda machinery. I have also studied the Koran and issue of Martyrs.
I have just watched the one and a half hour propaganda masterpiece done by Mohammed Ali and would like to raise the following points:- I would not like any other Kenyan to be misled into believing LIES against Kenya and ELEVATION of those murderous cowardly Muslim fanatics.
1)For the the whole one and a half hour of Jicho Pevu- Mohammed Ali does NOT call those murderers Terrorists. He only makes mention of the term “Magaidi”after the clip that shows president saying that five terrorists have been Killed.
2) Ali calls those murderers heroic terms like “Wapiganaji”, “Wanamgambo” but NEVER calls them TERRORISTS
3) In the first fifteen minutes of Jicho Pevu- Ali chooses his clips very carefully in order to pass a MESSAGE to KENYANS from AL- Shabaab. Listen to this statement from one of the people that was spared by the Murderers “You did not spare our women and children- why should we spare your children” The FACT that Ali chooses to focus on that statement should raise any antenna of Terrorists Network watchers. To increase their impact- the Islamic Fundamentalists usually release some victims and lets them speak through some carefully chosen media. I believe Jicho Pevu is their key voice in Kenya.
4) Jicho Pevu cleverly demonises the KDF, and makes them look like a bunch of fools. Note that there soldiers are not angels- but the propaganda tools of Islamic Terror networks takes advantage of weaknesses in the opposing forces to blow issues out of proportion. They have successfully done that in Iraq, Russia and Afghanistan. For instance, without evidence- Jicho Pevu claims that there were only 4 “Wapiganaji” “Wajasiri” fighting against 200 KDF. The fact that some CCTV cameras show 4 murderers does not mean that they were only 4.
5) Several Verses in the Koran encourage Martyrs to take up arms since the enemy will kill each other: Ali cleverly uses the same verses by claiming that the six KDF soldiers that died “Waliuana wenyewe kwa wenyewe”. Listen to any tape by Rogo and you will get the same statement word for word. Those with eyes and ears- see and hear for yourself.
6) Ali claims that the 4 Escaped. He does not give us maps from the location of the CCTV on how they could have escaped. Why? What is his motive? Prepare us for another attack?
7) Three weeks before the Westage Attack- Jicho Pevu showed gory images on TV of Rogo and other Islamic Fundamentalists that have been in the forefront of teaching hatred against Christians and KDF. Displaying of bodies of “Martyrs” is usually used by Fundamentalists to prepare others for attacks. Ask yourself one key question: Why did Jicho Pevu break ALL journalistic rules to display the bodies of Rogo and three others on National TV? Was it a mere coincidence that after three weeks of Jicho Pevu displaying those bodies Kenya is attacked? Facts speak for themselves
8) Martyr Body Display: This is one of the key methods used by Jihadists and their preferred media outlets. In Late August Mohammed Ali broke ALL Journalistic Rules by PUBLICLY displaying the Bodies of Aboud Rogo and three other slain clerics. That was not just a bad editorial judgement- but a properly timed activity in any Islamic Fundamentalists schemes. Ask yourself these hard questions
a) Why would anyone want to display for more than ten minutes badly mutilated bleeding bodies of “three Martyrs” at 7 pm?
b) What purpose does the display of “Martyrs” serve? This is meant to act as a signal to other “Martyrs”. Fundamentalist Islam teaches that Martyrs bodies have special powers. If you believe that there is no connection between the Jicho Pevu Display of Mutilated Bodies and the Westgate Attack three weeks later, then you must be tough. The Middle East Media Research Institute has details of previous tactics: Check them out in this link
9) Demonising The Military Force: In order to encourage more Jihadists, the Islamic Fundamentalists have a well tested tactic of making the opposing FORCE look terrible and foolish: This tactic has worked well in Iraq and Afghanistan. Buy any preaching tape by Rogo and you will discover that Rogo and his fellow preachers at the Masjid Musa Mosque have been demonising KDF in all their preachings.
This is done in order to lift the spirits of new recruits, and fire them up against the “terrible” enemy. I have checked, and rechecked the section that claims that KDF looted- but some things just do not add up: Before you join the mob justice of judging our forces- consider this
a) Looting would have seen them carrying different goodies, of different sizes and colours: The images I have seen just show seven men carrying similar sized paperbags. Nowhere do I see any till being broken into, nowhere do I see any soldier picking anything from any shelf. Before we jump into the mob justice against our soldiers- consider this: Al shabaab has manufactured several defamatory stories against Ugandan Forces.
The only difference is that Museveni will shut down any irresponsible media house that airs anything that tarnishes UPDF without proof. Jicho Pevu has depicted KDF as a bunch of clueless nincompoops. First, by claiming that 200 men were not able to capture 4 “Fighters”, second, by sensationally claiming that the 4″Fighters” mysteriously escaped(without showing how and through what route).
The fact that cameras only captured 4 men does not mean that there were only four. Westgate has several shops and we cannot conclude that they were only four, when we only have CCTV footage of three sections of the mall that has hundreds of sections. This fits well in the Islamic Fundamentalists system of demonising the opposing force.
10) Why Cant ALI use his investigative skills to get to the bottom of those that funded the attackers? Why cant he use his skills to expose the preachers that have been recruiting young men to fight against Kenya and kill Christians? Why Cant Jicho Pevu give us the network that hosted these killers? Truth is: ALi is not willing to expose them; Reason- I will explain later
Gordon Opiyo
Source:Nairobiexposed.com

Biography for Lupita Nyong'o

 

 

Biography forLupita Nyong'o More at IMDbPro »

  source.http://www.imdb.com/media/rm493411840/nm2143282?ref_=nm_ov_ph

Date of Birth

Mexico

Height

5' 5" (1.65 m)

Mini Biography

Lupita Nyong'o was born in Mexico, raised in Kenya and educated in the USA. She is a graduate of the Yale University School of Drama's Acting program.

