Over the past three evenings, I have watched the PBS series “This Emotional Life” at the pbs.org video portal. It was an interesting mix of ideas. Some of it, I found problematic, particularly in the first episode. At one point, the host, who is a social psychologist at Harvard, made some offhand remark about romantic love being evolutionarily desirable. This is silly and one small conversation with his colleagues in anthropology would have disabused him of that notion. Romantic love is, of course, a cultural construct and people have been reproducing quite well without it for a very long time. We may find it desirable, and for many of us it is a good thing, but there is not necessarily any reason why we need it in order to pass on our genes. The other thing I took issue with was not really the fault of the host. He had gone to a lab to watch some experiments in which mothers looked at facial expressions of their babies and then they did brain scans to look at how the brain responded to this. I felt that this simply reinforced the idea that women are the natural nurturers. Where were the fathers in this experiment? At a book discussion last month, someone made the comment that they think women are simply more caring and nurturing than men and asked me, as an anthropologist, whether I thought that was right in terms of it being universally true. I told him I didn't think so. One has to take into account the role of culture in these kinds of things. Women are taught to be nurturing. It's a basic part of the enculturation process. That doesn't mean it's automatic or biological in any gender specific way. And this experiment that was reported on in the show reinforced a gender stereotype in my opinion.
Last night as I watched the last part, I did get concerned when he started out at a self-help conference in which the many people in attendance were told that if they have cancer, AIDS, depression, or other diseases, it is because they are thinking bad thoughts. But the host challenged the speaker who said this and proceeded to engage in a fuller and less off the wall discussion of these issues. I find this whole idea that we can bring on illness by thinking the wrong things to be highly problematic. First of all, it blames the victim and lets society off the hook. Cancer can come from lots of different things, some of which include environmental pollution and other factors. If we are going to assert that people can avoid cancer by thinking happy thoughts, then why should society care whether the earth is polluted or not? This is a great way to dump responsibility where it does not belong. To be sure, there are health issues that can be almost eliminated by individuals making good choices. Information, responsibility, and critical thinking should be encouraged. But to then decide that if some things are a result “improper” thinking then everything else is too is pretty poor logic. It made me think of a friend I had when I lived in Alaska. She was a very committed evangelical Christian person who had been severely depressed to the point of hospitalization. I never knew all the details, because I didn't know her then, but what I did witness was her distress because she was still being blamed for this! It was her fault, according to her fellow Christians, because she didn't pray hard enough and allowed herself to be possessed by demons! I was horrified! And the pain she felt years later was still evident.
I think we all become afraid of the many terrible things that can happen to us. It may be comforting to think that is something awful happens to someone it is because they brought it on themselves. Because, after all, if I just avoid doing that, then this terrible thing won't happen to me. Problem is, this is nonsense. Bad things happen. That is life. Better, I think, to acknowledge that there are going to be times in our lives that are really crummy and worse. In part two of the show, I heard the stories of people suffering from PTSD. They struggled for years and even decades. But they survived. With help and care, they were able to go on. One of the psychologists who does research in this area commented that her work has amazed her because she has seen how much people can go through and still be OK in the end. And that, I think, is far more empowering than deciding that you will avoid pain in the first place. In my own life, I have had some really bad times, though nothing like some of the horrific experiences related by people in the program. During my worst times, I wanted someone to help make it all better. When that proved impossible, I slowly realized that the person I was waiting for was me. I was the only one that could make it better. Here was where I had the power and control—not to change the circumstances, but to deal with them and keep going anyway. Stuff happens. Really, really bad stuff happens. When it happens to other people, we can help them in various ways, but often we can't change the circumstances. If a friend suffers the loss of a loved one, for instance, we can comfort them, bring them food, let them know they are not alone, and many other things. But we can't change the circumstances. All we can do is provide some strength for them to draw on so they can deal with what has happened to them. And the same holds true for each one of us. We can't think away bad things. But we can learn how to go on in spite of them. That is personal power.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
Adaptation
Last night I watched the first episode in the Human Spark series in which Alan Alda goes in search of the things that make us human. I am so grateful for the fact that I can watch this stuff online at pbs.org, since I don't own a TV. Last night's show was about how and why we survived and continued to evolve as a species while the Neandertals did not. There is general agreement (at the moment, anyway!) that we shared a common ancestor and that there was a wave of migration out of Africa and eventually into Europe—the hominids that migrated evolved into Neandertals. Some of the same type of hominids stayed in Africa and evolved differently, based on conditions on the ground there. At some point they began to migrate and ended up sharing territory with Neandertals. But they were very different. And apparently, they were able to adapt much better to changing circumstances. It seems clear based on the archaeological evidence that these hominids had symbolic behavior as a part of their toolkit. Neandertals may not have—there is some evidence regarding ritual burial practices that is now in some dispute, so the picture is a bit muddy at the moment. What is clear, though, is that Neandertals were well adapted—the species did survive for 200,000 years, after all—but they were kind of one-trick ponies. Their tools show no evidence of change throughout this time period and analysis of the bone, that allows scientists to discover what they ate by looking at where the protein came from (animal, fish, plants) indicates that they ate exclusively meat. They were living in an area with abundant marine resources, but they didn't bother exploiting them because they had large mammals. They kept on as they always had, living in small groups and widely scattered over a large land area. And then our human ancestors arrived with a more adaptive way of being in the world, language, other kinds of symbolic behavior, and seemingly a wider vision of what was possible. This was the beginning of the end for the Neandertals who were unable to adapt in the ways that would have been necessary for them to continue to survive in a different kind of world. It seems to me that there is a lesson here for our own times—as individuals and societies. Things change. The ability to adapt to that change is crucial to our survival. This is why all of those people who want to move us backward into some fantasy world that exists only in their own minds will fail. People who wax poetic about how the country is being ruined and the America they grew up in is gone should wake up. Of course, since it is middle-aged white men who seem to be saying this a lot lately, I can understand. The world was probably a lot less complicated for them when they could move about unfettered by the pesky requirements of civil rights and respect and equality for those who were not white males. But for the rest of us, we can be thankful that that country is gone. Good riddance. These guys should really learn to find a way to adapt in this new world instead of crying for the old one. That's not to say there was nothing good about the “good old days.” But successful adaptation does not mean throwing everything away and starting over. It means looking at how things could be done better. If something works, you keep it. If it doesn't, you figure out what will.
