Unity

This morning the local radio talk show host was quite passionate in his audience participation question, "What will it take to unite America again?"   It was obvious that he is hurting over the divisiveness he is experiencing, and wants more cohesion, more unity.

As my regular readers know, I am a big believer in finding common ground.  Everything I say in this post about unity I have probably said in another post, but I've never put it all together in one spot before.

So here is my step-by-step plan to restore unity, in whatever micro or macrocosm that you desire.

1. Listen - it is impossible to find unity with a person if I don't listen to them.  And the listening has to be non-judgemental.  If I am internally refuting your statements; I'm not listening, I'm debating or arguing.  This is not to say that I must agree with your statements.  It means that if you are describing how you feel, I must validate your feelings.  If you are stating facts that I do not believe can be substantiated, then I have a duty to let you know. But if I say "You're wrong", I'm not seeking unity, I'm seeking to be right.  So if my data is not in alignment with your data, the statement is, "Our data on this subject is not in alignment.  Can we go back to where our data agrees, and then examine the differences in our data?"  At that point, if unity is your goal, you will find the common ground in your data, and decide if agreeing to disagree at the point where your data separates will prevent you from being united on other topics.  And remember, all feelings are valid.  All unity is underpinned by valuing the feelings of everyone.
2. Accept there is no them - if my desire for unity involves saying if they or them would only, again I am not seeking unity, I am seeking to convince someone else to think or act my way, or I am deciding that the way someone thinks or acts is less good than the way I think and act.  If I seek unity, I have to value all of us in all of our differences.  I have to accept that I will not always understand, and that is fine.  Everyone is who they are for a reason.  I can learn from everyone I meet, even if what I learn is that I don't want to treat people the way another person does.  But I can't throw anyone in the "them" bucket.  I have to accept that we are all flawed, broken creatures trying our best, and not always manifesting in a positive way.  I have to love all the broken, even if I have to keep myself safe from some of the brokenness. At the very least, I have to ask the greater forces in the universe to help everyone carry their burdens in such a way that no one is tempted to do harm to another because of their own brokenness.
3. Never use one way communications to promote divisiveness.  This one is really hard in today's world.  But if I want unity, I have to be certain that I am not harming others with my broadcasts.  I am not proud to say that I have "unfollowed" a number of people on Facebook because I was offended and saddened by the hateful, divisive posts that continued to appear on my newsfeed.  I don't want to "unfriend" people, but the level of vitriol in so many posts actually hurt me, so I shielded myself from it.   If I seek unity, I can be firm in my support of my ideals, but I can't denigrate anyone else. And if I seek unity, I must stay in the most benign of subjects when I share my ideals on social media.  Love of family, love of friends, support for those fighting disease; those are ideals that mostly create unity.  Support for a political candidate or for a complex ideology?  The singular direction of social and broadcast media make it a poor platform for that sort of information.
4. Apologize - if I want unity, I have to be willing to apologize.  And to apologize for more than just my own shortcomings.  If I want unity, I will say over and over again, "I am so sorry that you were treated in a way that made you feel less than", and "I'm sorry that happened to you".  I will say, "I know I can't make it better, but if there is something I can do to ease your pain, please tell me", and "If I ever unconsciously say or do something that hurts you, please tell me so that I don't do it again".  Real unity comes when each individual takes responsibility for the feelings of others.  When each individual feels called to right wrongs, even wrongs that they did not commit.
5. Accept there are many separate and equal realities.  I can only know the reality I know.  That is the truth that each one of us lives.  I have to accept the reality that each person paints for me as a valid reality.  Even if it is far different than my own.  Once again, finding common reality is the starting point, and working forward from there to where the visions of reality diverge.  Accepting that the realities will never be the same allows me to see things from a different viewpoint.  I can only find unity when I embrace that your reality is as real to you as mine is to me.  And when I embrace that the problems that you see in your reality are legitimate problems, whether or not I have ever experienced them in my reality.   And now we can unite to solve them.

Unity is an ideal that is difficult to achieve, especially in a society like the United State of America, where rugged individualism is so prized.  Unity values the individual, but depends on each individual valuing others equally with themselves.

Long post with lots of words, and it could all be summed up in the golden rule, "Treat others as you would like to be treated".  I long for unity.  I long for a world with no "them".  I'm going to keep trying to be a person that creates unity rather then divisiveness.  Because if I don't find common ground with you, we can never even engage in the conversation to move forward towards, instead of away from, each other.