Lupita's film debut was playing "Patsey" in acclaimed director, Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave (2013). She was also the lead in MTV's award-winning drama series, "Shuga" (2009).

Lupita's stage credits include playing "Perdita" in "The Winter's Tale", (Yale Repertory Theater), "Sonya" in "Uncle Vanya", "Katherine" in "The Taming of the Shrew", as well as being in the original production of Michael Mitnick's "Elijah".
IMDb Mini Biography By: Seventh Sense Communications

Trivia

Lupita is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama.

A man knocked down at thika road

HEY FRIENDS,
 JUST ASKING IF SOMEONE HAS CONNECTIONS WITH ANY POLICE ON THIKA RD JUST PASSED THERE IN THE MORNING AND THERE IS A BODY OF A MAN WHO APPARENTLY WAS KNOCKED DOWN BY AN OTHAYA NISSAN MATATU AT 8PM LAST NIGHT THE SAD THING IS NO ONE TOOK DOWN THE NUMBER PLATE,PLEASE ANYONE WHO IS A POSITION TO HELP OUT IT WILL BE APPRECIATED COZ MAYBE HIS FAMILY IS WONDERING OF HIS WHEREABOUTS.HIS BODY NEAR THE KCA UNIVERSITY.

Tyler Perry Inspiring Words - How To Be Successful - Motivational Speech

Who you are by Carorine Mutoko

What you cant Afford do without and If you must have work for it-From Caroline Mutoko

Ladies Quite Average Attitude_Caroline Mutoko tells the ladies(Must Watch)

A Letter from a Kenyan Abroad (response to kenyans in kenya)

A response to Bikozulu's "A Letter to Kenyans Abroad" http://bikozulu.co.ke/a-letter-to-kenyans-abroa
The source: http://mkawasi.blogspot.com/

For a long time I’ve fought the itch to respond to blogs, tweets, status updates and newspaper articles from Kenyans at home that bash Kenyans abroad for their accents and attitudes. I had decided it’s too trivial. Until today when “A Letter to Kenyans Abroad” arrived on my wall, twice, then twice again, demanding to be read. And I did. Time to scratch that itch.

Bikozulu starts off well, then degenerates into a rant of castigating Kenyans in the diaspora for being o-so-obnoxious. Some Kenyans at home have taken to carrying around a big stick canning their diaspora brothers and sisters at every turn for defiling a certain doctrine of Kenyanness. Thanks largely to Bikozulu’s letter, I have summed up their ten commandments for Kenyans abroad.

1. You’re not allowed to have an American or British accent. 
2. Don’t criticize your country’s dirty politics. That’s the way it is.
3. Stop pointing out the crippling poverty in your motherland. That’s the way it is.
4. It’s sacrilegious for you to speak of a foreign country as “home.” It turns your ancestors in their graves.
5. Stop asking for quality time with us when you visit; we’re busy and we’ve moved on from you. 
6. If you want to make a difference, come to Kenya. Stop that diaspora rights nonsense.
7. You’re not allowed to use the phrase “when I was in…” or “back in…” with reference to a location in Europe or North America during conversation with a Kenyan at home. 
8. We are allowed to insult you for flipping burgers and scrubbing toilets abroad because… remind us, didn’t you go to get a PhD?
9. You’re not allowed to criticize a Kenyan at home for poor work ethic. That’s the way it is here, respect us.
10. No matter how long you’ve lived in Europe or the US, maintain an authentic Kenyan accent. (A variation of 1st commandment.) 

So let me start with the 1st, 7th and 10th commandments, by far the most irksome to Kenyans at home when broken. A year or so ago, there was a news item about a certain white lady who had lived in Lamu for only a year and mastered Kiswahili perfectly, complete with the Lamu indigenous accent. What was interesting is how so many Kenyans in Kenya, including the journalists, were awed by her effort and achievement, holding her up as an example for other Kenyans whose Kiswahili is questionable. But a Kenyan abroad speaking excellent English with a decent command of the British or American accent is considered arrogant, false and somehow a rejecter of his/her African heritage.

The stuff of inferiority complexes by colonized minds still amazes me. It is what I see every time I see reactions to Kenyans abroad speaking with some degree of a western accent. Yes, some consciously work at it, either because in their workplace they bear an obligation to be understood (I’m a teacher, language is my tool, and to be understood is my responsibility), or because it simply makes life easier to do what the Romans do while in Rome. Some acquire accents overtime, subconsciously, in varied degrees. That does not mean they lose your identity. It is true that Kenyans abroad acquire a deeper pride in their ethnic and Kenyan identity, some speaking Kiswahili for the first time, and those who were born here learning their mother tongue with pride while Nairobi kids could care less.

