As a lover of horses and of history, I could not help noticing a long time ago that horses have often been used successfully to suppress peasants’ revolts. (The most recent example in England was at Orgreave Colliery.) I used to often wonder about this. After all, cavalry, although important, did not play a decisive part in most battles between armies. Lots of other factors came into it.

Three things could usually defeat cavalry.

1. Other cavalry.
2. Firepower, or archery power.
3. Well trained infantry: the Roman tortoise, the Saxon shield-wall, the 16th and 17th century hedgehog, Wellington’s red squares.

So they were not invincible. Why did they always seem to defeat revolting peasants? Were they just lucky?

On looking into it, I soon discovered that rebels were often undisciplined and ill-led.

• They tended to rush towards the enemy, especially if they believed they had the advantage in numbers. Rushing against a mounted enemy never works. The trick is to stand still and strike at the right moment. It is impossible to time your blow with sword, spear or axe correctly when running. You cannot judge the speed of an approaching horse, while you are moving too.
• The opposite is not true. A cavalryman is always good at timing his blow at an enemy on foot, whether running or standing.
• If you are on foot, the advantage of numbers works best if you stick together. Rushing almost always means getting out of formation and allowing the men on horses to strike you down one at a time.

Class war?

• The above point is even more true when you remember that cavalry were almost always professional soldiers or men of the ‘noble’ warrior class. Men who spent most of their time practicing fighting on horseback.
• Peasants were usually in part-time forces and their quality varied. They were usually accustomed to being led by their social superiors, who were, naturally, on the other side when they revolted.

And this explains why horse-ownership was banned or discouraged in the Bible (e.g. Deuteronomy Chapter 17 verse 16).

It is thought that the reason for the rather negative view of horses in the Bible, especially the Old Testament, is that God did not want the leaders of Israel to employ cavalrymen or charioteers, because they would use them to oppress the people and because they would be tempted to go in for unnecessary foreign wars. On the other hand, an infantry made of local volunteers would be harder to use in such ways. (I do not believe God was opposed to owning horses as such. So there is no need to feel guilty if you are a horse-owner.)

All this I learnt a long time ago. One big question continued to bother me for a long time, however.

Why did the peasants not try to form their own cavalry, even temporarily? All right. They didn’t have horses and they couldn’t ride! (A lot of farm work was done by oxen until the 18th century.) But surely they could have stolen some horses, even if they did not have any of their own. And at least some peasants must have been reasonably competent riders?

When the answer occurred to me, I was annoyed that I had not thought of it before. As I so often find. It is due to a certain physical property of horses.

When horses were the main form of transport, many people probably rode from one village to the next, but few would have needed to learn anything at all advanced. Most beginners find it is relatively easy to ride a horse at a walk, although a trot can be quite uncomfortable until you get used to it. A canter is often easier – until the horse stops or turns!

People would have found a real difference between basic riding and the more advanced stuff if they rode in a battle, even in a skirmish. Sharp turns at speed are difficult. In everyday situations, you would probably be going in straight lines, or something like, most of the time. In battle, manoeverability is usually everything.

The reason horses were so unhelpful to the peasants is a result of their way of moving. At a trot, a horse moves diagonally opposite feet together. Left fore and right hind, and vice versa. At a canter, one diagonal pair breaks up, making a three-time rhythm: lead foreleg, diagonal pair, other hind leg. On a circle or a bend the animal will keep its balance best if its lead foreleg is the one on the inside of the circle. To ride a figure of eight, you should change the lead, and hence the pattern of the other legs, in the middle. This may sound a bit sophisticated, but wild horses often change leads when cantering round bends or zig-zags, although many have a favourite lead, like being right or left handed.

In the past, most people might not have fully understood all this, but you can get the practice right without understanding the theory. Any professional cavalryman would know how and when to ride a change of lead. A peasant would not.