Interesting results

I'm always trying to learn more about myself, always trying to figure myself out.  A couple of years ago while I was still working, I attended a training session on Unconscious Bias.  We were given a link to a website where you could take multiple tests to see what bias was implicit in your makeup.

I think I took a couple of the tests, I really don't remember that well.  Last week, I read an article on implicit bias.  So, I clicked a link and took the race test and the gender-career test.  Here are my results.

Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for African American compared to European American.

Your data suggest a strong association of Male with CAREER and Female with FAMILY compared to Female with CAREER and Male with FAMILY.

I'm not sure if I'm surprised or validated by my results.

I thought I was more balanced than that.  I thought if I showed a preference or association it would be slight and not strong.

So on the issue of race, I'm very comfortable and validated by my results.  Either slight automatic preference, or no preference would have been fine with me.

But the gender issue - I know I have a strong association of Female and FAMILY, but I would have thought I had an equally strong association of Female and CAREER.  I wonder if my results would have been different when I was still working in corporate America.

I'm disturbed by the fact that even though I try very hard to see males and females as equals, having equal importance and responsibilities both at work and at home, I'm implicitly biased.

I wonder if and how this manifested in my working life?  Did I find it easier to ask my male employees to sacrifice family time than my female employees?  Did I give my female employees more latitude with flexible scheduling to meet their families' needs?

I don't think I did.  And that is the thing that I remember about unconscious bias from the seminar.  It is just that, unconscious.  And knowing about your biases allows you to learn compensatory behaviors, it allows you to question your initial thought or judgement, but I'm not sure you can change these bias because you want to.  If you could, I wouldn't have the strong association of Male with CAREER.

I know life experiences can change your unconscious bias.  I know that knowing them is good so that you can combat the bias you have.  There are many tests available if you are interested in learning more about yourself.  Here is a link to Project Implicit.

As for me, I think I will take a bunch more tests.  I'm comfortable with knowing more about myself, even if I'm not always comfortable with what I learn.

Oh My

It is pretty obvious from my photo that I am a woman.  I have tried throughout my life to just be a person, but I am undeniably a woman.

As a woman who worked in Environmental, Health and Safety in the Petrochemical Industry, it was not uncommon for me to be the only woman in a room, or one of two or three out of ten or twenty.  Just the way it was.

I tried as hard as I could to not call attention to gender differences, and to stay away from succumbing to feeling like a victim because of some of the inequity in the workplace.  I recognized that as a woman, there was a different set of expectations and behaviors that I had to conform to so as to not be viewed as too assertive, too aggressive, or willing to use my femininity to gain advantage.

I don't like to get into conversations that focus on our differences, I prefer to find common ground and work from there.  Sigh.

I'm afraid that because a woman is one of the major party candidates for President of the United States, the man-woman tension that has always existed is going to be worse than ever.

And I have to tell you.  It is distressing.

There are characteristics that are more dominant in men, and characteristics that are more dominant in women.  But there are also outliers to those dominant characteristics.  What I see happening as the man-woman tension increases, is that we turn each other into caricatures.

Yes, there is such a thing as mansplaining - Wikipedia describes it this way "to explain something to someone, typically a man to woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing".  And to be honest, as a woman with technical expertise in my field, I had to learn to be very careful in how I presented my expertise in the workplace because many people (but predominantly men) heard my expertise as condescending or patronizing.    Everyone has the capacity to explain something to someone else in a condescending manner,  we should all police ourselves to not do that, but when I am honest with myself, as much as I want to find common ground, my life experience tells me that more men are going to explain things to women in a condescending or patronizing manner, and more men are going to hear any explanation from a woman about something they do not understand as condescending or patronizing.

And that is why it is so distressing.  I know how hard I try to stay out of falling into the trap of believing I know something about you by looking at you.  And yet when the man-woman tension ratchets up, the catalog of bad experiences I have had gains prominence in my thoughts.

And I remind myself that the majority of people that I have interacted with are wonderful people.  People who try very hard to make certain that everyone is treated with dignity and respect.  People who think carefully about the words they use so as to not cause harm.

And I tell myself to not let the outliers that contributed to the catalog of bad experiences matter so much, and color my thoughts and perceptions so much.

But it is hard.  Because there were nights after a long day of meetings with predominantly men, where the frustration at being disregarded, the hurt from the casual comments of superiority, the anger at the self-censoring that I had to do left me in tears.