I found myself feeling kind of sad as I watched the show. I began thinking about what it would have been like to be a Neandertal and seeing these new creatures appear in your world. If they lived in small groups and “people” began dying off and not being replaced, they would have seen their little groups get smaller and smaller. I know their brains worked differently than ours do. We don't know what their emotional life was like. They are sequencing the DNA and the first indications are that we share a great deal—not a surprise as we share DNA with a great many creatures that are very different from us. So I know that we can't really put ourselves in their shoes. The few genetic differences that there are were apparently great enough to cause major differences in behavior. Still, I found myself wondering what it would have been like to be the last Neandertal.
I found myself feeling kind of sad as I watched the show. I began thinking about what it would have been like to be a Neandertal and seeing these new creatures appear in your world. If they lived in small groups and “people” began dying off and not being replaced, they would have seen their little groups get smaller and smaller. I know their brains worked differently than ours do. We don't know what their emotional life was like. They are sequencing the DNA and the first indications are that we share a great deal—not a surprise as we share DNA with a great many creatures that are very different from us. So I know that we can't really put ourselves in their shoes. The few genetic differences that there are were apparently great enough to cause major differences in behavior. Still, I found myself wondering what it would have been like to be the last Neandertal.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Not an Artist
Yesterday was the first day in the last several that we didn't have to go out and shovel sidewalks. This morning the plow went by again and got down to bare pavement in some spots. Just in time, because according to the weather forecast, more snow will be coming, beginning this afternoon, though it is supposed to be nothing like what we had over the weekend. The local newspaper reported that as a result of the weekend's “unusual storm” we ended up with 31 inches of snow! They seem to be doing a good job with the plowing and I have to give a shout out to the mailman. Looking down the street, I can see that many people didn't bother to do anything to their sidewalks, so the poor guy has to trek through deep snow for most of this block, anyway. And yet the mail has been in the box at its usual time. So to the mail carriers everywhere who are out there walking and driving in some horrible conditions, I say thank you!
We have been keeping the truck parked. We try to do this anyway, but we do take it to go grocery shopping. Food is more expensive here than it was in Oregon, and we have a tight budget, so it's worth it to drive the few miles (not really far, but not practical to walk) to the two stores where we can stretch our food dollars. One is an Aldi, which has great prices on lots of stuff, but it's small and the selection varies, so it's the kind of place where you go first to get what you can. Then we head to Wegman's to round out the list. That seems to be the nicest grocery store in town and the prices on everything I need, with the exception of a very few items, are significantly cheaper than anywhere else. But since we have no snow tires on the truck or weight in the back of it, we probably won't be doing our normal grocery shopping routine for a while. So another thing I have been appreciating is the fact that I shop as I do and I know what to do with the food I have. We only go grocery shopping a couple of times a month, so we stock up when things are on sale. I loaded up on baking supplies when they were cheap last month, so I have what I need to bake muffins and bread. Produce is expensive here, so we took advantage of the farmers' market that's a few blocks from our house. I got extra squash, apples, and cabbage because I knew it would keep. I always have a supply of pasta on hand and some canned stuff in the cabinet. I have been glad of all this lately because our regularly scheduled grocery shopping excursion was going to be Monday. Depending on how this next weather system goes, we may or may not be able to go next week. But in the meantime, I have been using my kitchen skills to feed us on what we have and because I shopped wisely, I have what I need to make nutritious meals. I am glad to have these skills. So many people don't bother, figuring they can open a box or drive through the fast food joint. And to be sure, we could walk to those kinds of places. And there are places to buy food within walking distance where I could shop for certain things and not bust the budget. But there again I have to be able to actually use the raw ingredients. It's a good skill to have and it helps that I enjoy doing it most of the time.