If you try to make a horse do a sharp turn on the wrong lead, there are several ways it might respond:

• ignore the stupid instruction
• make a very wide, gradual turn
• drop down to a trot (this can be most unseating if you are not expecting it)
• try to change leads and stumble or even fall (I have known this to happen)
• do a neat change (if it is an experienced, agile horse)

You can guess that you would not like any but the last option. You could find even the last a bit unseating if you were not prepared. If you are wearing any sort of armour and carrying weapons you are top heavy and more likely to fall off or cause the horse to stumble. In battle, any mistakes can be fatal. You do not want to be fumbling.

I believe this explains, at least in part, why a handful of trained cavalrymen could usually defeat a lot of revolting peasants. Don’t blame the horses!

Although this book is fiction, it is based on real life tragedies that have been experienced by close friends of the author, so the story is very real and very touching.

Not much makes me cry – hardship, cruelty, disaster or tragedy don’t really affect me, but this book brought tears to my eyes. Not from the tragedy, but from the kindness described that hinted at the gleaming of a better world. What a wonderful book, what a wonderful story! It really lifted my spirits, and gave me hope in the midst of the chaos of our world.

The book deals with a young mother, Shona, who loses her 9 year old son in a bicycle accident. Her world falls apart, and she withdraws to a quiet village, leaving even her husband behind, to try to get herself together again. The story details her road of discovery and recovery as she perceives the tender love of God as it shines through the common, struggling, kind people around her.

The author herself is a very caring person: although she has perfect hearing, she learnt sign language, and for many years she did this sign language for the deaf people in her local church, so that they could also understand the sermon and what was happening in the life of the church.

The book is rich with descriptive passages of the countryside and people, that immerse you in the story and the surroundings to the extent that you wonder if you’ve perhaps been there before, since it makes such a vivid impression on the mind. I enjoyed letting my imagination gorge itself on the picture painting of the text, where pertinent focal points were masterfully plotted onto the canvas of my mind so that I felt I was in that room, or paddling in that stream. I experienced this type of immersion long before when I was in school reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte as a set book, and since then I’ve always enjoyed it.

I found the book encouraging, inspiring and even a little educational in the sense of learning how we should be living and treating each other. It showed how tragedy in people’s lives can eventually result in giving life to another person who is struggling, so that something absolutely wonderful comes out of something that is abysmally tragic. It is a tale of victory coming out of tribulation, made all the more poignant by the fact that this story is only really fiction because the names and places have been changed; the events described are actually a mosaic of several actual happenings.

This book is more than well worth reading – it should be read! Kindness is the one thing that could solve all this worlds problems, and this book tells you how to do it!

Highly recommended!

Elvis Presley is well known as the King of Roll and Roll, but this man had an influence in the areas of movies and dancing as well. If you aren’t aware of his influence over dancing then you definitely need to keep on reading. It is hard to imagine that when Elvis first was on TV, appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show, shaking his hips to his music outraged many people. They felt his moves were too sexual in nature and they also believed that he was a white man trying to dance like he was black.

For a while it became quite a controversy for him to be on shows. In fact, many of the producers only wanted to show him from the waist up so that they wouldn’t offend their viewers. Even so, there was no stopping the following that Elvis developed in part due to his amazing dancing abilities. It seemed that people all over the world just couldn’t get enough of him.

His concerts in Las Vegas and other venues around the world always sold out. Many of those that came to see him made it clear that while they loved his voice they were there for many other reasons. Among them was the fact that they loved his dance style and it was wonderful to see him offering something so new and so energetic to the crowd before him.

Many teenagers loved this rock and roll man, and it also offered them a way to freely rebel against their parents. They also found his style of dancing gave them something new to work with that wasn’t a rehash of what their parents had been dancing to. The fact that they could call this their own was magical and it allowed it to really take of. There aren’t many people who were teenagers in that era that don’t remember dancing to Elvis music and loving it.

Many of the movies that Elvis played roles in included music and dancing as well. These roles set a new boundary for what could be seen on the big screen. It helped to pave the way for the public to take an interest in dancing at a new level as well. They were willing to take those moves that they saw from Elvis and try them out on their own in many instances as well.