And those people at those meetings probably never knew.  Because they weren't consciously doing anything wrong.  They were just behaving inside the societal and workplace norms that exist.

Having a woman as the candidate of a major party in the United States Presidential election is breaking a societal norm that has existed since the inception of the United States of America.

The candidate in question absolutely has more to provoke animosity than just any woman, as she has been in politics for the best part of her life and was a First Lady of the United States, a United States Senator, and the United States Secretary of State.   But I'm afraid the animosity would exist for many just because she is a woman, just because a norm is being broken.

And as we have seen many times, there is a lot of ugliness simmering beneath the surface of our norms.  And when those norms are challenged or broken, there is a lot of anger that causes great harm.

I'm going to try my best to not get sucked into the downward spiral.  I know that men and women are more alike than different, and that you simply don't know anything about what kind of person someone is because you know their gender.

And I'm going to remind myself over and over again that it is easy to be casually cruel when you don't think about your words and actions.

And I'm going to hope that as society continues to evolve past the artificial separations we have created, that we can do so with more love than hate, more compassion than anger, and more listening than shouting.

Ugh

The level of ugliness keeps rising, and I've noticed a new horrific development.

Many people have become incapable of being embarrassed.

I see people post things that are untrue, and when someone points that out, they simply ignore the advice that they have been duped and stay the course.

There is no, "OOPS, I was duped", or "I'm sorry I didn't research that before I posted it", there is just move on to post the next passionate meme or video clip.

There is a phenomenon that has been studied for many years called confirmation bias.  Confirmation bias is the tendency for humans to seek data that confirms our hypotheses, and to more readily believe data that confirms our hypotheses.

Confirmation bias is stronger when it is related to emotional issues.  So when I'm trying to be kind and non-judgemental, I think that people's confirmation bias has overridden their sense of decency.

But come on man!  The crazy stuff  that people post on social media is just crazy.  Am I the only one who knows what Snopes is?

I know in the heated political climate right now a lot of people want to make their point.  They want to find the one story, video, piece of evidence, etc. that proves their candidate is the right candidate.

I want to share a little something with you.  The more outrageous and easily disproved your last post was, the less likely I am to even read your next post.

And in spite of how hard I try to not judge, unless it is clear your post was sarcastic, I'm going to put you in the intellectually lazy pile.  I know, terribly judgy of me.

But I really believe we all owe each other better than to just repeat what we hear without making sure it is true.  Because another facet of confirmation bias is that it impacts our memories.  So when someone hears something that supports their emotional position on a topic, even if they find out later it is not true, they may very well remember it as true.

Freaky, huh?

So we are in danger of having a society filled with people who passionately believe totally false information they have gotten from social media.  And that is scary.

We have a parallel phenomenon in which entertainers present themselves as news commentators, so that people believe they are hearing factual news when they are actually hearing very biased opinion.

News has facts.  News does not present people or events as good or bad.  Just as things that happened.  Real news allows the viewer or reader to decide how to feel about any particular news story.

And while we are at this whole scary place we are in discussion, I have another truth bomb.  Just because you and any number of other people believe something, it doesn't make it true.

I am continually amazed by the things that people I always thought were reasonably intelligent post on social media or say in conversation as factual.  Run it past the logic filter.  Check multiple sources for congruence of data.  Do anything besides take the intellectually lazy position of deciding because you agree with the emotion the information provokes that it is true.

Read Fahrenheit 451.  Think about what the book is communicating while you are reading it, and then think about how you are living.

Try harder to seek truth instead of confirmation.  It is really important.

Patriotism, Nationalism, Pride and Hubris

For the past couple of weeks in the United States of America, a silent protest movement has been gaining momentum.  Started by an American football player in the National Football League, athletes are choosing to kneel or sit, rather than stand when the National Anthem of the United States of America is played before the start of athletic competition.

The football player in question said that he decided to protest during the National Anthem because the liberty and justice promised by the Constitution of the United States, and represented by the United States flag were not being delivered to all Americans, and most specifically, people of color.

The press and social media have gone into somewhat of a feeding frenzy, and a lot of crazy things are being said.  And that is what led me to want to write this post.

I did a little research that I'd like to share with you.

Patriotism is defined as having love for or devotion to one's country.

Nationalism is defined as a feeling that people have of being loyal to and proud of their country often with the belief that it is better and more important than other countries.

To my way of thinking, patriotism is harmless, love for and devotion to one's country is fine.  Nationalism, however, is not harmless.  When you start to believe that your country is better and more important than other countries, you run the very real risk of alienating people, and in inciting other nations to try to show you that you are not better.