I have been thinking about things like this in a larger context. Sunday afternoon, while the snow was coming down fast and hard and I had a big pot of soup simmering on the stove, I read a book called The Cynical Idealist: A Spiritual Biography of John Lennon. Now I am not a particular fan of Lennon's music and really don't know much about him at all. It's not a book I would have pictured myself reading, but Bill had brought it home from the library and read it, even reading parts aloud and it sounded intriguing, so I picked it up. There were times I felt I could have been reading about myself in terms of the guy's personal philosophy and his search for more knowledge and understanding about this world. An entire section was devoted to the time after he met Yoko in which they decided together to make their lives a work of art. This is an idea I have thought about before. If more people looked at their lives in that way, I think they and the world would be far better off. Then yesterday I read a book that was different, but included the message that our lives are a canvas on which to create. This book is Joan Anderson's A Walk on the Beach. Again, here was some stuff that I needed to be reminded of. Then last night I watched an episode of Art:21 on the PBS website. I enjoy listening to creative people talk about their creative process. This was similar to what I felt reading the Lennon book. I got the message and even agreed with it, but I often didn't connect with the ways in which they tried to get that message across. In my own life, I have had people try to convince me to become a larger part of whatever local art scene existed in the towns I was in, exhibiting my work with yarn and thread. And I did this on occasion. One woman at an art gallery I volunteered at was persistent, telling me, “You are an artist, you know.” I felt uncomfortable with that designation. And now I understand why. It came to me this morning that I am not comfortable with the term “artist” because that truly isn't what I do. I believe very strongly in creativity as a means to an authentic and visionary way of living. But I am far more practical and down-to-earth than the art world would allow. I am interested not only in ideas, but in being able to express them to as many people as possible. I am a craftswoman. I take my raw materials and use them to create practical, useful things. If I am making supper, food is my raw material, and I use that to make simple, nutritious meals. I am not a gourmet cook, nor am I interested in fancy presentation where there's a dollop of food on a plate swirled with some colorful sauce. No, if I'm doing the cooking, you're going to get a big bowl of soup or pasta or something like that. It tastes good and is good for you and that is important to me, but it's not a work of art. If I am crocheting something, it will probably have a use—it will be worn or stepped on, as in the case of the bathmat I made when we moved in here, used in the kitchen or something like that. If I am writing a poem or an essay, I will take the ideas I am always bombarding myself with and the words needed to express those ideas and do so in a straightforward, yet creative way. I am not one to experiment with making up new words or playing with language in weird and theoretical ways and I don't enjoy reading the work of people who do—I just don't connect. And when it comes to crafting a life, I take all of the things I mentioned above and add whatever life offers me, using it all to create a life that is meaningful and that feels right to me. I have a larger message, which is really pretty simple—this culture isn't working on a societal or personal level and we can and must change it. We are not trapped by the limited possibilities offered by mainstream culture. That's it. I believe that if people really looked at how they are living, most would change something—either something large or something small. If they did, they'd be better off and the world would be better off because we would all be acting in far more healthy ways. I could try to express that in any number of ways. But for me it seems that the more people I can communicate with, the better, so I will use language in a straightforward way to craft a poem or an essay. I will use yarn or thread to create a gift or a garment that makes people think twice about mindless consumption divorced from creativity. I will fashion a meal to illustrate the fact that real food is not hard to prepare, tastes good and is better for you than the fake stuff you get when you open a box and stick a plastic container in the microwave. I don't need to create a work of art that will allow only a privileged few to access these ideas. Some people do have that need, because that's the way they think. And I say more power to them. We need more creative expression in this world. But I think that we increasingly need more craftspeople, too. People who are more interested in using the appropriate materials to become more deeply themselves and to share that with the world.
We have been keeping the truck parked. We try to do this anyway, but we do take it to go grocery shopping. Food is more expensive here than it was in Oregon, and we have a tight budget, so it's worth it to drive the few miles (not really far, but not practical to walk) to the two stores where we can stretch our food dollars. One is an Aldi, which has great prices on lots of stuff, but it's small and the selection varies, so it's the kind of place where you go first to get what you can. Then we head to Wegman's to round out the list. That seems to be the nicest grocery store in town and the prices on everything I need, with the exception of a very few items, are significantly cheaper than anywhere else. But since we have no snow tires on the truck or weight in the back of it, we probably won't be doing our normal grocery shopping routine for a while. So another thing I have been appreciating is the fact that I shop as I do and I know what to do with the food I have. We only go grocery shopping a couple of times a month, so we stock up when things are on sale. I loaded up on baking supplies when they were cheap last month, so I have what I need to bake muffins and bread. Produce is expensive here, so we took advantage of the farmers' market that's a few blocks from our house. I got extra squash, apples, and cabbage because I knew it would keep. I always have a supply of pasta on hand and some canned stuff in the cabinet. I have been glad of all this lately because our regularly scheduled grocery shopping excursion was going to be Monday. Depending on how this next weather system goes, we may or may not be able to go next week. But in the meantime, I have been using my kitchen skills to feed us on what we have and because I shopped wisely, I have what I need to make nutritious meals. I am glad to have these skills. So many people don't bother, figuring they can open a box or drive through the fast food joint. And to be sure, we could walk to those kinds of places. And there are places to buy food within walking distance where I could shop for certain things and not bust the budget. But there again I have to be able to actually use the raw ingredients. It's a good skill to have and it helps that I enjoy doing it most of the time.