Now, some claim, with a chest-thumping, that they don’t have an altered accent after living abroad for decades. False. Even a Kikuyu with the heaviest Kikuyu accent somewhere in Boston will subconsciously slip in a “tomayto” here, a “callege” there, a “Canerricat” (Connecticut) too.  There’s nothing to it. And if while in Kenya you slip into your diaspora-acquired accent, don’t ever apologize for it to puzzled Kenyans ready to write you off as a fake. You are the sum of your experiences. Because I’m fully aware of this attitude, before I visited Kenya after a long period of absence some years ago, I warned my family, “my accent is significantly tainted.” I’m also able to switch back and forth between accents, depending on who I’m talking to. I know a lot of diasporans have this dexterity. Did you study Darwin?

And yes, Kenyans do pick up accents from other parts besides Europe and North America. I can point you to Kenyan friends who settled in India, Nigeria and Tanzania and came back with the various accents. But Kenyans at home just choose not to highlight it. Go figure. You don’t even have to look beyond Kenya. My Taita aunts, married and settled in different parts of Taita, now speak with accents from that part of Taita. But do we tell them they’re being arrogant? No. Only if they settled in America and spoke with an American accent, then they deserve our wrath.

As for commandment 7, it belongs to the same category of inferiority complexes displayed by those who think it arrogant for a diaspora Kenyan to speak of foreign (read, Western) places in conversation. See, I’ve told so many stories starting with “when I was in Kakuma refugee camp…” and tell of what I learnt about bravery beyond human comprehension from the “lost boys” of Sudan, and never once did I receive a judgmental look. But the minute I start a story with “when I was in New York…” Kenyan noses are squinted upwards, eyes rolling back into insular heads as if I just farted nerve gas. C’mon Kenyans.

Commandment 2, 3, 6 and 9. Reading Bikozulu’s repetitive tag, “that’s the way it is”, as in, you have no right to change our status quo, is really telling of the “outsider” attitude directed at diaspora Kenyans. Kenyans abroad criticizing Kenya is seen as insulting someone else’s mother. Get over it, Kenyans, we’re Kenyans too, and we too have a fierce responsibility to hold our politicians accountable and our fellow Kenyans responsible for conduct that builds a country. The corruption sucks, the poverty stinks, the matatu menace is barbaric, the roads suck (don't brag to me about Thika Superhighway, a mere 50 km stretch that leaves another 8,900 km of principal highways in need of similar upgrading, and 63,000 km of interurban roads crying for attention; we made one step in the right direction, don't act as if we've arrived).

The insecurity on city streets we once walked is still unacceptable, even more now that we have experienced greater safety in foreign countries. We want the good socio-economic experience we’ve had abroad to be available in Kenya too; uncongested transportation, social services for the poor, clean neighborhoods…and for the well-off Kenyans to care enough about the lives of slum-dwellers in their backyards. Yes, we will tweet and blog and status-update from our diaspora perches until you hear this. Even as we have in our own diaspora midst shameful incidents of tribalism of the worst kind, our failings and foibles do not allow you to exclude us from the privilege of being part of Kenya’s journey, in critical speech and action.

And while we’re on this topic of criticizing each other, there really ought to be a deodorant revolution in Kenya. Why is it that the minute you land in Kenya, the foul smell of human armpits hits you? You walk about the streets or ride a matatu and wish you had a gas mask. Or if an elevator full of people somewhere in the US is reeking of stale sweat, I'll bet you all my diaspora remittances the culprit is definitely the newcomer diaspora African at the corner. Our collective reputation is fouled up. Yup, I said it, yes I did. My African peeps, man. Style up. Please don’t tell me about poverty and choosing between soap and food. Dignity is important. Martin Luther King actually made such a call to his people, told them to stop stinking, that working hard for long hours with little pay does not mean neglecting personal hygiene, and to date, you won't find any black person all funky, even in the heat of summer, the poorest of black folk in America smell good! Heck, Richard Pryor probably said it best, “Don’t just wash you’re ass hole, wash your whole ass.” Let’s take care of the total package of who we are, not just one aspect.

On commandment 6: The world is now a kaleidoscope of each other’s influences, and claiming you don’t want “American” solutions is myopic while America itself seeks all kinds of ways to get stuff from Africa for its own growth, from culture to human and material resources (yup, they harvest human brain power through the green card “lottery” every year). The Romans built their civilization upon a borrowed Greek culture and a borrowed foreign faith that later became Christianity. So diaspora, go ahead with your exposed selves and influence change for the good of our country. And yes, Mr. Bikozulu, I can actually sit in Starbucks and effect change. It won’t come in one tweet, or one blog, or one electronic transmission of funds to Kenya from my cell phone. It will come from a concerted effort of using all the tools I have in the diaspora.  In fact, diaspora has contributed to change and continues to do so.

On commandment 8: Kenyans go through a lot in the diaspora, few have it easy all the way. Don’t gloat over those who go through flipping burgers and scrubbing toilets while working towards their school fees or just to pay rent. It’s these very same Kenyans that send money home, haba na haba. Some have made a business out of it, no kidding. You can find Kenyans running cleaning businesses that have done so well they’ve bought homes. I speak of people I know personally. A Kenyan banker I spoke to recently left his “big” job for a taxi-driving business. Labor which Kenyans at home consider menial can be turned to gold. It's attitude that counts. It’s time Kenyans at home kicked the habit of equating success with white collar jobs. And yes, some of succeed, some don’t. Such is life. A little encouragement would go a long way.