Unfortunately, a great deal of the dancing that Elvis did wasn’t really appreciated until after his death. Many believe he was decades ahead of his time with the visions that he had. He wasn’t a rebel as so many critics back then labeled him. Instead he was an artistic genius. If you ask any great dancers or musicians out there today many of them will tell you that one of their inspirations has always been Elvis.

Today there are many people that try to successfully impersonate both the sounds and the dance moves of Elvis. You can find plenty of them in Las Vegas at shows as well as being offered for weddings. Of course it takes a great deal of skill to be able to pull this one off successfully. The critics are very tough on these impersonators so only the best of the best are hired.

There is no denying that the legacy of Elvis is alive and well today. There are so many remarkable things that he was able to accomplish in his lifetime. History will always remember him though as a man that was able to balance music with dancing, and who was creative enough not to let society or the industry limit his talents.

Envision this: You dozed off at a companion’s New Year’s celebration and you’ve quite recently woken up. The solitary thing is, it was Dec 31 20010 when you showed up however now you take a gander at the schedule on the kitchen divider you understand it’s January 1st 2021! Much the same as that, 10 years have flown by!

After you battle out the entryway, you end up remaining in a dubiously recognizable road and you locate that equivalent battered old earthy colored wallet in your back pocket. Some way or another you were cryogenically frozen (however that is a story for one more day) and now you have a ton of making up for lost time to do.

How about we take a gander at the world around and perceive how things have changed, particularly for you-a tech enthusiast and one of the main computerized individuals in your organization’s advertising division.

Contactless Connectivity

It’s New Year’s morning and the entire world feels somewhat perplexed, not simply you. You need to discover your direction towards home. You walk around the bus station, which is still there, (however with another extravagant tracker that discloses to you when the transports are coming), and understand your yearly pass may be obsolete. Taking a gander at the transport driver while you bumble for coins in your pocket, he inquires as to whether you have contactless on your credit card or debit card.

You recall that back in 2009 you had seen the contactless logo on your bank card with doubt, never envisioning it could at any point get on). However, presently, you’re welcome to tap your card on the installment terminal by the driver and sit down and watch every other person do likewise.

Omni-channel Experiences

You jump off your transport in the town community. Aside from some new bistros and spots offering you to accomplish something many refer to as vape, very little has changed. Yet, you, being a nerd, can’t resist the urge to see all the digital advertisements around the spot.

Taking a gander at your valuable old iPhone 4 (when the jealousy of your companions), it’s reasonable it has become worn and even somewhat corroded, especially when you see a few adolescents swagger past with colossal screens and a wide range of shimmering devices hanging from their handsets. Indeed, it’s an ideal opportunity to get yourself a redesign. Along these lines, with a recently discovered spring in your progression (and expectation that your card may work), you waltz into the closest mobile store.

All that looks captivating and the in-store ‘mobile guru’ springs over to offer help.

Vivid technology

You stop to look inside the furniture store you recollect from youth, presently occupied with colorful digital displays, intuitive mobile screens, and odd VR-style headsets, and discover it amassing with post-Christmas deal customers. As opposed to entering, you choose to download the application which you’re charmed to find is fueled by expanded reality (AR), something you’d just at any point run over before in the 2002 film Minority Report.

While you were lying in a frozen state, everything had gotten customized.

Back in 2010, a brand that called a client by name was viewed as personalization, and now it’s a showcasing standard. In the present hyper-associated advanced world, customers want esteem driven substance, offers, and item recommendations that suit their particular requirements. Here are a few experiences that show that idea:

57% of shoppers are glad to share individual information as a trade-off for customized offers or limits.

62% of shoppers anticipate that brands should send customized offers or limits dependent on the things they’ve just bought.

91% of buyers are bound to shop with brands that give relevant offers, deals, and content recommendations.

Into the Unknown

It’s been a stunning day (incidentally, you’d elected to be frozen for 10 years as a feature of a social/clinical test, and now you’re a mogul, hurrah!) and obviously digital marketing has developed quickly in the short space of 10 years. You can’t completely get your head around all that has changed, yet as the tune from that old film says, “Let it Go”.