I have been thinking about things like this in a larger context. Sunday afternoon, while the snow was coming down fast and hard and I had a big pot of soup simmering on the stove, I read a book called The Cynical Idealist: A Spiritual Biography of John Lennon. Now I am not a particular fan of Lennon's music and really don't know much about him at all. It's not a book I would have pictured myself reading, but Bill had brought it home from the library and read it, even reading parts aloud and it sounded intriguing, so I picked it up. There were times I felt I could have been reading about myself in terms of the guy's personal philosophy and his search for more knowledge and understanding about this world. An entire section was devoted to the time after he met Yoko in which they decided together to make their lives a work of art. This is an idea I have thought about before. If more people looked at their lives in that way, I think they and the world would be far better off. Then yesterday I read a book that was different, but included the message that our lives are a canvas on which to create. This book is Joan Anderson's A Walk on the Beach. Again, here was some stuff that I needed to be reminded of. Then last night I watched an episode of Art:21 on the PBS website. I enjoy listening to creative people talk about their creative process. This was similar to what I felt reading the Lennon book. I got the message and even agreed with it, but I often didn't connect with the ways in which they tried to get that message across. In my own life, I have had people try to convince me to become a larger part of whatever local art scene existed in the towns I was in, exhibiting my work with yarn and thread. And I did this on occasion. One woman at an art gallery I volunteered at was persistent, telling me, “You are an artist, you know.” I felt uncomfortable with that designation. And now I understand why. It came to me this morning that I am not comfortable with the term “artist” because that truly isn't what I do. I believe very strongly in creativity as a means to an authentic and visionary way of living. But I am far more practical and down-to-earth than the art world would allow. I am interested not only in ideas, but in being able to express them to as many people as possible. I am a craftswoman. I take my raw materials and use them to create practical, useful things. If I am making supper, food is my raw material, and I use that to make simple, nutritious meals. I am not a gourmet cook, nor am I interested in fancy presentation where there's a dollop of food on a plate swirled with some colorful sauce. No, if I'm doing the cooking, you're going to get a big bowl of soup or pasta or something like that. It tastes good and is good for you and that is important to me, but it's not a work of art. If I am crocheting something, it will probably have a use—it will be worn or stepped on, as in the case of the bathmat I made when we moved in here, used in the kitchen or something like that. If I am writing a poem or an essay, I will take the ideas I am always bombarding myself with and the words needed to express those ideas and do so in a straightforward, yet creative way. I am not one to experiment with making up new words or playing with language in weird and theoretical ways and I don't enjoy reading the work of people who do—I just don't connect. And when it comes to crafting a life, I take all of the things I mentioned above and add whatever life offers me, using it all to create a life that is meaningful and that feels right to me. I have a larger message, which is really pretty simple—this culture isn't working on a societal or personal level and we can and must change it. We are not trapped by the limited possibilities offered by mainstream culture. That's it. I believe that if people really looked at how they are living, most would change something—either something large or something small. If they did, they'd be better off and the world would be better off because we would all be acting in far more healthy ways. I could try to express that in any number of ways. But for me it seems that the more people I can communicate with, the better, so I will use language in a straightforward way to craft a poem or an essay. I will use yarn or thread to create a gift or a garment that makes people think twice about mindless consumption divorced from creativity. I will fashion a meal to illustrate the fact that real food is not hard to prepare, tastes good and is better for you than the fake stuff you get when you open a box and stick a plastic container in the microwave. I don't need to create a work of art that will allow only a privileged few to access these ideas. Some people do have that need, because that's the way they think. And I say more power to them. We need more creative expression in this world. But I think that we increasingly need more craftspeople, too. People who are more interested in using the appropriate materials to become more deeply themselves and to share that with the world.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Celebrating the Snow
We finally got some real snow. It started the other day and hasn't really stopped yet. It was kind of crazy out there on Saturday night and Sunday. I understand that we got 14 inches of snow yesterday alone. Fortunately, it is the light, fluffy kind of snow as it's been in the teens. This makes shoveling much easier, since the snow is piling up along the sidewalk and it would be so much harder to hoist a shovel full of wet, heavy snow up to dump it. Most people seem to be not bothering to clear their walks, so it becomes necessary to walk in the street. We walked in some blizzard-like conditions yesterday morning going to church. It finally feels like winter. I am happy to see it, but I wish it had come two weeks sooner.
There is something about days like this that put me in a calm and peaceful state of mind. There was hardly anyone at church yesterday—only about 10 of us. It seemed different somehow with so few people. We did get a ride home from a new friend who gave me a snowflake she had tatted! It is beautiful and it was so appropriate for the day! Once we got home, I hung up my snowflake where I can look at it from my spot on the couch, Bill did some shoveling and I made some lunch. We had some tea. We read and watched the snow fall. I made a big pot of soup for dinner and took some whole wheat oatmeal rolls that I had made a couple of days ago and turned them into garlic bread. More reading, more tea. I made Bill a hat. All the while I felt a deep sense of peace. It's a feeling I never have in the summer and I rarely have when the sun is shining. It's so quiet out there. It is on days like yesterday when I feel most in touch with the deepest part of myself. It was a great day. I had a walk in the snow, time with new friends, books, tea, yarn, homemade soup and bread. I had peace. I felt joy. Maybe it was good after all that the storm came when it did, just as I was starting to feel sad at the end of the holiday season. Maybe there's a lesson here about looking at what each day brings and finding something to celebrate. So today I will look at the snowflakes falling, make some tea, and read, I think, a novel that Bill gave me several weeks ago. I have plenty of soup left. I have my yarn ready to begin my next hat. We have done our morning shoveling and it remains to be seen whether we will need to do it again later. Bill has moved the truck and parked it on the other side of the street (we have to move it every day or risk a ticket). There is nowhere we have to be. I will just be here, appreciating the simple joys of a quiet day.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Hope in a New Decade
A new decade has begun along with this new year. I know it's all symbolic, but these kinds of human inventions, like calendars, are helpful to us as we make sense of our world. And so I reflect on the decade that has passed and where I find myself at the beginning of the new one.
