Of Cabbages and Kings

For the past 10-15 years or so, I've told myself a version of this line: "Bad things (weather/crime/disease/war/dictators) have always existed.  They only seem scarier now because we see them instantaneously, instead of waiting a week to read about it in a newspaper, or waiting days for a news crew to get there, and now we are bombarded by repetition of these images in a way that never existed before."  That was my story.  Now, I'm not so sure.

There is no denying that we are living in constant turbulence; and maybe we really always have been but didn't know it. Maybe it IS the hair-trigger speed of the spread of news that contributes to our collective uneasiness. But we are clearly uneasy;  as Americans, as citizens of the world, as a species. Am I speaking for all of us? Yep.  The uncomfortable nature of living is felt more by some than by others, to be sure, but I'll go ahead and step out here to attempt to speak knowledgeably - not because I know more, or because I feel more, or because I care more, but because this is the outlet I have available to me. This is my way to share. I'd rather be a painter or a pianist, but this is what I have to give, so I am gonna give it.

Thinking humans like to try to solve problems. Arrowheads. Printing presses. Combustion engines. Microchips. We are in an election year in the U.S., in case that may have passed you by somehow, and for every problem there are solutions aplenty  coming out of the mouths, the keyboards, the iPhones, you name it, of politicians at every level.   Myself - I'm just trying to solve problems on a micro level. I'm just trying to keep my nose above the emotional water-line.  I'm trying not to sink, and if I do sink, I'm trying not to take anyone down with me.

As a result, I've been meditating more. I've been reading more. I've been praying more. And I want to share a little bit of this journey. First, from Peace Is The Way by Deepak Chopra, this gem:

…the mentality of us versus them is always an expression of the root problem, which is dualism.  Dualism is the belief that there are no final or absolute values, but only the play of opposites.  In a dualistic world humans are separate from the source of creation.  We are in its grip whenever we feel alone, isolated and fearful of the world out there.  Spiritual people are just as prone to this form of anxiety as non-spiritual people. They are prone to it for a different reason, however, because they devote themselves to fighting against duality all the time. Germs are always around the doctor who fights hardest against them. In Nietzche's famous phrase, if you stare at a monster long enough, you become the monster. Which is a provocative way of saying that if you dwell on duality long enough it swallows you up.

The solution, as I understand it, is to find a practical way to escape the divisions that duality imposes.  These divisions run incredibly deep. Good versus evil. Dark versus light. Body versus soul. Us versus them. Even when you try with all your might to be on the side of the angels, the inescapable fact is that good defines evil and vice versa.  The day that good was born it discovered that it had a twin in the cosmos and both are immortal.  The way of peace leads beyond duality. There is no other road to take for someone who wants to end war and violence. (pp 47-48)

 

This is not easy, particularly in a world where we are persistently reminded of our differences. We are in perpetual "us versus them" mode, even when we don't realize it. To pull ourselves out of that mindset and into a collective consciousness feels impossible.  While meditating, it's easier. While praying in your place of worship (where, by the way, everyone there is "us") it is easier. But try watching the news, driving in traffic, attending a baseball game, or singing the national anthem as simply a human and nothing else. The struggle is real.

Lately, I've wondered if this growth of my prayer life, and this urge to connect has been in vain. Aside from the comfort and calm that meditation and prayer bring to me personally, I've wondered if these actions are doing any good.  And if they are, how can I tell? (If you didn't think this piece was "woo-woo" already, it's about to go way out there, so maybe stop now and watch Jeopardy or something if you think this smells funny.)

The spiritual side of humans has always been interesting to me, so I've read books, attended some lectures, and attempted to grow my own awareness and abilities in understanding the unseen part of our existence on Earth.   And while this has resulted in a belief system that is bit of a mish-mosh, I feel that at least I'm moving forward in this experience, and  work to apply "coming from a place of love" to my outlook in most areas. Even in traffic.

Last week (July 17th) I read Doreen Virtue's Facebook post just by chance, and it struck a chord. Here is the part that grabbed me:

This is a message for you personally and globally, showing that your prayers for peace ARE making a big positive difference.

The message is to keep praying for your personal peace and world peace.  Your positive energy is counter-balancing the fear energy and negativity.  So please keep up the good work!

You may read the news and feel that peace prayers aren't working; however, the angels are saying that it would be much worse without the contributions you and others are making.