It’s difficult to anticipate precisely what will occur in the following decade, yet by keeping your finger on the beat, you’ll have the option to advance with the occasions, riding the peak of the steadily remunerating innovative wave consistently. Here’s to 2021… and getting yourself 10 years more youthful!

We are told that meditation is good for your mind, and that we need sleep to form memories and to relax, regroup, and allow our bodies to take a break. Okay, but what if I told you that you can lose weight in your sleep too. I am sure you’ve already considered this thought, but let’s go to a higher place and take this conversation to a higher level shall we?

There is a great paper to read that might be apropos to this topic and intellectual inquiry titled; “VR Solutions for Improving Physical Therapy,” by Carlo Camporesi, Marcelo Kallmann, and Jay J. Han published in 2013. The abstract is straight forward and simple;

“We present new solutions based on Virtual Reality technologies for improving the delivery of physical therapy and rehabilitation. Three main aspects are addressed: 1) the ability to allow therapists to create new exercises and therapy programs intuitively by direct demonstration, 2) automatic therapy delivery and monitoring with the use of an autonomous virtual tutor that can monitor and quantitatively assess the motions performed by the patient, and 3) networked collaborative remote therapy sessions via connected applications dis- playing the motions of both the therapist and the patient.”

Okay so, VR physical therapy is basically tricking your mind into healing itself, convincing your muscles that you are doing what you intend and that your mind is connected to the rest of your body correctly and that everything is fine, you can even see it, thus, your body makes those connections stronger, you retrain your biosystem to work together again, and viola, you are whole – at least that is the goal. Well, what about dreaming. Can you trick your mind into believing you are doing something?

Sure, ever have dreams of flying, we all do from time to time, how about dreams of running? Well, we are not the only species that can do that one, watch your pets paws move while they are sleeping sometime, they are most likely dreaming about something they do all the time, run. Guess what? They are probably burning fat, have elevated metabolisms and are strengthening the connections from their brain to all those muscles, perhaps even forming muscle memory.

You can do the same thing, just go for a run in your mind as you start to fall asleep, as you go from lucid dreaming to sleep think about running in a particular place, maybe around your neighborhood. This will help you burn fat cells. How do I know? Simple, I’ve done it and lost weight in the process. Please consider all this and think on it.

Like many other Christmas traditions gift giving is not original with Christmas. Its roots trace back to non-Christian religious observances from pagan holidays celebrated in Rome and in the Yule of Northern Europe. Like many cherished customs, modern society has added their own twist that adds or detracts to the celebration, depending on your viewpoint.

Gift giving began as early as the festival of Saturn, called Saturnalias celebrated by the ancient Romans near the 25th of December. In a mocking way, slaves exchanged places with their masters and simple gifts of wax candles and pottery figures called “sigilla” were exchanged towards the end of the celebrations.

In the North during the Yule season, giving gifts were a part of Winter Solstice and the return of the sun. Gift baskets made from wheat stalks reflected its life giving qualities and fertility. The harvest was as much a part of this celebration as anything.

These traditions were adapted into Christianity and became a part of the Christmas celebration. At one point, around the year 1000, the Catholic Church banned gift giving because they thought the practice had become too pagan.

The Puritans coming to America did not celebrate Christmas and gift giving because they too found it over abundant and too wild.

The Victorians actually reinstated the traditions of gift giving as part of their Christmas festivities. Their gifts were much simpler and traditional than those given today. Gifts were scattered through the house and found in pies, not in stacks under the Christmas tree.

Santa Claus and his gift giving were reinforced through commercialism and traditional Christmas poems. Adapting European figures such as St. Nicholas, Santa Claus came into his own with the publishing of Clement C. Moore’s, “Twas The Night Before Christmas. His gift giving characteristics were reinforced with the bright and jolly man portrayed in the commercials of a favorite carbonated beverage.

Adopting all of these past traditions, many Christians trace back the idea of gifts, to those given to the Christ child by the Magi. Many Christians see his birth as the ultimate gift of love from God.