It is perfectly OK to believe that you live in the best country for you.  Or not.  But to decide that your country is better or more important?  How in the world can that be measured?

And therein lies the crux of the problem.  We are all individuals that value different things.  Some people might value universal health care more than an interstate highway system.  Some people might value a state religion rather than freedom of religion.  Some people might value parental leave more than a powerful military.

It is not right or wrong.  We are different and value different things.

In the commentary on the football player and his protest, many are saying that he should leave the country.  What kind of crazy talk is that?  One of the most profound and cherished freedoms in the United States of America is freedom of speech and freedom of expression.  You don't have to agree with the message or the method, but if you disagree with the importance of that essential freedom, what exactly do you love about this country?

And that takes me to the pride and hubris part of the post.

Pride is defined as a feeling or deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities  or possessions that are widely admired.

Hubris is defined as excessive pride or self-confidence.

To be proud of your country is fine.  To demand that others be proud of your country is hubris.

Most of us live where we live as an accident of birth.  Some choose to move to a country other than the one they were born in, and become nationalized citizens of that new country.   Being proud of your country will depend for most people on multiple attributes of life in that country.  But loving your country and acknowledging that your country is not perfect can easily coexist.

The easiest analogy I can make is this.  I love my mother.  My mother suffers from dementia.  That doesn't make me love her any less.  Acknowledging her dementia allows me to get her the care she needs to have the best quality of life she can.

Acknowledging the illnesses of discrimination, of excessive violence in society, of militarization of policing doesn't mean I love my country less.  It just means that I am willing to work to find solutions to these ills.

If you see no ills in your country, I'm happy for you.  Be proud.  Love your country.  But be careful of hubis.  Because those who see ills and try to bring attention to them so that they can be cured probably love their country just as much as you do.

I have friends all over the world who love their country.  I would never say that my country is the best country on earth.

I will say I love my country and I don't want to live anywhere else.  And I appreciate that many other people in many other countries feel the same way.

Persons of Extraordinary Grace

One of the great gifts of my life is the astounding number of people I have had the opportunity to meet and interact with.

In a thirty-plus year career with Union Carbide and Dow, I was fortunate to meet people from all over the world, and from all economic strata.

There are many people that believe that where you were born, or what color your skin is, or how much money you have, or what your gender or gender identity is informs a person about you.

My experience with meeting so many different people from so many different places is that what you can see or know about a person in a chance meeting is nothing at all.

Except for a few remarkable exceptions, and I will call those people Persons of Extraordinary Grace.

What exactly to I mean by that?  I think I can only explain it by example.  I'll start with a famous example, and work my way back to examples that are no where near famous.

When I was seventeen or eighteen, I was lucky to get tickets to see the Phil Donahue show taped live in New York City.  The taping was very cool, and Phil Donahue was the darling of daytime television back then.  At the end of the taping, Phil invited the audience to stay and meet a couple of friends of his that happened to be there. The first was his future wife, Marlo Thomas, who was his girlfriend at the time.  Then Marlo introduced her father, Danny Thomas.

Danny Thomas was a Person of Extraordinary Grace.  Danny Thomas was the driving force behind the creation of St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital.  Danny had made a vow to God that if he achieved success in show business, he would build a shrine to St. Jude Thaddeus, and that shrine is St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital.

When I met Danny Thomas at that taping of the Phil Donahue show, I was impressed with his incredible presence. He possessed an incredible goodness of spirit that was impossible to deny.  I call that innate goodness grace.

Now for a more ordinary example.  I was traveling by train from Indiana to New Jersey when my daughter was seven months old.  In an extraordinary feat of coordination, she hooked her binky and flung it off the train while we were traveling between cars.  She really loved that binky.  She was teething.  I could only afford a regular seat, not a sleeper, and the other passengers were quite vocal in their displeasure sharing a compartment with a crying baby.  I spent most of the night in the ladies lounge attached to the rest room.  Because I was traveling alone, everywhere I went, baby and diaper bag went with me.  Early in the morning, an older (late sixties, early seventies) well dressed woman came into the ladies room, as I was struggling to hold the diaper bag, the baby, and wash my hands.   She offered to hold my baby so that I could wash my hands properly, and maybe even wash my face.  I was beyond grateful for her help.  And then came the moment of extraordinary grace.