And suddenly, I got it.  It's like our lucky cabbage!  My mom had some interesting ideas and a few superstitions which have embedded themselves in me for better or for worse.  One of her unfailing traditions was to cook cabbage every New Years Day in a pot with silver coins dropped into the bottom.  She would carefully scrub the silver coins then add them to the water, then add the cabbage.  Over time, the U.S. minted coins that were less silver and more nickel or other metals, so she searched out "real" silver coins and kept them safe to reuse every year.  The purpose of this ritual is to ensure that the coming year will be financially healthy.  Now, here I must express that I have yet to have what anyone would consider a financially healthy year IN MY LIFE, however; I INSIST on making the cabbage, and having my family eat some of the cabbage every year, just as my mother did.  Even if someone is away on New Years Day and cannot be there for the actual dinner, I will save out some of the cabbage for them to eat as soon as possible.  And while my family may wonder aloud as to the effectiveness of the silver-boiled cabbage on our bank accounts, my answer has always been "Imagine how bad off we would be if we DIDN'T eat the cabbage!" 

And there you have it. While it feels like we are flailing away down here on Earth, and that our collective consciousness is not healing, our divisions are growing, and our suffering is multiplying, imagine if we were NOT praying, meditating, or envisioning peace for each other.

In 2014, NBC News carried a story about a physician who has studied what happens to the brain during prayer.  His name is Dr. Andrew Newberg, and he does not view prayer as a "cure" for any disease, but he does note that the brain changes during prayer, which he has been able to capture in images. The best quote from this story returns us to Dr. Chopra's idea of losing our sense of duality:

He (Dr. Newberg) said it was particularly "fun" to watch what happened inside the brains of a group of Franciscan nuns when they joined together in a meditative prayer. The area of the brain associated with the sense of self began to "shut down," according to Newberg. "You become connected to God. You become connected to the world," he said. "Your self sort of goes away." Aha.

 



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Porch Light

It's Fall - it's a Saturday morning. One of the joys of Fall Saturdays for me is College Game Day, so I try to get up early enough to watch the beginning of the show. I also had big plans to walk at the college track with my buddy this morning. Therapeutic. I was just coming out of my sleep and thinking about turning on the TV when my doorbell rang. It was 5:50 a.m. Who rings a doorbell before 6 in the morning? I'm about to tell you who. 

There is a security screen door outside my front door.  I can see out, no-one can really see in.  I like it that way.  I opened the front door and peered out through the screen - there were two little girls standing on my porch in the dark. "What's going on?"  The bigger girl answered "We need a ride home." "Let me get changed and come out there - sit on the porch and I'll be out in a minute". 

I just don't understand our species a lot of the time. I feel like we are overrun with selfishness and bereft of empathy. Not all of us individually, but as humans - I don't get it, and the constant puzzle in my head and the thing that drives me daily is the desire to change this. 

These two girls were on Fall break last week, as many kids were in the Valley.  They had been staying with their grandma, a tiny, well-worn woman, for the week instead of with their Aunt, whom they usually live with.  Grandma's ex-husband lives on my block - he is not related to the girls in any way. Are you feeling sick at your stomach already? You should be. 

"Grandpa" took the girls to the Fair last night, even though it was raining.  They rode some rides, had some turkey legs, won a stuffed sprinkle doughnut, typical.  They came home and waited for grandma to pick them up.  They called her, she didn't answer.  "Grandpa" told the girls they could sleep on an air mattress, gave them a sheet between them and proceeded to power down a bunch of beer.  Queasy yet, are you?  Yeah. 

The older girl was crying when I opened the door.  We sat outside together, and I tried to get information from them.  Her cell phone was dead, they wanted to go  home, she had run away from Grandpa, but wouldn't tell me why.  I looked at her - "Look, if Grandpa did something bad, I need to know the truth. I don't want him to get into trouble if he didn't really do anything bad". She started crying again. That's all I needed to see. 

I went inside the house to get my phone, and called the police on the non-emergency number.  I gave the girls some Belvita biscuits, and the  younger one a blanket - the sun was just coming up, but it was still a little chilly outside by Phoenix standards.  Because it wasn't an emergency, the dispatcher told me it could be awhile before anyone came to the house.  In the meantime, I learned that these girls, 13 and 10, did not know their street address.   