Finally, a touchy one for me, is commandment 4. About calling a foreign country home. I’m a transnational citizen. Kenya is my home, my birth country, the land of my family, extended family and ancestors. I also have a home in the US (not a house, a home). I very easily and naturally, without skipping a beat, speak of “going back home” when I’m in Kenya, referring to the US. I have no apologies for that; I and millions of other human beings for whom the concept of home is not limited to your ancestry, the origin of your name, the sound of your accent, or a certain cultural definition of “home” that is held sacrosanct by your people. We know that in Kenyan cultures, even the cities are not your home, only your ancestral land qualifies for the title. I understand where Bikozulu's emotional but unenlightened chastising is coming from. Brother, some of us long released ourselves from the shackles of that cultural straitjacket that does not allow you to belong anywhere outside of your ancestral home or country of birth.

Kenya is still the abode of my constant agitation. I will care about what goes on there till the day I die. My spirit will continue to roam around the hills of Taita all the waking days of my life. Yet none of this stops me from staying active in my neighborhood committee in Baltimore. This is home. I seek solutions to crime, overgrown sidewalks and career opportunities with as much passion as I do for Kenya. This is home. I cared about the Trayvon Martin case, the Ravens winning Super Bowl, and wonder loudly if Mayor Rawlings-Blake really cares for inner city Baltimore. This is home. I take the train to Washington DC to teach, attend countless meetings and socialize. This is home. America has nurtured me, annoyed me, loved me, grown me. In most likelihood, I will be buried here. This is home. Don’t tell me not to call it home just because Kenya is home too. And should my family move to Italy or Rwanda or China, I refuse to live a suspended existence of non-belonging because I’m not “home”. I will plant and harvest the crop of my dreams there too and make a home in that country. That, my friend, is quintessential diaspora experience. I treasure it.

BEING LONELY ACTUALLY CAN KILL YOU

Sometime in the late ’50s, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann sat down to write an essay about a subject that had been mostly overlooked by other psychoanalysts up to that point. Even Freud had only touched on it in passing. She was not sure, she wrote, “what inner forces” made her struggle with the problem of loneliness, though she had a notion. It might have been the young female catatonic patient who began to communicate only when Fromm-Reichmann asked her how lonely she was. “She raised her hand with her thumb lifted, the other four fingers bent toward her palm,” Fromm-Reichmann wrote. The thumb stood alone, “isolated from the four hidden fingers.” Fromm-Reichmann responded gently, “That lonely?” And at that, the woman’s “facial expression loosened up as though in great relief and gratitude, and her fingers opened.”

Fromm-Reichmann would later become world-famous as the dumpy little therapist mistaken for a housekeeper by a new patient, a severely disturbed schizophrenic girl named Joanne Greenberg. Fromm-Reichmann cured Greenberg, who had been deemed incurable. Greenberg left the hospital, went to college, became a writer, and immortalized her beloved analyst as “Dr. Fried” in the best-selling autobiographical novel I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (later also a movie and a pop song). Among analysts, Fromm-Reichmann, who had come to the United States from Germany to escape Hitler, was known for insisting that no patient was too sick to be healed through trust and intimacy. She figured that loneliness lay at the heart of nearly all mental illness and that the lonely person was just about the most terrifying spectacle in the world. She once chastised her fellow therapists for withdrawing from emotionally unreachable patients rather than risk being contaminated by them. The uncanny specter of loneliness “touches on our own possibility of loneliness,” she said. “We evade it and feel guilty.”

Her 1959 essay, “On Loneliness,” is considered a founding document in a fast-growing area of scientific research you might call loneliness studies. Over the past half-century, academic psychologists have largely abandoned psychoanalysis and made themselves over as biologists. And as they delve deeper into the workings of cells and nerves, they are confirming that loneliness is as monstrous as Fromm-Reichmann said it was. It has now been linked with a wide array of bodily ailments as well as the old mental ones.

Ariel Lee

In a way, these discoveries are as consequential as the germ theory of disease. Just as we once knew that infectious diseases killed, but didn’t know that germs spread them, we’ve known intuitively that loneliness hastens death, but haven’t been able to explain how. Psychobiologists can now show that loneliness sends misleading hormonal signals, rejiggers the molecules on genes that govern behavior, and wrenches a slew of other systems out of whack. They have proved that long-lasting loneliness not only makes you sick; it can kill you. Emotional isolation is ranked as high a risk factor for mortality as smoking. A partial list of the physical diseases thought to be caused or exacerbated by loneliness would include Alzheimer’s, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, neurodegenerative diseases, and even cancer—tumors can metastasize faster in lonely people.

The psychological definition of loneliness hasn’t changed much since Fromm-Reichmann laid it out. “Real loneliness,” as she called it, is not what the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard characterized as the “shut-upness” and solitariness of the civilized. Nor is “real loneliness” the happy solitude of the productive artist or the passing irritation of being cooped up with the flu while all your friends go off on some adventure. It’s not being dissatisfied with your companion of the moment—your friend or lover or even spouse— unless you chronically find yourself in that situation, in which case you may in fact be a lonely person. Fromm-Reichmann even distinguished “real loneliness” from mourning, since the well-adjusted eventually get over that, and from depression, which may be a symptom of loneliness but is rarely the cause. Loneliness, she said—and this will surprise no one—is the want of intimacy.