After washing up and collecting my daughter, the woman shared that she almost didn't offer to help, because she wasn't sure I would be comfortable with a "colored woman"(her words) holding my baby.  And then I knew I was in the presence of a Person of Extraordinary Grace.  I imagined that in her lifetime which had included Jim Crow laws she had been admonished for approaching white people.  But she saw a girl in a tough spot, and had the courage to risk rejection to offer help.  God's love on earth - extraordinary grace.

My dad was a Person of Extraordinary Grace.  He lit up a room.  He made people feel better.  He encouraged and supported and cared deeply about people.

Persons of Extraordinary Grace aren't perfect.  They are ordinary humans like you and me in many ways.  They get angry.  They make mistakes.  They fail.  But they possess an extraordinary capacity for love, for putting others before themselves, and for sharing God's love with others in a tangible way.   I am blessed to have many Persons of Extraordinary Grace in my life, and to have brushed past many Persons of Extraordinary Grace in my travels.

We all know Persons of Extraordinary Grace.  We know them by what they do and how they are the good they want to see in the world.  We know them because they always make us feel better when we are with them.  We don't know them because they look a certain way or dress a certain way.  Persons of Extraordinary Grace make themselves known by how they act.

And here is the best part.  We were all created with the potential to be Persons of Extraordinary Grace.  We all have the capacity to do great things.  To be the good we want to see in the world.  To build people up.  To risk rejection and scorn in order to help.  We won't all have the ability to change the world for the better the way that Danny Thomas did with St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital, but we all have the ability to change someone's world at a moment in time with a singular act of kindness.

And that matters. Each and every kind act matters.  Each and every sacrifice on behalf of another matters.  Each and every act of love for each other matters.  We can make the world a safer, more welcoming, more loving place.  One Person of Extraordinary Grace at a time.

Affirmation

This past Sunday at Mass, the gospel was the parable of the Prodigal Son.  This gospel is always problematic for me.  For those unfamiliar with the parable, here is the condensed version.

There is a rich man with two sons.  The younger son asks for his share of his inheritance, and takes it and squanders it.  When he has nothing left, he decides to go and ask his father for a servant's job so that he doesn't starve to death.  The father is delighted to have his son back, and has a big celebration.  The older son who has done everything to be a good son is hurt that his father throws a big party for the son who squandered his inheritance, when the father has never even given him the opportunity to throw a party for his friends.  The father tries to explain by saying that his son was lost, and is now found.  While everything the father has now belongs to the older son.

Now as to why this gospel is a problem for me.  I can understand everyone's feelings.  I feel bad for the older son, who feels unappreciated when all he has ever done is what is asked and expected of him.  I feel bad for the younger son, who didn't expect to be welcomed as a son, but just wanted to not starve to death.  And I feel bad for the father, because in his joy at the return of his lost son, he didn't realize he might unintentionally hurt his older son.

I get how the parable is a metaphor for a forgiving God who is always looking for His children to return to him.  But as a human, it makes me think about the complexities of the parent, child and sibling relationships.

As I sat in church on Sunday, I started thinking about my move to Louisiana thirty years ago.  My decision to move to Louisiana hurt both my mother and my daughter.  I was in a very difficult financial and emotional situation in New Jersey, and I had been praying and praying for a solution.  When the job in Louisiana was offered at a much better salary than I was making in New Jersey, I felt it was the answer to a prayer.

But on Sunday I started worrying if perhaps it had been a selfish decision.  If I would have been better off staying near family.  There is no way to know how my life or my daughter's life would have turned out if I has stayed, and I think we are both in a good place now, but the doubts started to eat at me as I sat in church.  I worried that when all is said and done, and I meet my maker, I would be called to task for making decisions in life that were more about what was good for me than what was good for others.

Those of you who read my blog regularly know that I love it here in the greater New Orleans metropolitan area.  I feel like this is where I belong.   So, as I was wondering about my choices, and wondering if I had listened to God's voice in my life or to my own selfishness, I noticed something.  At least six out of ten people in Mass were wearing New Orleans Saints clothing.  Shirts with fleur de lis, logo apparel, football jerseys.

And I knew I was among my people.  That I was exactly where I was supposed to be.  That this community, this magical city, was meant to be my home.

I felt like God had opened my eyes to see that I am where He meant me to be.

Life is full of decisions.  Most of them small, but some of them huge.  The huge decisions are hard to not second guess.

I have a very good life.  I feel guilty sometimes because my life is so good.  When I feel guilty, I wonder if I should have made different decisions somewhere along the way so that someone else would have a better life, and mine would be less good.