It was a tough decade for me. Loss is the word that describes it best. Some of the loss was a result of me throwing away parts of my life that no longer served me well. Some of it was thrust upon me, no matter how much I did not want it or worked to keep it at bay. Loss arrived, did its thing, and left me reeling. So as this new decade begins, I find myself nurturing a small, flickering flame of hope against the strong wind of resignation. When I look back I marvel at the person I was in comparison to the person I am today. Then I was full of hope. What is today a small, flickering flame was a giant bonfire then. I was leaving the world of academia—a world in which I had spent the majority of my adult life. This was the right thing to do. Even during the times when I wondered whether I should have just settled for the life of mediocrity that staying would have provided, deep down I always knew that it never would have worked. The ivory tower is really a prison for most of the academics I came in contact with over my years in higher education. This is not true across the board, of course, but I think that for most academics, disillusionment is a constant companion. Academia is a world of limits, egos, and far too many people who spend endless hours arguing about smaller and smaller ideas. The more people stay in that world the more focused they become on very narrow topics. I would have died of boredom. I have honestly never seen a more bitter, angry, unhappy bunch of folks all congregated in one place. So I was right to escape when I did. But this did lead to a time of searching and I had to give up my ideas about what my life would be like when I made the decision to leave. There was my first loss of the decade.
It wasn't really traumatic at that point, though, because as I threw off the shackles of the narrow world I was leaving, I was filled with a sense of possibility and hope. But that's when things started to go wrong and the losses piled up. Looking back, I can see that what I was doing was going in search of various parts of myself that I had buried or discarded along the way. Being someone who gets very committed to doing things “right” I found myself taking an all-or-nothing approach. Because I was not comfortable with uncertainty and not having a plan, I was trying to pivot from the clear rules of a life in higher ed, stifling as they were, to some other thing. And so I ended up bouncing from one thing to another, but always trying to be productive. It took another trip back to the world of academia which ended in short order for me to really stop and figure out that this was not going to work. As I tried each new thing and each new thing did not work as I thought it would, I felt more agitated and distressed. And more desperate to find something—anything--that I could devote my life to. It took me almost until the end of the decade to do that.
Meanwhile, as I was careening around looking for a place to rest, the 4-legged-furry people that I had shared my life with began to die. As the decade ends, they are all gone and I am still not used to being animal-less after over 20 years of living with a various assortment of creatures. More loss.
There came a time when I even lost the will to continue living this life. I suppose it was fortunate that I was too exhausted to act on this wish and it only ever amounted to me praying each night to not wake up in the morning. Then when I did I had to spend some time resigning myself to dragging myself through another day. I am not sure where my flickering flame of hope was then, but I certainly felt it had been snuffed out. I had watched it grow dimmer and dimmer as the decade progressed and I don't think I really cared at that point whether it ever sparked up again. I could not see how on earth I would make it through the next hour, let alone the next day or week.
But I was fortunate to have good people in my life who tended my little flame of hope until it came back to life. It is not the bonfire it was when the decade began. But it is there. I see it when I consider the wonderful people I am lucky enough to count as friends. I see it when I look at my husband and feel grateful that we have this life together and that I get to spend every day with the single other person on this earth I love more than any other. I see it when I hear about people all over the world who are working to help the planet survive and thrive. But the winds of resignation are strong, too. I have less optimism now about the ability of people to move beyond their fear and into healthy lives. I see people living in complacency and not trying to make the changes that we need to make. I see them wallowing in ignorance and being proud of their anti-intellectual knee-jerk provincialism. Part of this, is, I am sure due to observing life in the amazingly dysfunctional community of Klamath Falls, where I spent half the decade. But it also exists in crazy town hall meetings where people shout things like, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” Um, hello, if the government keeps its hands off your Medicare, there's no Medicare, since it is a GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM! Watching people like this who are so lazy that they can't think things through for themselves, but have to rely on nutcases to provide them with bumper sticker slogans that don't even make sense, make me resigned to watching the world fall apart—or at least the United States. I have come to the conclusion that this may be for the best. On the other hand, my flame grows a little brighter when I hear stories like the one about the climate change denying Senator James Inhofe, who took a “truth squad” of two people to Copenhagen to explain the truth to people. He finally got a press conference going where he was spouting some crazy stuff about how global warming was really a vast conspiracy between the UN and Hollywood. Apparently, a German journalist from Der Spiegel looked at him and said, “That's stupid. You're an idiot.” Moments like that make me think that all is not lost. Some people will not be bamboozled. Many of them live elsewhere. I fervently hope that when the decade turns again—and even well before that, I will also live elsewhere. I would like to live in a place where journalists don't just report on every crazy idea from every crazy person as though it is valid. I would like to live in a place where those crazy people don't get elected to high office in the first place, though I suppose that is unrealistic. Every place has its eccentrics and fringers, there just seem to be more of them who are granted power in this country than in many others. I would like to live in a place where journalists and the general public would question the legitimacy of a march to preemptive war by an unelected leader who was trying to work out his problems with daddy and being pushed by his own circle of crazies. I would like to live in such a place. I hope I will.