Today’s psychologists accept Fromm-Reichmann’s inventory of all the things that loneliness isn’t and add a wrinkle she would surely have approved of. They insist that loneliness must be seen as an interior, subjective experience, not an external, objective condition. Loneliness “is not synonymous with being alone, nor does being with others guarantee protection from feelings of loneliness,” writes John Cacioppo, the leading psychologist on the subject. Cacioppo privileges the emotion over the social fact because—remarkably—he’s sure that it’s the feeling that wreaks havoc on the body and brain. Not everyone agrees with him, of course. Another school of thought insists that loneliness is a failure of social networks. The lonely get sicker than the non-lonely, because they don’t have people to take care of them; they don’t have social support.

Ariel Lee

To the degree that loneliness has been treated as a matter of public concern in the past, it has generally been seen as a social problem—the product of an excessively conformist culture or of a breakdown in social norms. Nowadays, though, loneliness is a public health crisis. The standard U.S. questionnaire, the UCLA Loneliness Scale, asks 20 questions that run variations on the theme of closeness—“How often do you feel close to people?” and so on. As many as 30 percent of Americans don't feel close to people at a given time.

Loneliness varies with age and poses a particular threat to the very old, quickening the rate at which their faculties decline and cutting their lives shorter. But even among the not-so-old, loneliness is pervasive. In a survey published by the AARP in 2010, slightly more than one out of three adults 45 and over reported being chronically lonely (meaning they’ve been lonely for a long time). A decade earlier, only one out of five said that. With baby-boomers reaching retirement age at a rate of 10,000 a day, the number of lonely Americans will surely spike.

Obviously, the sicker lonely people get, the more care they’ll need. This is true, and alarming, although as we learn more about loneliness, we’ll also be better able to treat it. But to me, what’s most momentous about the new biology of loneliness is that it offers concrete proof, obtained through the best empirical means, that the poets and bluesmen and movie directors who for centuries have deplored the ravages of lonesomeness on both body and soul were right all along. As W. H. Auden put it, “We must love one another or die.”

Who are the lonely? They’re the outsiders: not just the elderly, but also the poor, the bullied, the different. Surveys confirm that people who feel discriminated against are more likely to feel lonely than those who don’t, even when they don’t fall into the categories above. Women are lonelier than men (though unmarried men are lonelier than unmarried women). African Americans are lonelier than whites (though single African American women are less lonely than Hispanic and white women). The less educated are lonelier than the better educated. The unemployed and the retired are lonelier than the employed.

Ariel Lee

A key part of feeling lonely is feeling rejected, and that, it turns out, is the most damaging part. Psychologists discovered this by, among other things, studying the experience of gay men during the first decade of the AIDS epidemic, when the condition was knocking out their immune systems, and, as it seemed at first, only theirs. The nation ignored the crisis for a while, then panicked. Soon, people all over the country were calling for gay men to be quarantined.

To psychologists trying to puzzle out how social experiences affect health, AIDS amounted to something of a natural experiment, the chance to observe the effects of conditions so extreme that no ethical person would knowingly subject another person to them. The disease came from a virus—HIV—that was neutralizing all the usual defenses of a discrete group of people who could be compared with each other and also with a control group of the uninfected. That allowed researchers in a lab at UCLA to take on one of life’s biggest questions, which had become even more urgent as the disease laid waste to thousands, then tens of thousands: Could social experiences explain why some people die faster than others?

In the mid-to late ’80s, the UCLA lab obtained access to a long-term study of gay men who enrolled without knowing whether they were infected with HIV. About half of them tested positive for the virus, and about a third of those agreed to let researchers put their lives under a microscope, answering extensive questions about drug use, sexual behavior, attitudes toward their own homosexuality, levels of emotional support, and so on. By 1993, around one-third of that group had developed full-blown AIDS, and slightly more than a quarter had died.

Steven Cole was a young postdoctoral student in the lab itching to move beyond his field’s mind-body split. At the time, he told me, psychology was only just beginning to grasp “how the physical world of our bodies gets remodeled by our psychic and conceptual worlds.” When the UCLA researchers started trying to figure out which social factors sped up the progress of the disease, they tested obvious ones like socioeconomic status and levels of support. Curiously, though, being poor or lacking family and friends didn’t much change the rate at which an infected man would die of AIDS (although being in mourning, as gay men often were those days, did seem to weaken an infected man's immune system).

It eventually occurred to Cole to try to imagine the world from a gay man’s perspective. That wasn’t easy for him: “I’m a straight kid from the suburbs. I had stereotypes, but I didn’t really know the reality of these people’s lives.” Then he read a book, Erving Goffman’s Stigma: Notes on the Management of a Spoiled Identity, that tallies in detail the difficulties of “passing” as someone else. He learned that the closeted man must police every piece of information known about him, live in constant terror of exposure or blackmail, and impose sharp limits on intimacy, or at least friendship. “It was like walking around with a time-bomb,” says Cole.

Ariel Lee

Cole figured that a man who’d hide behind a false identity was probably more sensitive than others to the pain of rejection. His temperament would be more tightly wound, and his stress-response system would be the kind that “fires responses and fires ’em harder.” His heart would beat faster, stress hormones would flood his body, his tissues would swell up, and white blood cells would swarm out to protect him against assault. If this state of inflamed arousal subsided quickly, it would be harmless. But if the man stayed on high alert for years at a time, then his blood pressure would rise, and the part of his immune system that fends off smaller, subtler threats, like viruses, would not do its job.