And that my friends is crazy thinking.  We all owe it to ourselves to fashion the very best life for ourselves that we can.  If we are parents we must think of our children, but if we are falling apart and unable to cope we are not going to be effective parents.

As children, we are required to love and respect our parents, but it is our job to make our own way in the world, even when it doesn't align with our parents view of our path.

When we are happy and living the life we were meant to live, we have the capability to lift others up, to share our good will, and to be a positive force for good.

Life does not always go according to plan.  There are heartaches and heartbreaks in every life.  There is adversity to overcome.  But through it all one thing remains.  Opportunity.

Every day offers the opportunity to be grateful for the life you have had so far.  Every day offers the opportunity to change things if life is not what you want it to be.  Every day offers the opportunity to second guess the choices that have led you to where you are.  Every day offers the opportunity to accept you are exactly where you are meant to be.

Life can never be all good.  The best times in our lives often set up the worst times, when we lose the people we shared our best times with.

So celebrate every chance you get.  Celebrate what makes you happy.  Celebrate the people that you love and have loved.  Try not to second guess.  You are where you are.  You made the best decisions you could at each juncture to get where you are.  If you need to change something to be happy, figure out what it is and how to make that change.

And remind yourself on a regular basis that you are a positive force for good.  And then be that force.

Stereotypes, prejudices, and realities

I read an article this morning about what the author considers to be the last allowable prejudice in American speech, television and film, the mockery of people from Appalachia, or in the common vernacular, hillbillies and rednecks. (There are those that maintain this prejudice extends to the people of the Ozarks as well).

My husband is from Appalachia, and has maintained since I have known him that this is true.  That while we must not be insensitive to Native Americans, or African Americans, or Muslim Americans or Chinese Americans or any other Native or Immigrant group, it is totally permissible to make fun of rednecks and hillbillies.

The snide remarks and jokes about incest, and lack of dental hygiene, remarks about moonshine and hillbilly heroin (oxycontin) do seem to be pervasive and permissible.  And I have to wonder why.

And it is easy to wade into the rhetorical weeds on this subject.  As I was reading the article, I found myself thinking about myself and my origins.  I grew up in New Jersey, often referred to as the armpit of the United States.  The caricature of a Jersey Girl, a foul-mouthed, over made-up, gum chewing, wise-cracking airhead is as alive and well in 2016 as it was in the 1950's.  I worked hard to change my speech patterns so that it would be virtually impossible for people to geographically identify me.  I started to fill up with a righteous anger on behalf of everyone, because just about any identifiable demographic can be marginalized and mocked.

And then I had to stop myself.  My issues with growing up in New Jersey, and feeling mocked and made fun of should give me greater empathy for the people of Appalachia, not a need to compete for who is more denigrated.

And there was my lightbulb moment.  I'm just like everyone else.  When I hear someone share their pain, instead of listening, accepting, and validating, I want to point out that I have pain too.  And that is so not the right answer.

When any human is sharing their pain, the only answer is I'm sorry you are hurting.  I will do my best not to add to your pain.  Empathy is good, but trying to one-up, or say I'm hurting too, or I am disregarded too just adds insult to injury.

And it is not reasonable to expect a person in pain to hear anything but rejection unless all you offer is support.

This being a good human is hard, never-ending work.

We can all be marginalized.  We can all feel denigrated.  And we all have a right to have our voices heard and our feelings validated.  But we have to be sensitive to the person sharing their pain at any given moment.  That moment is theirs, not ours.

And as I wandered around in the rhetorical weeds, I thought about how much I love my adopted home of Louisiana.  And I thought of how we tell Boudreaux and Thibodaux jokes, and laugh at our speech idioms like "making groceries".  I thought of how we celebrate how different we are in Louisiana, and how difficult it is to laugh at anyone who is already laughing at themselves.

And I wondered how we came to be this way in Louisiana.  How it is that in the coastal part of the state, we really don't identify as "Southerners", but identify as New Orleanians, or Cajuns, or Creoles, or Coon-Asses.   Or as transplants that thrive in Delta soil and want to claim this culture as our own.

And I think about my post from yesterday, about my default emotions of laughter and compassion.  For whatever reason, those seem to be the predominant default emotions in coastal Louisiana.  Cajun cook Justin Wilson used to say that when God made Louisiana He must have been smiling.  I think He must have been, and that leads to the joie de vivre so prevalent in the local culture and behavior.