It was a tough decade for me. Loss is the word that describes it best. Some of the loss was a result of me throwing away parts of my life that no longer served me well. Some of it was thrust upon me, no matter how much I did not want it or worked to keep it at bay. Loss arrived, did its thing, and left me reeling. So as this new decade begins, I find myself nurturing a small, flickering flame of hope against the strong wind of resignation. When I look back I marvel at the person I was in comparison to the person I am today. Then I was full of hope. What is today a small, flickering flame was a giant bonfire then. I was leaving the world of academia—a world in which I had spent the majority of my adult life. This was the right thing to do. Even during the times when I wondered whether I should have just settled for the life of mediocrity that staying would have provided, deep down I always knew that it never would have worked. The ivory tower is really a prison for most of the academics I came in contact with over my years in higher education. This is not true across the board, of course, but I think that for most academics, disillusionment is a constant companion. Academia is a world of limits, egos, and far too many people who spend endless hours arguing about smaller and smaller ideas. The more people stay in that world the more focused they become on very narrow topics. I would have died of boredom. I have honestly never seen a more bitter, angry, unhappy bunch of folks all congregated in one place. So I was right to escape when I did. But this did lead to a time of searching and I had to give up my ideas about what my life would be like when I made the decision to leave. There was my first loss of the decade.
It wasn't really traumatic at that point, though, because as I threw off the shackles of the narrow world I was leaving, I was filled with a sense of possibility and hope. But that's when things started to go wrong and the losses piled up. Looking back, I can see that what I was doing was going in search of various parts of myself that I had buried or discarded along the way. Being someone who gets very committed to doing things “right” I found myself taking an all-or-nothing approach. Because I was not comfortable with uncertainty and not having a plan, I was trying to pivot from the clear rules of a life in higher ed, stifling as they were, to some other thing. And so I ended up bouncing from one thing to another, but always trying to be productive. It took another trip back to the world of academia which ended in short order for me to really stop and figure out that this was not going to work. As I tried each new thing and each new thing did not work as I thought it would, I felt more agitated and distressed. And more desperate to find something—anything--that I could devote my life to. It took me almost until the end of the decade to do that.
Meanwhile, as I was careening around looking for a place to rest, the 4-legged-furry people that I had shared my life with began to die. As the decade ends, they are all gone and I am still not used to being animal-less after over 20 years of living with a various assortment of creatures. More loss.
There came a time when I even lost the will to continue living this life. I suppose it was fortunate that I was too exhausted to act on this wish and it only ever amounted to me praying each night to not wake up in the morning. Then when I did I had to spend some time resigning myself to dragging myself through another day. I am not sure where my flickering flame of hope was then, but I certainly felt it had been snuffed out. I had watched it grow dimmer and dimmer as the decade progressed and I don't think I really cared at that point whether it ever sparked up again. I could not see how on earth I would make it through the next hour, let alone the next day or week.
But I was fortunate to have good people in my life who tended my little flame of hope until it came back to life. It is not the bonfire it was when the decade began. But it is there. I see it when I consider the wonderful people I am lucky enough to count as friends. I see it when I look at my husband and feel grateful that we have this life together and that I get to spend every day with the single other person on this earth I love more than any other. I see it when I hear about people all over the world who are working to help the planet survive and thrive. But the winds of resignation are strong, too. I have less optimism now about the ability of people to move beyond their fear and into healthy lives. I see people living in complacency and not trying to make the changes that we need to make. I see them wallowing in ignorance and being proud of their anti-intellectual knee-jerk provincialism. Part of this, is, I am sure due to observing life in the amazingly dysfunctional community of Klamath Falls, where I spent half the decade. But it also exists in crazy town hall meetings where people shout things like, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” Um, hello, if the government keeps its hands off your Medicare, there's no Medicare, since it is a GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM! Watching people like this who are so lazy that they can't think things through for themselves, but have to rely on nutcases to provide them with bumper sticker slogans that don't even make sense, make me resigned to watching the world fall apart—or at least the United States. I have come to the conclusion that this may be for the best. On the other hand, my flame grows a little brighter when I hear stories like the one about the climate change denying Senator James Inhofe, who took a “truth squad” of two people to Copenhagen to explain the truth to people. He finally got a press conference going where he was spouting some crazy stuff about how global warming was really a vast conspiracy between the UN and Hollywood. Apparently, a German journalist from Der Spiegel looked at him and said, “That's stupid. You're an idiot.” Moments like that make me think that all is not lost. Some people will not be bamboozled. Many of them live elsewhere. I fervently hope that when the decade turns again—and even well before that, I will also live elsewhere. I would like to live in a place where journalists don't just report on every crazy idea from every crazy person as though it is valid. I would like to live in a place where those crazy people don't get elected to high office in the first place, though I suppose that is unrealistic. Every place has its eccentrics and fringers, there just seem to be more of them who are granted power in this country than in many others. I would like to live in a place where journalists and the general public would question the legitimacy of a march to preemptive war by an unelected leader who was trying to work out his problems with daddy and being pushed by his own circle of crazies. I would like to live in such a place. I hope I will.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
What's It All About?