And he was right. The social experience that most reliably predicted whether an HIV-positive gay man would die quickly, Cole found, was whether or not he was in the closet. Closeted men infected with HIV died an average of two to three years earlier than out men. When Cole dosed AIDS-infected white blood cells with norepinephrine, a stress hormone, the virus replicated itself three to ten times faster than it did in non-dosed cells. Cole mulled these results over for a long time, but couldn’t understand why we would have been built in such a way that loneliness would interfere with our ability to fend off disease: “Did God want us to die when we got stressed?”

The answer is no.

What He wanted is for us not to be alone. Or rather, natural selection favored people who needed people. Humans are vastly more social than most other mammals, even most primates, and to develop what neuroscientists call our social brain, we had to be good at cooperating. To raise our children, with their slow-maturing cerebral cortexes, we needed help from the tribe. To stoke the fires that cooked the meat that gave us the protein that sustained our calorically greedy gray matter, we had to organize night watches. But compared with our predators, we were small and weak. They came after us with swift strides. We ran in a comparative waddle.

“The very fact that [loneliness] can affect the genes like that—it’s huge,” Suomi says. “It changes the way one thinks about development.”

So what would happen if one of us wandered off from her little band, or got kicked out of it because she’d slacked off or been caught stealing? She’d find herself alone on the savanna, a fine treat for a bunch of lions. She’d be exposed to attacks from marauders. If her nervous system went into overdrive at perceiving her isolation, well, that would have just sent her scurrying home. Cacioppo thinks we’re hardwired to find life unpleasant outside the safety of trusted friends and family, just as we’re pre-programmed to find certain foods disgusting. “Why do you think you are ten thousand times more sensitive to foods that are bitter than to foods that are sweet?” Cacioppo asked me. “Because bitter’s dangerous!”

One of those alone-on-the-savanna moments in our modern lives occurs when we go off to college, because we have to make a whole new set of friends. Back in the mid-’90s, when Cacioppo was at Ohio State University (he is now at the University of Chicago), he and his colleagues sorted undergraduates into three groups—the non-lonely, the sort-of-sometimes lonely, and the lonely. The researchers then strapped blood- pressure cuffs, biosensors, and beepers onto the students. Nine times a day for seven days, they were beeped and had to fill out questionnaires. Cacioppo also kept them overnight in the university hospital with “nightcaps” on their heads, monitoring the length and quality of their rest. He took saliva samples to measure levels of cortisol, a hormone produced under stress.

As expected, he found the students with bodily symptoms of distress (poor sleep, high cortisol) were not the ones with too few acquaintances, but the ones who were unhappy about not having made close friends. These students also had higher than normal vascular resistance, which is caused by the arteries narrowing as their tissue becomes inflamed. High vascular resistance contributes to high blood pressure; it makes the heart work harder to pump blood and wears out the blood vessels. If it goes on for a long time, it can morph into heart disease. While Cole discovered that loneliness could hasten death in sick people, Cacioppo showed that it could make well people sick—and through the same method: by putting the body in fight-or-flight mode.

A famous experiment helps explain why rejection makes us flinch. It was conducted more than a decade ago by Naomi Eisenberger, a social psychologist at UCLA, along with her colleagues. People were brought one-by-one into the lab to play a multiplayer online game called “Cyberball” that involved tossing a ball back and forth with two other “people,” who weren’t actually people at all, but a computer program. “They” played nicely with the real person for a while, then proceeded to ignore her, throwing the ball only to each other. Functional magnetic resonance imaging scans showed that the experience of being snubbed lit up a part of the subjects’ brains (the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex) that also lights up when the body feels physical pain.

Ariel Lee

I asked Eisenberger why, if the same part of our brain processes social insult and bodily injury, we don’t confuse the two. She explained that physical harm simultaneously lights up another neural region as well, one whose job is to locate the ache—on an arm or leg, inside the body, and so on. What the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex registers is the emotional fact that pain is distressing, be it social or physical. She calls this the “affective component” of pain. In operations performed to relieve chronic pain, doctors have lesioned, or disabled, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. After the surgery, the patients report that they can still sense where the trouble comes from, but, they add, it just doesn’t bother them anymore.

It’s tempting to say that the lonely were born that way—it’d let the rest of us off the hook. And, as it turns out, we’d be about half right, because loneliness is about half heritable. A longitudinal study of more than 8,000 identical Dutch twins found that, if one twin reported feeling lonely and unloved, the other twin would report the same thing 48 percent of the time. This figure held so steady across the pairs of twins—young or old, male or female, notwithstanding different upbringings—that researchers concluded that it had to reflect genetic, not environmental, influence. To understand what it means for a personality trait to have 48 percent heritability, consider that the influence of genes on a purely physical trait is 100 percent. Children get the color of their eyes from their parents, and that is that. But although genes may predispose children toward loneliness, they do not account for everything that makes them grow up lonely. Fifty-two percent of that comes from the world.

Evolutionary theory, which has a story for everything, has a story to illustrate how the human species might benefit from wide variations in temperament. A group that included different personality types would be more likely to survive a radical change in social conditions than a group in which everyone was exactly alike. Imagine that, after years in which a group had lived in peace, an army of strangers suddenly appeared on the horizon. The tribe in which some men stayed behind while the rest headed off on a month-long hunting expedition (the stay-at-homes may have been less adventurous, or they may just have been loners) had a better chance of repelling the invaders, or at least of saving the children, than the tribe whose men had all enthusiastically wandered off, confident that everything would be fine back home.