At this point, I am just thanking God that they rang my doorbell and not someone else's.  Most of my neighbors are pretty good people, but you know - this is a big city. They are little girls. How bad was the situation to make them come out in the dark and ring a stranger's bell?  I asked them why they rang my bell: "Because your house was the only one with a porch light on".  

The older girl had a cell phone, but it was dead.  She asked "Do you have a map on your phone?"  Sure. We figured out where they lived roughly.  She said "We can just walk home, but we wondered if you would drive us there?" 

Because the Fair has so many animals, and because the barn is literally across the street from my house, the flies this time of year are prolific and disgusting.  The sun came up a bit more, and with it the flies got busy.  It was kind of gross, but I didn't want to bring the kids into my house- I wanted us all to feel safe, and outside seemed like the best place for that to happen.  I told the girls I would make myself some coffee then we would talk about driving them home, all the while hoping the police would hurry up.  I was inside when the doorbell rang again - the oldest girl had a panicked look on her face "My Tata is outside, I don't want him to see us!" So, into the living room they came.  Almost an hour after they first rang the bell, two officers pulled up outside my house. 

The female officer came into the living room with the girls.  The male police officer took me outside so I could tell him what had happened so far.  

These two little girls have broken my heart. Mom and dad are in jail. They live with their Aunt, but don't know their address.  They go to school, but are failing a lot of their classes.  And of course they have brothers and sisters.  If they had money they would go to Footlocker and buy Jordans. They like to roller skate.  I didn't sit with them for a while after the police came because they needed to do their job without me. I waited to come out until Grandpa was safely ensconced in the back of the police car. The female officer asked the older girl to go into my bathroom and take off her undergarments to put into a plastic bag she gave her.  

Grandma finally responded to a voice mail that one of the officers had left her, and was on her way over to pick the girls up. She had just come home from the casino. She pulled up with other kids in the car, including a baby.  I wondered where they had spent the night - and with whom? 

 

And then there was CPS, or DCS.  There was a lot of waiting and back and forth with them as well.  All the while, the male officer and myself talked to the girls, learned about them, tried to encourage them to do right, study hard - tried to infuse them with every possible life lesson we could in that short amount of time, and to do it with good-natured kindness. 

They had to let grandpa go, but there will be a criminal investigation. The girls left with their grandma, and were going to be met by CPS at grandma's home.  I stood at the security door where no one could see me, and watched them go. I asked for angels to be by their sides, and prayed for their safety and health. And I did the same for the police officers as they left.  Then I shut the big door and came in and cried. 

Children deserve our protection. They deserve an opportunity to learn and grow and to know their address. They deserve to be taken to the Fair and to have fun without running the risk of being harmed.  I spent an unexpected 4 ½ hours with two little girls and two of Phoenix's finest this morning. A chance meeting of all of us. None of us likely to ever see each other again - unless I am called to court to testify. I was thanked profusely for my kindness and patience, and for doing "exactly the right thing" this morning by both officers on separate occasions today.  I could only look back at them and say the same things,  - all of us with a world weary understanding in our eyes. 

Let us continue to hold each other up, to stand by each other as humans. That's our job. Let us all be better at doing our job.  Let's keep our porch lights on.

Can I Buy Your Magic Bus?

Most people I know who actually participate in any type of goal-setting or resolution-making do so at the beginning of the year.  I like June for this purpose. OK, June and Lent.

Raised in the Anglican Communion, teaching for nine years at a Catholic school, avid believer in meditation, Buddhist values and all things positive, I’m not so sure where my ‘faith tradition’ lies these days. Sometimes I find myself envious of those who have it down more firmly than I. Other times I ponder the great cosmic mistake that caused this ruckus we have going on the planet – complete with greed, competition and automobiles, and go all John Lennon on it. Imagine.

Lent has rolled around on those unsuspecting practitioners, and this time, as most times, I’ve jumped in. But this year feels a little different, because there is so much going on. Isn’t there?  The instantaneous news feeds (particularly weather reporting – holy moly – but that’s another whole piece that I don’t have time to write at the moment) have been what I’ve blamed on the edginess and anxiety going on around us all of late. Well, instantaneous reporting and a little unbalance in my hormones, perhaps. I often wonder ‘Is it just ME, or have we all gone a little apeshit?’, but this is a question I am loathe to ask out loud.  I mean, TROUBLE has been around forever, right? Bad people have always existed. So have hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis…you get the idea.  When the Mayan Calendar end-of-the-world mongers were saying “SEE?? Look how bad the weather is, the axis is slipping, it’s all OVER!!” I was thinking that they just didn’t realize that this business has been happening for centuries; we just never had i-phones to let each other know about it immediately.