Christmas Week has begun. Or Solstice Week. Or whatever it is for me. I am never sure, exactly. I have never really placed a religious significance on Christmas. It has never been about the birth of a baby, though it's kind of a nice story. It is not about celebrating the return of the light, because I don't celebrate it. I dread the coming of spring and summer. I get depressed in the spring and I have to grit my teeth and get through summer. I hate it. I love winter. So maybe it's a celebration of winter for me, then. I don't know really what it is. But I do know that this is the best couple of weeks of the year. The air feels different. Everything seems more quiet. I realize that if I was caught up in the consumer christmas culture, I would experience things very differently, but I left that behind long ago. For me it is all about being quiet and just being with my family.
Yesterday we went grocery shopping for the last time in 2009. I was thrilled when we got home! It was done. And I was home. And I plan to be home for the next several days. I will be listening to Christmas music as I bake mocha muffins, oatmeal rolls, cinnamon rolls, and cookies (muffins today and the rest Thursday). I will listen to various audio versions of A Christmas Carol while I knit and crochet hats and scarves for our tree at UU. I will read when I feel like it. I will drink many cups of coffee and tea, sitting here with Bill. I will not have to watch a clock and schedule certain things for certain times so I can be somewhere. I can get up in the morning and just exist. And I can create. I think that is the real essence of this time of the year for me. I can create for other people. I do that all year anyway, when I make a shawl for someone or bake cookies and share them. But it feels different at this time of the year. Maybe that's the meaning of the season for me. It is a time when the reason for my creativity changes a bit from creating because an idea won't leave me alone, or because I want dessert, or I want to feel the yarn and my wooden crochet hooks in my hands, to creating because I want to share my creations with specific people. Maybe there is also a bit of honoring all of the women in countless generations who came before me, because my creative life is very much tied to women's history—I work with thread, yarn, and food. I crochet. I knit. I cook. I bake. I know that once the latter three got mechanized and commercialized, women no longer did them. But I am not working on that scale. I am working on a domestic scale as women have done through the centuries. Part of what I am saying, I think, when I give someone something that I have made is, “Look at this. It did not come from a store or as a result of someone's slave labor. I made this. I made this for you. And throughout history, women have been creating things for the people they love. Women have done this. Honor this work—not because I have done it, but because without it, none of us would be here.” The truth is, whether women have done this work out of necessity or because they needed it done but also loved doing it, it is necessary work. It is not just art for art's sake. It is creativity with a practical purpose. I am not against art for art's sake, but I find it amusing that we have privileged that world in the way that we have. It is, of course, primarily male, though that is changing. There's nothing wrong with thinking great thoughts and then chipping away at stone or throwing paint on a canvas or whatever else you need to do to express those thoughts. It's important. We need that. But we also need the kind of creativity that women have been quietly doing in homes everywhere for all of these generations. We need that kind of creativity at a very basic level. Without it, we don't survive. Without women expressing themselves in the kitchen, for example, by creating healthy meals, how would we live? We can see today when that task has been largely outsourced to food processors and fast food chains that we are not surviving well at all. We are eating ourselves to death. We need more people—men and women—to get back into the kitchen and start creating food again. Real, nourishing, life-giving food, not pseudofood. Not chemicals and cardboard dressed up to look like food. But we have devalued this work and so no one wants to do it. It is seen as unimportant. Our society is increasingly not set up to accommodate such activities. If we honored this work, if we understood that our very survival depends on it, maybe we would organize things differently. So maybe that is what Christmas is to me—a way to say that we can choose again. None of this is working. Our gluttony, our imprisonment in a consumer culture that is out of control, our unconsciousness about who we are and how we want to live are all highlighted at this time of year. And yet we are invited by the story of the birth of this baby and by the pagan celebrations that we can do things differently. We can recognize that there is a simpler way to live. We can accept that we need the dark time for contemplation and growth. We can use it to prepare for the work that is ahead. We can discover who we are—who we really are and not who we are told we should be—and we can build a life on that. When I bake and crochet, I am being true to who I am and what I value. And maybe that is a little easier at this time of year. Maybe that's why it all feels different to me somehow. By dropping out of the consumer culture christmas and dropping in to the creative culture christmas, I have discovered more of myself and a way to share that with other people. Merry Christmas, Happy Solstice, Festive Holidays.