Reflecting back on earlier times, the holidays can be a time to give, not for the sake of getting or spending, but a time to show appreciation with thoughtful gifts of love. The holiday becomes more meaningful by showing concern to those less fortunate than ourselves. Taking commercialism out of Christmas and reflecting on a simpler time, will go a long way to improving the Christmas gift giving tradition.

The idea for cell phones has been around for a lot longer than the technology to provide them was. As soon as the first landlines came into use, people had the idea of improving the convenience and flexibility of this new communication medium, and of bringing it to new areas such as cars. At first, cellular phones were little more than two way portable radios, but as technology improved, the concepts behind cell phones improved rapidly.

Bell labs and Motorola were both involved in a dramatic race to see who could invent the first viable cellular phones. While Bell labs had installed innovative radio systems into police cars, these devices were far too large for anyone to carry around and were thus impractical as a truly mobile telephone. However, in 1973, Martin Cooper, a scientist working for Motorola successfully made the first ever cell phone call using a portable handset. The age of the cellular phone was at last born, and who did he call? None other than his rival at Bell Labs, Joel Engel, who had been racing with him to create the invention.

Within a couple of years, both Bell and AT&T had come up with prototypes of their own and the first trial areas were set up. Chicago and Tokyo were the first cities in the world where you could use a cell phone but their availability was extremely limited and the new phones were only available to a select number of trial customers to begin with. For example, the 1979 trial venture in Chicago distributed cell phones to just 2000 customers.

The idea caught on like wildfire. By 1987 there were over one million cell phone users in the US alone. It seemed as if everyone wanted a cell phone and the major companies involved had really hit a home run. However, there were difficulties. For example, in the US, the FCC regulates and allocates radio bandwidth for different purposes. The radio spectrum is limited and can become ‘full’, so it is necessary to control who gets use of different parts of it. The area they licensed for cellular phones, at 800 MHz was quickly crowded. However, instead of giving more, they forced the telecommunication companies to improve technology and come up with more efficient ways of utilising the bandwidth they had. By the end of the 80’s this had been achieved and the cell phone age we know at present really got underway. And the rest as they say is history.

When is the last time you compared rates on your home and auto insurance policies? Unfortunately, policies held for a long period of time accompanying a stellar safety record don’t always translate into lower insurance rates. Even if you think you have a good rate, shopping around periodically is smart.

After receiving my April newsletter and attempting to follow my advice of maintaining an umbrella insurance policy, one of my readers contacted his insurer to add coverage. This reader was shocked when his insurer informed him that he didn’t qualify for an umbrella policy because he didn’t carry sufficient liability insurance on his auto policy. (Minimum auto liability insurance – frequently $500,000 – is required in order to purchase umbrella coverage.) Although this individual had owned his policy for eight years, he was unaware that the policy only provided $50,000 of liability coverage. This amount was clearly insufficient for an individual approaching and preparing for retirement.

In addition to realizing that he was severely underinsured, this individual discovered he was also paying excessive premiums. For only $50,000 of auto liability coverage, this person was paying $914 per year. Moreover, the individual realized he was paying $351 per year for the $350,000 of liability coverage the individual had on his condo.

Consequently, in total, this person was paying $1,265 per year for $50,000 of auto liability and $350,000 of home liability coverage.

This individual then spoke with an independent insurance agent to increase auto liability coverage to an amount that enabled him to obtain an umbrella policy. This was critical, as it dramatically decreased the individual’s liability exposure, a risk an individual with accumulated assets clearly shouldn’t have. Even better, the individual was able to obtain dramatically improved rates on his policies. For a total of $1,207 (less than he was previously paying!), the individual was able to secure $1,000,000 of auto liability coverage, $350,000 of home liability, and an additional $1,000,000 umbrella policy.

Clearly, it can be beneficial to occasionally review and compare rates on your insurance policies. People tend to believe that policies that have been owned for extended periods of time are efficiently priced, but it may be the opposite. If you haven’t verified that you are adequately insured and conducted a cost comparison recently, speak to an independent insurance agent and minimize your exposure with cost-effective policies.