And then a couple of weeks ago, as I was innocently working away and listening to the radio (multi-tasking – I have skills!) THIS was the dialogue via my earbuds (The Diane Rehm Show – Friday News Roundup-International 2/1/2013):

JOHN (Caller) 11:45:58

My question is this, it's sort of a question and a comment because one of the gentlemen on your program just referred to it but you know, in the previous hour people were talking about how popular Hillary Clinton was and raving about what she had done because she'd traveled all over. But when one looks at the state of North Africa and the Mideast it appears to me, I'm 76 years old, and appears to me we've never been in worse shape than we are right now in those areas.

REHM (Host) 11:46:30

You know, John, I was saying during the break, it just seems as though the whole world is in chaos. How do you respond, Yochi?

DREAZEN (Yochi Dreazen -contributing editor at The Atlantic) 11:46:45

I think that's a great question and I agree with you. We were joking about it kind of, you know, ruefully about how bad things are the world over. I think there are a lot of questions to be raised about the Obama administration foreign policy and her role in it. You know, she supported the Afghan surge. It has not worked.

DREAZEN 11:47:02

She supported some of the tougher lines in Pakistan. It's questionable about how effective the drone campaign there has been in terms of showing up a very weak government. Her role in Libya where the U.S. was sort of dragged into it against its will and we talked about her role and the role of the administration in Egypt so I think there are really genuine questions about what she accomplished.

DREAZEN 11:47:17

To the broader point there's a new show that premiered this week called "The Americans," which is about a Russian, a sort of KGB undercover couple living in America in the '80s, a phenomenal show, but what's interesting about it is it's a reminder of 30 years ago and the world seemed relatively neat.

DREAZEN 11:47:36

You had the U.S. You had the U.S.S.R. You had all these kinds of shadow fights with dead drops and spies. Flash forward and I think there's a bit of nostalgia like with "Mad Men." Now we're in a world where you've got groups in Africa we don't really understand, opposition groups in Syria we don't really understand, unrest across parts of the world that have been stable for decades so I think the caller is exactly right. This is a scary time.

REHM 11:47:51

Susan?

GLASSER (Susan Glasser, editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine) 11:47:52

Yes, but I think is a pretty giant, you know, red siren-flashing, but here, Yochi. The Cold War posed an existential threat to the United States in a way that as tragic, as disturbing, as dangerous to the national interest as some of these crises are they in no way pose the kind of threat to the United States that we existed under for the entire dangerous period of the Cold War.

GLASSER 11:48:20

And I think that's very important to remember. There's a real lively academic debate going on right now. There's a professor at Harvard, Steven Pinker who has done a big study of violence in the world and makes the argument that in fact we are living, despite what it seems like from reading the newspapers, we're living in a historic time of less violence than ever before in human history.

GLASSER 11:48:46

And there are many numbers not only to support this, but I do think it's important to remember that, A, we don't know where we are in the story and, B, and pretty significantly, that inarguably I think by any standards, although these are individual, disturbing crises it is difficult to see what tools the United States has to manage them in many cases. The bottom line is that actually we're much safer today.

                                               *** *** *** ***

OK, so IT ISN’T JUST ME. That’s the first takeaway. Although I was stunned to hear others (and frighteningly erudite others, by the way) admit this aloud. Second takeaway was Steven Pinker. Now there’s a guy I haven’t thought of in a few years. He had my head spinning back in the day when I still worked for universities and had time to ponder.  His first book, The Language Instinct, resulted in my semi-idolizing him for a bit. Apparently he has taken on that task himself, and now resides (presides?) at Harvard. He has great hair. I haven’t read The Better Angels of our Nature yet, but it’s on its way.  We shall see. If anyone else wants to weigh in on it, please do.

And although my ‘faith tradition’ is bouncing all over the place, the call of the Lenten promise of extra meditation, a little self-denial, and extra kindness to those in need pulled me out of the office, into the car, and driving (rather frantically) into the parking lot of All Saints’ Episcopal Church this past Wednesday.  Harried after rushing in lunchtime traffic, I walked into the narthex where two priests, a bishop, and a lay-reader were waiting to process in. They were followed by an altar-server whom I have known pretty much my entire life (mom to childhood friends!) who greeted me by name, hugged me and told me she was happy I wasn’t late.