Yesterday we went grocery shopping for the last time in 2009. I was thrilled when we got home! It was done. And I was home. And I plan to be home for the next several days. I will be listening to Christmas music as I bake mocha muffins, oatmeal rolls, cinnamon rolls, and cookies (muffins today and the rest Thursday). I will listen to various audio versions of A Christmas Carol while I knit and crochet hats and scarves for our tree at UU. I will read when I feel like it. I will drink many cups of coffee and tea, sitting here with Bill. I will not have to watch a clock and schedule certain things for certain times so I can be somewhere. I can get up in the morning and just exist. And I can create. I think that is the real essence of this time of the year for me. I can create for other people. I do that all year anyway, when I make a shawl for someone or bake cookies and share them. But it feels different at this time of the year. Maybe that's the meaning of the season for me. It is a time when the reason for my creativity changes a bit from creating because an idea won't leave me alone, or because I want dessert, or I want to feel the yarn and my wooden crochet hooks in my hands, to creating because I want to share my creations with specific people. Maybe there is also a bit of honoring all of the women in countless generations who came before me, because my creative life is very much tied to women's history—I work with thread, yarn, and food. I crochet. I knit. I cook. I bake. I know that once the latter three got mechanized and commercialized, women no longer did them. But I am not working on that scale. I am working on a domestic scale as women have done through the centuries. Part of what I am saying, I think, when I give someone something that I have made is, “Look at this. It did not come from a store or as a result of someone's slave labor. I made this. I made this for you. And throughout history, women have been creating things for the people they love. Women have done this. Honor this work—not because I have done it, but because without it, none of us would be here.” The truth is, whether women have done this work out of necessity or because they needed it done but also loved doing it, it is necessary work. It is not just art for art's sake. It is creativity with a practical purpose. I am not against art for art's sake, but I find it amusing that we have privileged that world in the way that we have. It is, of course, primarily male, though that is changing. There's nothing wrong with thinking great thoughts and then chipping away at stone or throwing paint on a canvas or whatever else you need to do to express those thoughts. It's important. We need that. But we also need the kind of creativity that women have been quietly doing in homes everywhere for all of these generations. We need that kind of creativity at a very basic level. Without it, we don't survive. Without women expressing themselves in the kitchen, for example, by creating healthy meals, how would we live? We can see today when that task has been largely outsourced to food processors and fast food chains that we are not surviving well at all. We are eating ourselves to death. We need more people—men and women—to get back into the kitchen and start creating food again. Real, nourishing, life-giving food, not pseudofood. Not chemicals and cardboard dressed up to look like food. But we have devalued this work and so no one wants to do it. It is seen as unimportant. Our society is increasingly not set up to accommodate such activities. If we honored this work, if we understood that our very survival depends on it, maybe we would organize things differently. So maybe that is what Christmas is to me—a way to say that we can choose again. None of this is working. Our gluttony, our imprisonment in a consumer culture that is out of control, our unconsciousness about who we are and how we want to live are all highlighted at this time of year. And yet we are invited by the story of the birth of this baby and by the pagan celebrations that we can do things differently. We can recognize that there is a simpler way to live. We can accept that we need the dark time for contemplation and growth. We can use it to prepare for the work that is ahead. We can discover who we are—who we really are and not who we are told we should be—and we can build a life on that. When I bake and crochet, I am being true to who I am and what I value. And maybe that is a little easier at this time of year. Maybe that's why it all feels different to me somehow. By dropping out of the consumer culture christmas and dropping in to the creative culture christmas, I have discovered more of myself and a way to share that with other people. Merry Christmas, Happy Solstice, Festive Holidays.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Service
Yesterday a friend was musing about how she gives to others at Christmastime. She was talking about making ornaments and baking cookies and giving them out to the people in her 55 and over neighborhood. It got me thinking about how I engage in service. I usually don't have much money, because I choose to live simply. When I have had money to give, I have given it, but usually service for me takes the form of time and creation.
I have volunteered my time to various organizations through the years. I worked in the women's centers at two different universities. I have spent time working in art galleries and with arts organizations in two different states. I have been active in the peace and social justice committees in churches I have attended over the past 5 years. I have worked with the Oregon State University Extension Program in food pantries helping to educate people about food preparation and safety, and nutrition. I got training and certification in literacy education. All of these areas of life are important to me and I felt good about giving my time to support them.
I also feel that it is important to give to individual people. That is a form of community service, too. There are many ways to do this, of course—being a friend, providing a shoulder to cry on or an ear to listen, helping someone around the house, and countless other things provide us with ways to build community and support each other. For me there is also the fact that using my talents in the service of others feels spiritual to me. Like my friend, I bake a lot. It is a good feeling to give someone a tin of homemade cookies and see their face light up. I also crochet (and sometimes knit, tat, or cross-stitch). Most of what I have made over the past 25 years has gone to other people. In the last 7 years or so, I have made countless prayer/blessing shawls. It all started when my mother-in-law's mother died. I had heard about prayer shawls and thought it would be a good thing to do, so I made one and mailed it to her. She called me on the phone and cried as she told me that it was the nicest gift anyone had ever given her. This was quite a moment for me because this is a woman who was not at all happy that I was marrying her son (she probably had good reasons for this, mainly the fact that I was 18, he was 28 and we had only known each other for a couple of months, but after 29 years, I can say it's worked out). Our relationship was fine by then, but it was still a powerful moment for me. It has all snowballed from there. I can be talking to someone and my inner voice will suddenly tell me that I need to make them a prayer shawl. Sometimes it seems obvious to me why this is so, but sometimes it really doesn't. I have tried to talk myself out of it at times, but it never works and the thought hounds me until I make the shawl. I am always glad I did. For me, this exemplifies many things that I think are important—the power of creating things with my own hands, the connection between people, and the shawl itself is important, because it symbolizes for me a comforting embrace. When I give someone a shawl, I am giving them a hug that they can feel even when I am not there. I find shawls very comforting and have several of them that I wear regularly. So this is an important form of service for me.
One less tangible way that I engage in community service is by living a conscious, thoughtful, simple life. I am respectful of the earth, of people, and of the material resources provided by the earth. I do not waste. I do not engage in overconsumption. I rarely shop and when I do, I buy secondhand. I use the library. I do not own a TV. A life of creativity, thinking, and experience is what is meaningful to me, and not one of mindless shopping. I see this as a way to not only set an example, but to use less, thus helping in a tiny way to make the planet more habitable for others. This is a form of service to my fellow humans and to the earth and all of her others creatures as well. All of these ways of serving others and the planet are expressions of my spiritual path. I am not a religious person, and I consider myself a humanist, so it's not a god thing. It's a being a human being thing.
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