The place and event.

Shortly after the Corps of Discovery arrived on the Pacific west coast, it was no coincidence that several tribesmen appeared before Lewis and Clark wearing excellent fur apparel. These coastal tribes were commercially savvy. They had been trading with foreign sailors for years. They also knew what was on the explorer’s minds in addition to finding a cross-country trade route.

Thus, Lewis and Clark were awestruck by a particular sea-otter shoulder-cloak worn by a tribesman. But, they did not have enough tradable goods on-hand to obtain it from him. The tribesman also wanted the blue-beaded belt worn by the corps interpreter’s wife, Sacajawea. Did she voluntarily give it up for that purchase?

Sacajawea’s teenage years.

About five years earlier, Sacajawea’s early teenage life underwent tumultuous change. As a 12-year-old Lemhi Shoshone girl living near the now Idaho-Montana border, she was captured by a party of Hidatsa warriors. From there, she was taken to a large Hidatsa-Mandan dual-tribal village near the Knife and Missouri Rivers in North Dakota, where she was adopted by a Hidatsa family. The practice of capturing children from different tribes was common among the plains tribes at that time.

During the next four years in her new home she learned the Hidatsa language and worked with the village women in their large field gardens. The Hidatsa and Mandan tribes were matriarchal matrilineal agricultural tribes. That is, the women there owned and inherited the 20-feet-across earth-covered lodges and the huge gardens they maintained. They also headed the large clans within these tribes, while the men attended to the village defenses and hunting needs. In fact, the women of these two tribes grew so much food, which they stored underground during the winter months, they easily traded portions of it for needed goods from several nonagricultural tribes and from the French and English trappers passing through the region.

During these four short pre-marriage pre-motherhood years within her new tribe, Sacagawea, must have made a favorable impression on the older women there. Her adoptive mother could have been influential in their Hidatsa clan, but just how much, no one knows for sure. Still, Sacagawea was eventually awarded a blue-beaded belt by an influential society of the women there. According to the tribal historians, such belts were awarded to those who were industrious and, perhaps, were sensible and well-grounded. The belt itself could have been three-fingers wide, with an extended section hanging down at the point of attachment.

This belt meant a lot to Sacajawea. It meant more to her than mere success through her work. To her, this belt meant acceptance and accomplishment outside of her own tribal bloodline. It was a visible token of her all-around worthiness as a person. This belt could have further inspired her to grow into a well-grounded mid-teenager. That is when she married a French-Canadian fur trader at the age of 16.

Meeting Lewis and Clark

Shortly after that, in late 1804, they met the Corps of Discovery there at their dual village, where she gave birth to a baby boy on February 11, 1805. Captain Lewis helped with the delivery. The captains also hired her trapper husband, Touissiant Charbonneau, as an interpreter. He spoke French, Hidatsa, and Mandan, and could sign. As it also turned out, Sacagawea, who spoke Hidatsa and Shoshone, accompanied him with their son on this dangerous journey. Their son was less than two-months old when they departed their village for the west.

During the journey westward, Sacajawea showed substantial maturity and capability. Lewis and Clark praised her in their journals when she calmly retrieved floating goods from the river while the boat she was in began to capsize in a wind storm. She also supplied the corps with many wild edibles, and thought nothing of it. Additionally, she remembered the Shoshone-country landmarks and their language well.

Thus, she helped immensely with the necessary interpretations when the corps arrived at her home tribe before crossing the Rocky Mountains. Furthermore, when the corps departed this village westward, she stayed with her fur-trapper husband to finish the journey. She and their baby son could have easily stayed there among her own people now that her brother was the chief of that Shoshone tribe. Instead, she stayed with her husband and the corps.

Back to the question.

Now, back to the question: did Sacajawea voluntarily donate her belt toward the purchase of that cloak? Although its not known for certain, she definitely could have done so at the behest of the corps’ mission to find a trade route, which she understood. After all, she had been watching the corps collect animal and plant specimens, pelts, and skins for several months by then.