I went in, knelt, and said the same thing in silent prayer that I always say when I first get into church. “Thank you driver for gettin’ me here”. It was instant relief.  Steven Pinker says we’re safer, yet life feels crazier. Lent feels good.

Sibling Rivalry

I have three brothers. A lot of people don’t realize this, especially since all three of us haven’t lived in the same state since 1972. The youngest of them is 10 years and 10 days older than I am; either one of the older two could have been my dad – they would have been the same age my dad was when he had them (18 and 19 respectively). That whole being a dad of two boys by the age of 19 business really begs another blog. But I digress.

There are a lot of really interesting things about this here internet age we have going on. I admit to daily Facebook noodling, mostly observing, sometimes commenting, uploading the odd picture of the rare Phoenix rainstorm. Playing Words With Friends.  Finding out that someone I haven’t  seen in real life in 20 years is going to the podiatrist. Fairly normal stuff. 

This summer my oldest brother procured a FB page. He has seven friends on it, of which yours truly is one. I’m not really sure why he took the plunge into the cyberpool, but I find it fascinating in a rather voyeuristic way. You see, my older brothers and I don’t really communicate much, especially since my mom died.  I can lay blame for this – I have a mirror. But I always knew deep down that she was the thread knitting our dysfunction together, and once she was gone it would all unravel. Sometimes I hate being right.

 The other one of my older brothers I have chosen rather decidedly not to communicate with on account of me wanting to retain what’s left of my sanity (he can be troublesome).  But those two older brothers are FB friends. I am only ‘friends’ with the oldest, and we have only communicated on Facebook long enough to bemoan yet another frustrating season for the Mets, and for him to admonish me not to cheer for the Diamondbacks when I went to the Mets game here in Phoenix (I cheered for both - I’m an equal opportunity fan). He’s the reason I am a Mets fan, after all, so that makes sense.  But I can see who both of these guys are friends with, and can view a little bit about what they’re allowing world to know about who they are. Apparently this is very little in the oldest brothers case (I have a feeling he was pressured into this whole Facebook gizmo – he has a teenaged son). But Brother Trouble has some interesting friends, and a life so very far away from me in so many ways that I have to keep reminding myself that we’re related. You could LOOK at us and see that we’re family. I have always thought that he and I looked the most alike out of all four of us. Except I have hair. So far.

The 10 year older brother has told me that he flat out refuses to get a FB page, he doesn’t want anyone knowing anything extra about him and he’s not really that interested in anyone else either, for that matter. He’s that much like my dad, “Mr. Anonymity”. Both of my parents were almost obsessively private. I’ve inherited a bit of that in odd ways. For example, I don’t ever want a vanity license plate or a particularly noticeable vehicle – I guess that’s so I can make a quick escape if necessary.  But I don’t care who knows if I walked through the park and took a picture of a goose. If anyone cares enough to look at it then more power to them.

I guess what I’m driving at here is that, but for the grace of Facebook, I would have no idea what is going on AT ALL in the lives of the two older ‘boys’. Of course I love them both, and of course I want them both to be happy and healthy. One in particular I would like to be happy and healthy and live closer to me, but clearly the decision was made lo those 40 some-odd years ago that he would be a New Yorker, Amen. The other…I see him searching. He isn’t searching for me, but that’s ok. I wonder if he checks out my pages, my photos, my friends. I wonder why this is as close as we can get to each other. So odd, for people who started out in the same home, from the same gene pool.

It’s kind of fun to pull back away from our social network, and think about what it is we’re really doing. What it is we’re substituting – and why. I see more of my family – cousins and brothers – on Facebook than I do live and in person anymore.  I don’t expect I will ever see the ‘strange and estranged’ brother again in real life at all. It seems that, just as I have done, he has made his own family out of people to whom he is not related. And that’s ok. As I said – I want happiness above all, even for Brother Trouble.

Old Moss-Back George

Dearly Beloved, today we come together to witness the marriage of Chaos Theory and Stereotyping, and to show consideration for how the two disparate entities shape our daily lives.