I wandered around a lot in this post.  Maybe I can tie it all back together.  We all stereotype, and we all have prejudices.  The reality is, when someone points out to you how a stereotype or prejudice hurts them, the best response is I'm sorry.  And a pledge to try your best to not add to the hurt.

And in the same way as anything can be mocked, anything can be celebrated.  I am so grateful to live in a place where we celebrate our unique culture all the time, and do so with exceedingly good humor.

Anger

Of all the emotions, anger is probably the one I am worst at.  I don't like to be angry.  I'm really not good at being angry.  And it takes enormous energy to be angry.

I guess that is why I stay a little amazed at how many people seem to be comfortable being angry all the time.

This leads me back to my train your brain (intentionally or unintentionally) thinking.  I think whatever you practice, whatever emotional response consistently have, you train your brain to have that response, and it becomes the default response for you.

So how does it all start?  I don't remember at what point in my life I started working on not getting angry.

I know I had a bad temper as a child, mostly it was directed at my siblings. Maybe because I was third and anger never yielded me a positive result, I looked for a more rewarding response.  I know my parents frequently told me I had to learn to not lose my temper.

I don't remember my mom and dad, nor my aunts and uncles being angry very much, so maybe I just followed their example.

I just don't know.  But I do know that by the time I was in the sixth grade, my default emotion was amusement, and my second default was compassion.

As the years have gone by, I have laughed and cried, I have consoled and been consoled, and my defaults of laughter and compassion have been reinforced countless times.

I still get angry sometimes, but less and less often as I get older.

And I wonder what life experience shaped all those people who seem to be angry all the time?  What has their anger done for them?  What is the reward for anger?

Part of why I have worked so hard to condition my brain away from the anger response is that anger represents a loss of control, and you all know that maintaining the illusion of control is a primary motivator for me.

Anger isn't rational or logical, and I prize reason and logic.  I can easily articulate why I have worked so hard to not respond to stimuli with anger.

I wonder if the people who seem to be angry all the time can articulate all the reasons why anger is a good response for them.

I wonder how all that anger has made their life better or more enjoyable.  I wonder if they even remember there are other responses besides anger.

And there is the actionable item.  If you are angry all the time, why?  Can you articulate what being angry is doing to make your life better?  Are you choosing to be angry, or have you conditioned yourself to respond with anger by being angry all the time?

Life is short.  Anger causes damage.  The time you spend angry can't be spent being happy and making good memories.  I really want to understand why anyone would consistently spend time that way instead of another way.

I feel like if I could understand the reward for being angry all the time, then I could understand how to offer a better reward for not being angry.  And then maybe I could help some people not be angry all the time.

I can't help if I can't understand, and as hard as I try, I just don't understand where all the anger comes from, and how in the world anyone can find the energy to fuel that anger.

I wish I could figure it out.  Because I would love for the anger to go away, or at least become less common.  Until then, I'll keep working on humor and compassion being my default emotions.  With love.  Always with love.

Rainy Days and Random Thoughts

It is raining outside, with thunderstorms.  We are under a flash flood advisory, and a flood watch, so really, it is the right thing to do to stay in the house.  It has been raining for the last hour and a half, and will rain for at least another two hours.

There is something about having to stay in the house that makes it feel confining, and makes me want to get out of the house.  This is really funny in a way, because usually, I just want to be in my house.

And that makes me think about how contrary we humans are.  So often we want something until we have it.  We want a job, or a house, or a car, or a person, and then when we get what we wanted, we feel empty instead of pleased.

Sometimes we are happy when we get what we want.  I still love my 2001 PT Cruiser, and I still love my kitchen that we remodeled in 2002, and I still love my red washer and dryer that I got in 2008.  (I guess I should mention I still think my daughter is the best human ever born and that has lasted nearly forty years, and I still love my husband to distraction after nearly twenty-nine years.)

But I am as guilty as the next person of "when" thinking.  When I retire, when I finish my novel, when I finish this crochet project, when we remodel the house, when I weigh "X", when something, everything will be wonderful.

And it just never works that way.

Those who read my blog regularly know that I am an essentially happy person.  I know I have a great life.  I am eternally grateful for that.  But on some days, and especially rainy days when good sense and caution demand I stay in the house, I start to get restless.

I question everything.  I seek distraction.  I have the attention span of a flea.  (Or a mosquito as Sharon would say.)

So far today, I have tried reading, writing and crocheting.  None held my interest.