And yet loneliness is made as well as given, and at a very early age. Deprive us of the attention of a loving, reliable parent, and, if nothing happens to make up for that lack, we’ll tend toward loneliness for the rest of our lives. Not only that, but our loneliness will probably make us moody, self-doubting, angry, pessimistic, shy, and hypersensitive to criticism. Recently, it has become clear that some of these problems reflect how our brains are shaped from our first moments of life.

Proof that the early brain is molded by love comes, in part, from another notorious natural experiment: the abandonment of tens of thousands of Romanian orphans born during the regime of Communist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, who had banned birth control. A great deal has been written about the heartbreaking emotional and educational difficulties of these children, who grew up 20 to a nurse in Dickensian orphanages. In the age of the brain scan, we now know that those institutionalized children’s brains developed less “gray matter”—that is, fewer of the neurons that make up the bulk of the brain—and that, if those children never went on to be adopted, they’d sprout less “white matter,” too. White matter helps send signals from one part of the brain to another; think of it as the mind’s internal Internet. In the orphans’ case, the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex—which are involved in memory, emotions, decision-making, and social interaction—just weren’t connecting.

There’s a limit to how much we can poke around inside lonely humans, for obvious reasons. That’s why a great deal of research on the biological effects of a lonely childhood involves monkeys. Last year, I visited a monkey lab in the rolling farmland of rural Maryland run by a burly and affable psychologist-turned- primatologist named Steve Suomi. Suomi conducts his experiments on rhesus macaques, adorable little creatures sometimes called a “weed species,” because they, like humans, thrive in most environments they’re thrown into.

Suomi is building on research begun by his teacher and mentor, Harry Harlow, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin notorious for experiments in the ’50s and ’60s. Harlow subjected newborn rhesus macaques to appalling isolation—months spent in cages in the company only of “surrogate mothers” made of wire with cartoonish monkey heads and bottles attached. Luckier monkeys had that and cloth-covered versions of the same thing to cuddle. (It is remarkable what a soft cloth can do to calm an anxious baby monkey down.) In the most extreme cases, the babies languished alone at the bottom of a V-shaped steel container. Cruel as these experiments were, Harlow proved that the absence of mothering destroyed the monkeys’ ability to mingle with other monkeys, though the “cloth mother” could mitigate the worst effects of isolation. Years of monkey therapy were required to integrate them into the troop. Harlow’s insights were not well received. Behaviorists, who reigned in U.S. psychology departments, held a blank-slate view of animal and human behavior. They scoffed at the notion that baby monkeys could be hard-wired for love, or at least for a certain quality of touch.

Times have changed, and Harlow’s conviction that nature demands nurture is now the common view. (Changing laws also mean that Suomi would have a harder time getting away with such experiments, which he’s not inclined to do anyway.) What Suomi has that Harlow did not have is technology. By shipping off monkey tissue to laboratories, such as Steve Cole’s, that have machines capable of seeing which genes are turned on and which are turned off, Suomi can show that loneliness transforms the brain and body. He can match the behavior of the lonely monkeys as they grow—what they act like, where they rank in dominance hierarchies when they’re introduced into a troop, whether they ever manage to reproduce—with the activity of genes that affect their brains and immune systems.

Suomi raises his monkeys in three groups, one group confined entirely to the company of peers (a chaotic, Lord of the Flies kind of childhood); another group left alone with terry-cloth mother-surrogates, except when released for a couple of hours a day to scamper with fellow babies; and the third raised by their mothers. What he found is that, in monkeys separated from their mothers in the first four months of life, some important immunity-related genes show a different pattern of expression. Among these were genes that help make the protein that inflames tissue and genes that tell the body to ward off viruses and other microbes.

Suomi was also excited about results coming in from peer-raised monkeys’ brain tissue: Thousands of little changes in genetic activity had been detected in their prefrontal cortexes. This region is sometimes called the “CEO” of the brain; it restrains violent impulses and inappropriate behavior. (In humans, faulty wiring in the prefrontal cortex has been associated with schizophrenia and ADHD.) Some of the aberrations were on genes that direct growth of the brain; modifications of those were bound to result in altered neural architecture. These findings eerily echoed the Romanian orphans’ brain scans and suggested that the lonely monkeys were going to be weirder than the others.

Emotional isolation is ranked as high a risk factor for mortality as smoking.

“The very fact that something outside the organism can affect the genes like that—it’s huge,” Suomi says. “It changes the way one thinks about development.” I didn’t need genetics, though, to see how defective the peer-raised monkeys’ development had been. Suomi took me outside to watch them. They huddled in nervous groups at the back of the cage, holding tight to each another. Sometimes, he said, they invite aggression by cowering; at other times, they fail to recognize and kowtow to the alpha monkeys, so they get picked on even more. The most perturbed monkeys might rock, clutch at themselves, and pull out their own hair, looking for all the world like children with severe autism.

Suomi added that good foster care could greatly improve the troubled macaques’ lives. He pointed out some who had been given over to foster grandmothers. Not only did they act more monkey-like, but, he told me, about half of their genetic deviations had vanished, too.