Let us first consider Chaos Theory. Really consider it. Think about the implications of the ‘butterfly effect’. How does an action, so minute and barely visible as the flutter of the wing of a butterfly evolve to impact the weather on the other side of the world? Is this really possible? Theories are made to be tested, then confirmed or amended. But Chaos Theory, at least as it applies to daily life, may be impossible to truly analyze. Think about the small, almost imperceptible encounters that we have in a day. Not only those with our family members (not to discount them, of course), but those in traffic. In the grocery check-out line. Waiting for a train, or a bus, or any kind of ordinary task that we undertake in public. That energy between you and the guy who cuts you off on the freeway, or you and the person who only needs to buy a loaf of bread (and that’s ALL and they stare at you as you unload your cart with 54 items in it) doesn’t stop between the two of you then and there. If we apply the theory of Chaos to these encounters, we begin to understand that our energy can reverberate and rebound and have some sort of implication later on in a place where we aren’t around to watch.

Onto stereotyping. An effective little tool – one that gets a bad rap, really. If our brains DIDN’T take the time to recognize a thing instantly and then zap it into its appropriate category, we would all be stymied by everything we saw/smelt/tasted/felt/heard on the daily. Imagine the chaos created by people stopping to scrutinize every detail of everything their senses perceived and then putting it in its proper mental container. Of course, if the thing is a) new to you and/or b) merits further review, then we can suspend the stereotyping in order to refine our definition of the thing. But sometimes even then we jam things into their slot in our brains, and move on.

So why these two ideas? To remind me and you that our interactions with others really do have infinite results. That the action of a person, no matter how small, whether a gesture, a kindness, an unkindness, a poem, a leer, a chalk sidewalk drawing, can carry on forever. BUT, we are also somehow unable to really see or appreciate or understand that, because our brains are constantly doing the shorthand work of stereotyping. And, much like the butterfly, we are seldom permitted to see the results ourselves.

I want us to try to bring all of this to the front of our brains, collectively. I don’t ask much, right?

This weekend I attended a real wedding, not a theoretical one. It was the wedding of someone I have known for over 30 years, to someone I just met (happily, SHE hadn’t just met him!). It was a lovely wedding, on a beach, with a gorgeous sunset, and a dolphin visiting on the waves in the background. I’m not kidding. As it is with most of the significant events in life, there were a few people absent from the wedding. At least their physical forms weren’t there. I spent some time at this wedding and ensuing debauchery (it was a fun reception!) thinking about those who were gone, imagining what they might say, what they might be doing if they had been there. One in particular tugged at me all night…and I want to tell a short story about him.

Once there was a boy. A young boy. A sensitive boy. He was a chubby, indoor kid not an outdoor kid. He was introverted and smart. He was an observer, not a participator for a lot of his young life. He came out of his shell a bit and traveled as he got a little older. He became a musician. He became a songwriter. He became a performer. He got really good at all three of those things; but he never got as good as he COULD have been. He was only 24 when he died and the vacuum left behind when he was gone cost people jobs, relationships, measures of sanity, made people question God, and stole some comfort and joy from hearts.

The remaining few got together on the dance floor on New Year’s Day and sang and danced to The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes to remember that boy. I didn’t stereotype or categorize. I let myself see and feel and hear that moment – the moment I was privy to, the moment that allowed me to see the end result of chaos. I danced and sang at the top of my little lungs, while the tears fell. Everyone else on the floor was a relative of his. His mother, his auntie, his cousins. They have a wealth of memories and stories and ways that his life influenced theirs. I have some gestures, some smiles, some inside jokes that we shared, and of course, songs. His life influenced mine. It still does.

On the same New Year’s Day this year across the country from the wedding there was a birthday celebration for another boy. This one was NOT an introvert. He was an athletic kid, an outdoor kid not an indoor kid. He was a friend to everyone he met. He smiled ALL the time. He became a diligent worker. He became a husband. He became a father. He was really good at those things, but he never got as good as he COULD have been. He was 29 when he died in September. My daughter, who is now 24, attended his birthday party on New Year’s Day and called to tell me about it. I could imagine the family holding the 30 maroon and gold balloons and letting them loose into the Arizona sunset. I could picture the smiles of my friends there, and I could taste the tears as well. The scene was described to me in great detail since I wasn’t able to be there. But you see, I WAS there. In theory.

The time that exists between those moments can be like the opening of a zip file. All of a sudden, a flood of things come out that you never knew you had stored. It all becomes so clear during events like those of New Year's Day. We have to learn to never underestimate our power in this world.

Happy New Year.