So, during that spellbinding splendid-fur-for-sale moment, she could have given Lewis and Clark the nod to add her belt to the trade package. Quietly and tearfully, perhaps? Yet, she also knew that the coastal tribes knew the corps had a vested interest in the furring industry then. That is why these tribes could demand the highly prized chieftain beads, like, the blue ones on her belt for quality pelts.

Moreover, the very next day after purchasing that fur cloak, November 21, 1805, Clark noted in his journal that they had given Sacajawea a “coat of blue cloth” to compensate her for the traded belt. That blue coat could have been a heavily adorned one of very fine cloth from a military dress uniform. To learn more about Sacagawea, see the LewisClarkandbeyond bicentennial presentations by Dr Amy Mossett and the following sites.

In the typical process of trauma therapy, the therapist and the dissociative trauma survivor will spend a great deal of time talking about how difficult it is to be multiple — and it is difficult, no doubt about it. For the typical multiple, there were years and years of pain and horror and abuse requiring the need to split over and over into a number of different personalities just to survive the unthinkable.

But the point of this article is to talk about what an outsider / singleton sees as the benefits of being multiple and having Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID/MPD). Yes, there really are some advantages to being split!

I see the following ten benefits in multiplicity:

• Being able to do more than one thing at the same time. Talk about having the ability to multi-task! I’ve known situations were one personality can be talking comfortably on the phone while another personality is busy doing the day’s work. How cool is that?!!!
• Always having someone to talk to. When you are friends with each other on the inside, you don’t ever have to be alone. Your best friends can be right there with you, any time of the day or night.
• Being able to maintain the joy of a child’s perspective. Children can be so innocently full of wonderment, and joy, and happiness. They know how to be carefree and happy and amazed at the simplest of life’s pleasures. Child parts, once safe from trauma, can keep that sense of joy near to them their whole lives long.
• Being able to take a break even when the outside body has to keep going. When you’re split, you can tuck back inside, and rest, or sleep, or think, and let someone else be out front managing whatever is going on in life. Having that ability to pull away and separate from the outside life can come in handy sometimes!
• Having the ability to remember so much more of life’s experiences. In my opinion, once a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder finds safety, and learns to connect with all their internal people, and lowers their dissociative walls, it seems to me that people with DID actually remember more of their life than “regular” singletons do. This includes remembering more of the good times as well as the bad.
• Having the ability to understand life and events from a variety of different perspectives. Those with DID don’t have to imagine what it would be like from a different perspective – they often have someone inside that already genuinely sees things that way!
• Blocking out pain. While blocking pain is not always a positive or helpful skill, there are times and places where having the ability to block out pain, both physically and mentally, can be a great benefit.
• Quite possibly needing less sleep? I can’t prove this, but it seems to me that a significant number of folks with DID can function quite effectively on less sleep than what the average singleton person needs. Maybe this is because the various parts can rest and sleep internally? By taking turns resting inside, does that make the overall physical need to sleep less? I have no real answers for this, but it’s not uncommon for this to appear to be the case.
• Looking younger. Again, I cannot prove this, but in my years of working with multiples, folks with DID look considerably younger even as they physically age. One would think that the years of trauma, abuse, and stress would have a negative effect on the physical appearance, and while there are obvious scars, there also seems to be a common ability to not age physically as quickly as singletons do. You all nearly always look younger than you actually are. How cool is that?!
• The ability to fit in with a variety of different people. While some system splits were formed as trauma-based ways of matching with various groups of people (and some not so good as others), the positive flip-side of that ability is that people with multiple personalities can literally find themselves fitting in easily with a wide variety of people in a variety of ages.

The point being, despite the difficult beginnings required in splitting into multiple personalities, there are many good and positive attributes to being multiple.

For those of you that are multiple, what do you enjoy about your multiplicity? What strengths do you have? How has multiplicity enhanced your life? What qualities of being a multiple would you want to keep, and never lose?