If we now know that loneliness, a social emotion, can reach into our bodies and rearrange our cells and genes, what should we do about it? We should change the way we think about health. James Heckman, a Nobel Prize–winning economist at the University of Chicago who tabulates the costs of early childhood deprivation, speaks bitterly of “silos” in health policy, meaning that we see crime and low educational achievement as distinct from medical problems like obesity or heart disease. As far as he’s concerned, these are, in too many cases, symptoms of the same social disorder: the failure to help families raise their children. Heckman believes that the life of a child at the lower end of the U.S. socioeconomic spectrum is starting to look more like the life of one of Suomi’s lonely macaques. As nearly half of all marriages continue to end in divorce, as marriage itself floats further out of reach for the undereducated and financially strapped, childhood has become a more solitary and chaotic experience. Single mothers don’t have a lot of time to spend with their children, nor, in most cases, money for emotionally enriching social activities.

“As inequality has increased, childhood inequality has increased,” Heckman said, “So has inequality of parenting.” For the first time in 30 years, mental health disabilities such as ADHD outrank physical ones among American children. Heckman doesn’t think that’s only because parents seek out attention-deficit diagnoses when their children don’t come home with A’s. He thinks it’s also because emotional impoverishment embeds itself in the body. “Mothers matter,” he says, “and mothering is in short supply.”

Heckman has been analyzing data from two famous early-childhood intervention programs, the Abecedarian Project of the ’70s and the Perry Preschool project of the ’60s. Both have furnished ample evidence that, if you enroll very young children from poor families in programs that give both them and their parents an extra boost, then they grow up to be wealthier and healthier than their counterparts—less fat, less sick, better educated, and, for men, more likely to hold down a job. In the case of the Perry Preschool, Heckman estimated that each dollar invested yielded $7 to $12 in savings over the span of decades. One of the most effective economic and social policies, he told me, would be “supplementing the parenting environment of disadvantaged young children.”

If you can’t change society all at once, though, you can change it a few people at a time. Cacioppo and a colleague, Louise Hawkley, have been developing programs to teach lonely people to get along better with others. At one point, the psychologists thought of designing a mobile app, a sort of electronic nagging mother, to help people break bad social habits. (You’d check an item off the list, say, if you remembered to talk to anyone that day—a store clerk or a librarian.) But they didn’t get funding for the software, so now they’re focusing on a simpler and more low-tech fix. It’s a seminar with an instructor and a pointer and a screen in which students learn to read faces and interpret voices and also to stop making the assumption that lonely people seem prone to make, which is that every person they meet is judging or rebuffing them. What they’re learning, says Hawkley, is the art of “social cognition.” Her goal is to show people that they come at the world full of “assumptions about human nature, about social mores, that aren’t necessarily accurate.”

Cacioppo and Hawkley have been testing their social-cognition curriculum on Army bases, holding classes to hone soldiers’ social skills and teach platoon leaders to spot the lonely in their ranks and help them fit in better. The results aren’t in yet, U.S. Army psychologist Major Paul Lester told me, but he has been receiving reports that suggest that people who have gone through the training fall prey to post-traumatic stress disorder less often. Lester insisted that I add that the Army hadn’t agreed to spend $50 million a year for this experiment only because it’s worried about suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder— although if loneliness training brought down the number of suicidal and dysfunctional soldiers, so much the better. The Army sees the classes as essential training for coping with military life. The best fighting comes from soldiers who interact well with other soldiers, said Lester, and soldiers’ lives are full of social disruption—transfers from base to base and so on.

These are patch solutions, obviously, though it’s appealing to imagine a social-cognition program filtering down and replacing the vague platitudes usually taught to elementary- and middle-schoolers in their human growth and development classes. And it would completely transform a child’s world to have a teacher trained to identify the lonely kids in her classroom and to provide succor and support once she’d found them. Naomi Eisenberger pointed out to me that, while schools take physical pain very seriously, they usually trivialize social pain: “You cannot hit other students, but oftentimes, there are no rules about excluding another student,” she said.

Cole can imagine giving people medications to treat loneliness, particularly when it exacerbates chronic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure. These could be betablockers, which reduce the physical effects of stress; anti-inflammatory medicine; or even Tylenol—since physical and emotional pain overlap, it turns out that Tylenol can reduce the pain of heartbreak.

At a deeper level, though, loneliness research forces us to acknowledge our own extraordinary malleability in the face of social forces. This susceptibility is both terrifying and exhilarating. On the terrifying side is the unhappy fact that isolation, especially when it stems from the disenfranchisement of the underprivileged, creates a bodily limitation all too easily reproduced in each successive generation. Given that we have been scaling back the kinds of programs that could help people overcome such disadvantages and that many in Congress, mostly Republicans, have been trying to defund exactly the kind of behavioral science research that could yield even better programs, we have reason to be afraid. But there’s something awe-inspiring about our resilience, too. Put an orphan in foster care, and his brain will repair its missing connections. Teach a lonely person to respond to others without fear and paranoia, and over time, her body will make fewer stress hormones and get less sick from them. Care for a pet or start believing in a supernatural being and your score on the UCLA Loneliness Scale will go down. Even an act as simple as joining an athletic team or a church can lead to what Cole calls “molecular remodeling.” “One message I take away from this is, ‘Hey, it’s not just early life that counts,’ ” he says. “We have to choose our life well.”

Judith Shulevitz is the science editor of The New Repub