Beware of Doldrums

Most of us are comfortable with our family members although we may not ever have chosen them as friends. There are psychological reasons for this, of course. ‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know’, perhaps. We may not love each family member equally but somehow we learn to accept their idiosyncrasies, even when they cause us undue stress, inconvenience, or even pain.

Lots of times we stay embedded in the dysfunction of a family system although we hate it. We continue to play our expected role well into adulthood after choices are available.

We get comfortable. We maybe get too comfortable. Is it laziness? (I ask this question about a lot of things, it seems). My friend Dixie, who is one of the world’s wisest people, tells me that we become inured. She is, like most of us, apoplectic about the Gulf oil spill. She blames corporate complacency on the whole thing. The unwillingness to effect a change in this instance resulted in damage that will last for decades.

The complacency that results in failure to make improvements shown by BP reminds me a lot of what happens directly after coal mining disasters. You know, when the news reports ‘this mine has had 15 safety violations in the past 18 months’ and we all wonder WHY nothing was done to prevent tragedies that demolish mining families. The Department of Labor issued 175,000 safety violations and $141.2 million in fines on coal mines in 2009 with little effect on the number of fatalities that were a result of said violations. This kind of inured behavior really is a result of nothing more than corporate greed. The same corporate greed displayed by BP.
The point is you can put up with your tyrannical family member and suffer the painful consequences, you can fine oil or coal companies out the ying-yang, and all of those things seem to be acceptable rather than taking a step that may cost you something in order to prevent future suffering. We are inured. Or greedy. Or both.

And in my little brain, I see an extension of this unbendable part of human nature as becoming more and more of a threat to our existence. It comes to our own unwillingness to make a change, stand up to a threat, or face something that may be difficult or costly.

Locally, I see this in AZ SB1070. I have family members who favor it; I have family members who are against it. There are such complex layers to the problem of immigration, particularly in Arizona, that it boggles the mind. Sort of like having to drill down super-deep in the ocean for oil. It’s THAT complicated.

However, what has happened as a result of the ‘discussion’ around this bill and its resulting passage is quite simple. It has allowed the re-emergence of racism as an acceptable but unspoken element of our existence. To face this ugliness and call each other out on it would be painful, expensive, and difficult. But it is so necessary. Again, I fear we are inured. It’s easier to watch both sides holler at each other behind giant signs and American and Mexican flags than it is to step up and ask for civility.
And now we’ve had an election. I don’t even want to tiptoe into the potential racism replete in the referendum on the Obama presidency that we’ve just experienced. That is too much for my tired mind to contemplate well, and with the discipline it deserves.

There was an increase in voter turnout of 1.1% between this mid-term election and the previous mid-term election in 2006. With all of the bickering and badgering, the despicable advertisements and heated arguments that took place, I’m afraid that this turnout still shows a discouraging level of complacency.

I’m left to wonder how we will ever solve anything when the undercurrent is so ugly. Has it always been this way? In Arizona we’ve just re-elected a dolt as governor (this is nothing new to Arizonans, having lived through Evan Mecham and Fife Symington), who really embodies the just-below-the-surface type of racism I fear the most.

So what is my point? I’ve been thinking through societal structures from the family unit to the corporation. I’ve been looking at the laziness of Americans in general. I believe what I want to say the most is this: The comfort in which we dwell while we allow intolerance to bubble up will bite us all squarely in the ass and in a very ugly way indeed. Whew.

Once the game is over, the King and the pawn go back in the same box. ~ Italian Proverb

Dare to Dream

The middle of the year seems to bring out introspection and resolution-making a little more readily for me than New Year’s Day does. I think it’s the frightening realization that I’ve let yet another half of a year slip by, and if the other half of the year goes as fast as the first half did I’ll be left wondering what exactly it was I did with that year, and why I didn’t make more of it.

I’ve been talking with a lot of people about their dreams of late – not the ones that come to you in your sleep, although those can be really interesting too – but more about their ideas of the future for themselves. What did they want to be when they grew up? What did they imagine their lives would be like? How have their dreams morphed over time? What are they dreaming about now?

When I was about 12 someone gave me a large, hard-covered book filled with blank pages of quality paper. I wrote poetry in it, penned some short stories here and there, painted with water color on some of the pages. I drew with pen and ink on a lot of them (I went through a lengthy pen and ink phase thanks to my Drawing and Painting teacher in high school), and among these ink drawings were several pages with front, back, and inside views of my dream house, drawn in great detail.