I find myself thinking about a book I read years ago, "The Mirror of Her Dreams" in which the heroine felt like she was fading away, and that her image in the mirror was becoming more and more vague.

On days like today, I feel like I am fading.  I feel like I am not myself. I feel like an imposter in my own life.

I think about the movie "Key Largo" and how the tension built and built while the storm raged.  It isn't any wonder thunderstorms are used so frequently in fiction for dramatic effect. They do create an unmistakable tension.

And as all these random thoughts chase themselves around and around in my head, I start to think about the strangest things.

Like how everyone is so worked up about whether or not an athlete stands for the playing of the US National Anthem, but hardly anyone is worked up about the Syrian refugee crisis.

About how so many people have an opinion on the privileged athlete who served a three month sentence for rape, but hardly anyone cares about the 306 people who are shot everyday in America.  (Statistics courtesy of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.)

I think about how for the last at least eight years, Congress and the Senate have actively worked to prevent progress, and yet most of those Congressmen and Senators will be reelected.  And people blame the President for what is wrong, and believe a new President can fix what they want fixed, but without Congress funding things, and the Senate confirming judicial appointments, nothing will change.

I think about how easily manipulated we Americans are by the news media, and how most people have lost the ability to differentiate between fact and opinion.

I think about how people are so eager to believe anything bad about someone they don't like, and how eager they are to refute anything bad about someone they like.  When all humans are a mixture of positive and negative traits.

I think about how much I want to be outside and moving.  Because for me, being outside and moving restores my equilibrium.  It makes me more substantive.  It calms my restlessness.

I hope the rain stops soon.  Until then, I'll just keep looking for something to distract me from my disjointed thoughts.........

The snarky girl inside my head

I try hard to be a nice person.  I try to be the person who says nothing if they have nothing good to say.  I think I succeed a fair amount of the time.  But there is a snarky girl who lives inside my head.

Most of the time, she directs her comments at life in general, and she can be pretty funny.  But every once in awhile, she gets loud, and downright mean.

I don't understand what it is that triggers the snarky girl to become the dominant voice in my head.  Usually, she is just one of the chorus of voices.

I hope that not too many of you are seriously freaked out by my admission that I have multiple voices in my head.

So anyway, when the snarky girl becomes the dominant voice in my head, and is mean-spirited, I don't like myself very much.  It takes a lot of energy to keep the snarky thoughts from turning into comments.  I don't want to show that part of me to very many people, the circle that I trust enough to see that me is very very small.

So, when the snarky girl is dominant, I tend to withdraw.  I don't talk to people.  I don't call my friends.  I don't even talk to my family very much.  And so there is no one to talk me out of disliking myself profoundly. The downward spiral begins, and the snarky girl gets louder and meaner.

Something always happens to break the cycle, and the snarky girl goes back to where she belongs, as part of the chorus offering biting but funny commentary on the ridiculous.

But I worry that someday she might take over as the dominant voice in my head, and I will lose the ability to keep her comments from becoming spoken or written word.

And then I wonder if mean people just lost control over the snarky voice in their head.

I feel like I have to devise ways to put the snarky girl back in her place, so that she never gains control.  (My inner control freak never rests.)

I have found that a forced day with friends will put her back in her place.  But they have to be the really close friends who being with is easy.  Who I can have no filters with.  Who know me well enough to forgive me if the snarky girl comes out.  The problem is I can't bring myself to make the contact, I always need a friend to draw me out.

Time with my daughter always fixes the snarky girl.  Because with my daughter I can give the snarky girl full voice, and she laughs with me and at me, and all the pent up anger and frustration evaporates.

Really hard exercise will quiet the snarky girl. The snarky girl must be one of the lazier parts of my psyche.  Really hard exercise makes the happy, optimistic voices in my head the loudest.

The good thing about the snarky girl in my head is that she reminds me that we are all complex.  We are all a mixture of positive and negative, we all have an internal yin and yang.   The snarky girl helps me remember to be kind to people when they are unkind, because they might just be listening to the wrong internal voice that day.  The snarky girl reminds me that no one can be painted with one brush, and that there is good in everyone, even when we can't see it.

So, while I am supremely uncomfortable with the snarky girl being the dominant voice in my head, I'm glad she is there.  The snarky girl never lets me forget it can be hard work to be kind to people.  The snarky girl never lets me forget that being judgemental is human, and must be fought against.

And when the snarky girl is in her proper place in my head, she often provides serious comic relief with her commentary.  And we all need comic relief.