I haven’t seen that book recently; it must be around somewhere in a box or in a closet, stuck among other fragments from my past. The thing is I can remember exactly what I wanted that house to look like. I’ve thought about it off and on over the years, and have always known that if I happened into a lot of money, that would be the house that I would build. And I would have to BUILD it, because, of course, it is unique enough not to be anything that one would find in a typical neighborhood. Back when I drew it, I wanted to build it in Chino Valley, AZ. Now I’m not so sure where it would go, but I’m fairly certain Chino Valley isn’t in the mix anymore.

I spent a lot of time at the ages of 12-14 or so, day dreaming, doodling, writing, and learning to do what I now recognize as planning. It was a zone in which I felt really peaceful and happy. The times in life when I’ve been the most productive and successful are those that have provided me with an opportunity to get into that zone to dream and create. When I was a teacher, planning was the best part of the job to me. I enjoyed linking subjects, ideas, curriculum requirements and activities together to build a lesson. The implementation was fulfilling, of course, and the students were always surprising and wonderful, but what gave me the most pleasure was the planning, where my imagination got to take over for awhile.

Sometimes in the implementation of a lesson plan one bumps up against realities for which even the best curriculum specialists were not prepared…but that just helps to refine the next lesson. And after talking to people about their dreams, I see that there are times when this is the case in the rest of life as well.


I once worked for a Department Chair at a university who had been a life-long political advocate, an Ombudsman, an extremely intelligent, tireless negotiator, a champion of the poor and downtrodden, steadfast enemy of big business and greed, a professor and esteemed researcher. He had spent most of his life in school, from kindergarten on up through his PhD, and remained there afterward doing research, writing, and teaching in the academic world until he was at the apex of his chosen field of study. He had virtually no experience with the lives of those for whom he was championing causes - until he had a heart attack. As a part of his recovery, he was required to attend rehab sessions and counseling with others in his relatively small college town who were also on the mend. One of the great shocks of his life was to rub shoulders with the ‘average Joe’; to learn who Joe was, what he believed, how he lived. The experience sent this learned man’s world view topsy-turvy. It didn't deter him from his dreams, but there was a lot more soul-searching and less saturated fat in his life after that.

One friend told me that he doesn’t feel that goals and dreams are the same thing at all. He always keeps his dreams a little bit ahead of his goals…a little loftier, a little less achievable. That’s the strategy that works best for him. I asked him once if he thought his life shaped his dreams, or his dreams shaped his life. He said that dreams have shaped his life. I think he is a lucky man. There are some people who have had the luxury of knowing precisely what their dreams were, aiming directly for them, and then watching life step aside and offer a wide, friendly berth as they reached them. But I think those people are rare. I don’t know too many, and I frankly haven’t asked any of them what it is they think they may have given up or missed by traversing their path so easily and steadily in life. I’m afraid that might sound like a bitter question.

IS that a bitter question? What I wonder is this: For most of us, do our dreams change simply out of laziness? Circumstance? Opportunity? I just don’t want to fall into the “if you can’t be with the one you love (honey) love the one you’re with” mentality…letting go of a dream simply because it isn’t easy or practical, or because it seems unattainable, then opting for something less daunting or less risky.

It seems to me that most of the rest of us are either a mixture of the purposeful and the dreamer, or just flat-out dreamers. The driven, purposeful, goal-setter in me is a sporadic part of my personality, visiting once or twice a year at best. As a result, there have been plenty of times in my life when I was buffeted around and pushed into places I didn’t expect to be. More often than not I’ve landed in a situation that has been interesting, that I might never have CHOSEN to be in, but one that taught me a lot, introduced me to a slice of society different from my own, and re-shaped me to the point of re-shaping my dreams.

This year my ‘resolution season’ seems to find me at a juncture where my purposeful self is competing with the dreamer in me. From past experience I know that the goal-setter version tends to prevail when she actually deigns to make an appearance. But I’ve got six more months until the next New Year’s Eve comes along, and plenty of time for twirling in the cosmic eddys that catch me up from time to time, so who knows what it is I’ll be dreaming about by December 31st?

I think I need a new pen and ink, and a nice, fresh tablet!

P.S. This article was sent to me by one of my more creative friends. It gives the scientific spin on all of the above...and then some. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/science/29tier.html